For the first time, she asked, “What’s that for?”
“That’s a twin-ops vessel,” Pan said, pointing at the angry gnat strafing them with magenta lasers on the bridge’s view screen. “It’s flying on autopilot and trying to keep our attention so it can attach a boarding craft to our hull. Keep the shields up and don’t try to shoot back. I’m going to find our intruders.”
“Pan, wait!”
“Hey, don’t worry about me.” She stopped in the doorway just long enough to flash the nearest camera her most confident grin. “Remember, I’m the baddest Rogue in the galaxy.”
Boarding crafts were designed to be sneaky. In the middle of a ship battle, they could attach themselves anywhere on an opposing vessel, disrupting shields and overriding proximity alarms, before dumping dozens of troops right in the heart of the enemy.
A crew caught up in a heated laser exchange could be easily taken off-guard by a unit of specially-trained soldiers. Oh, it was dangerous as hell, but fortune favored the bold, right?
Pan checked the airlocks to see if any of them had been tampered with. They were all registering zero connectivity. She widened her search and looked for the only other thing that would help.
She looked for places where the sensors just weren’t working.
She found the section. An outer bulkhead that was producing zero signal. When she arrived, she saw why. The wall was gone, replaced by the access door of the boarding vehicle. It had cut clean through the hull.
“Well, that ain’t gonna buff out.”
“That is none of your concern.”
She spun; finger ready on the trigger. Someone palmed her gun aside and kicked her into the wall so hard that she bounced off and tumbled to the floor. She rolled, found her target, and fired.
He was dressed in black tactical gear, sleeves rolled past his elbows. His dark hair was cut short and elegantly groomed, and he had a face for scowling. Those eyes seemed like they never saw anything they approved of.
She shot him in the face. Or, rather, she shot at his face. He swiped the bullet aside with a wave of his hand and it sparked off the wall to his right.
She blanched. Not what she’d been expecting.
“Cyborg or android?” she grunted, keeping the gun trained on him, for all the good it would do.
“I am beyond both. Do not compare me to those humans who cobble their augmentations together from ill-fitting pieces of obsolete technology, or the mindless automatons manufactured by the corporations. Perhaps I was human originally, but I am vastly more now. Just as Hope will be.”
“So, what are you? Her jailor?”
“Her husband.”
Pan gaped, but she smoothed out the surprise. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, if he was even capable of it. She cracked a tight, unpleasant sneer instead.
“Funny. She didn’t mention you. Actually, it sounded to me like she was happy to space herself so she could get as far away from you as possible.”
“Is that so?” He arched an eyebrow, but didn’t rise to her goading more than that. “I will speak to her directly. But first, I will dispose of you.”
He lunged at her. She fired again, fast as her finger could pull the trigger. He swatted every bullet aside like it was a fly until he was right in front of the barrel. Then he grabbed it and forced it up towards the ceiling.
She pulled one hand away and swung for his jaw. He jerked back, evading the blow, then hammered her ribs with a hard hook. She growled and kicked him in the balls. He must have had that part augmented too because he didn’t even blink.
“I’m not going to let you hurt her,” she snarled.
“You don’t have a choice,” he said.
He pulled something from his hip and thrust it at her. She went to grab his wrist, but he was fast. Too fast. The knife sank into her belly to the hilt. She curled forward, crumpling. He wrestled the pistol from her grip and held it out of her reach as she dropped to her knees. She grabbed for his belt then his legs. Anything to hold herself up. Strength fled out of her along with her blood. He stepped aside and let her fall.
She shook her head. It wasn’t going to end this way. It couldn’t.
She looked up into his cold, impassive eyes. No wonder he claimed to be beyond human. He’d lost every ounce of humanity he’d ever had. Assuming he’d ever been human.
There had been times, in Pan’s life, when she’d thought she deserved to die. When she’d worried the things she’d done had tipped her over an edge that no amount of trying to make it right could bring her back from.
But Hope? Hope didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve him.
“I have more important matters to attend to,” he told her. She could barely hear him over the sound of her struggling heart pounding in her ears.
He turned and walked away as Pan slumped to the deck.
He had almost reached the bridge when the door slammed shut and the lock cycled. He studied it with a deepening frown.
“Leave me alone, Alastor. Please.”
She couldn’t keep the tremble out of her voice. She couldn’t stop him from knowing how much he frightened her. And she couldn’t see it in his face, but she knew how much satisfaction it gave him.
“I see that she has given you nominal control of the ship.”
“She gave me a lot more than that.”
“Perhaps I should have brought her with me,” Alastor mused. “You might have been more malleable if I had leverage. I could have taken my time punishing her for taking what is mine.”
“I’m not yours. I don’t belong to you. I’m my own woman.”
He smirked and shook his head. There was a touch of fondness in it to go along with the disregard. “She has filled your mind with absurd notions. I will rectify them in due time.”
He moved to the terminal beside the door and began to push buttons. Searching, probing, and trying to find a way around Hope’s nominal control. She felt her grip on the door starting to slip, like having fingers again and all the frailty of being an ordinary human.
“Stop it,” she hissed.
“I commend your spirit, my dear,” he said, “but you have had your fun. It is time to pay for it.”
Hope cast around for options. Could she purge the atmosphere from the ship before he found out and stopped it? Would it even matter to him? Were there internal security defenses?
Or was her only option to watch and wait as he made her powerless again and locked her back in her black box?
Nothing but a voice and sometimes not even that. He’d already taken one body from her. Used it up. Destroyed it. He was going to take this one as well and she’d only just started to get used to it. She should have known she’d never escape. She should have told Pan to leave her and wait for him to find her, as she’d known he eventually would. Maybe if she’d done that, Pan wouldn’t be...
“Fun’s not over yet, dickhead.”
Hope saw her in the corridor behind Alastor. She was back on her feet, vest and work suit soaked in blood that just didn’t matter. She had the knife in her hand and the biggest grin on her face.
And Hope felt her silicon heart soar.
The closest Alastor got to surprise was an arched eyebrow. The arch grew more pronounced when Pan lobbed the knife at him and he wasn’t quick enough to catch it. The blade impaled his palm. Fluorescent nanotech solution dribbled from the wound and down his arm.
“Remember, I asked you, cyborg or android?” She spread her arms and grinned. “Take a guess.”
He’d talked about those cyber-clunker automata like they were the only models on offer. He’d obviously never seen a top-shelf android before. Until today.
The Authority had been real proud of their thinking, feeling killbot. An ‘infiltrator’ model they’d called her. Something to bring down the insurrections and the rebellions from within and keep the little people under their heels.
Only she’d infiltrated a little too well. She’d listened to those men and women t
alking about a future free of the Authority, when their families wouldn’t have to starve when they couldn’t meet work quotas, when they didn’t have to die of the black lung or spend the rest of their lives paying for a new arm or a new leg they only lost because the mining corp wouldn’t take responsibility for accident after accident after accident. When the Authority wouldn’t send its peacekeepers to put union families in airlocks and decorate the starfield with them for all the other workers to see.
Pan had bought in, big time. Baddest Rogue in the galaxy. Anything was better than working for the Authority.
What if your thinking, feeling killbot thought about everything you’d done and felt sick?
“This is fortuitous,” Alastor said, sliding the knife from his palm. “I have been searching for a body for Hope. Yours is exceptionally sophisticated. I will need to do something about your appearance, but... We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Pan grinned. “Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’d love to have Hope inside me.”
The corridor filled with the sound of Hope spluttering. “Oh my god, Pan!”
It had the desired effect. Alastor was so pissed, he actually managed to look angry. He lunged at her, knife aimed for her throat this time. She caught his wrists, deadlock, then kicked him so hard in the gut that his legs flew out behind him. He landed on his knees and she twisted, flipping him onto his back.
She aimed the knife at his chest, pushing it down. He held her off, until she started punching the knife hilt down towards his breastbone. The blade pierced his vest and sank between his ribs. She wondered which part of his enhanced physiology was most vulnerable. She grinned into his face as she thought about cutting him open to find out.
“You’re a dead man. You hear me? I don’t know what you did to her, but I am going to kill you for it.”
“That is unlikely.”
He slammed his knee into the side of her head, throwing her off. He jumped to his feet and the knife came free from his chest. She thrust at him again and he spun, catching her around the bicep and locking her tight. She swung the knife, hitting nothing, as she felt his fingers sinking into the synthetic flesh of her bicep.
Most of the time, she could go through life without thinking that everything under her skin was alloy and superconductive gel full of red food dye. But, when she was damaged, she couldn’t ignore her nature. Damage alerts started scrolling behind her eyes.
He pierced skin. She started bleeding. By the time he reached bone, she was gushing. She slammed her fist into the back of his head and he ignored her. She felt the steel warp in his fingers, felt it snap as he broke her endoskeleton. Her arm clanged to the deck; knife still clutched in her fingers.
Only now he had nothing to hold her by. She grabbed him around the throat with her remaining arm and dropped, pulling him over her back. She heard the crack of his augmented spine shattering against hers. She threw him to the floor and stamped on the side of his head. More vertebrae popped and his skull deformed under the piston power of her boot.
The airlock door hissed open. Pan took the cue and kicked Alastor through it. Before he could recover, it slammed shut again.
He stood up, posture stooped on one side by his broken back, and lunged at the door. He pried at it with his fingers like he thought it would be quicker than hacking the control panel.
Maybe he was right. It still wouldn’t be quick enough.
“Don’t come looking for me again, Alastor,” Hope said. “Just forget about me. I don’t belong to you anymore.”
Pan locked eyes with Alastor through the window. She waggled her fingers at him. Bye-bye.
The outer door opened. Hope’s husband barely had time to glare at her and then he was rocketing backwards into the black beyond.
Pan saw the twin-ops ship that had been firing at them arcing around, following his trajectory. Maybe his augmentations would keep him alive long enough for it to retrieve him.
It didn’t matter. A second later, they were in FTL. By the time he got back aboard his ship, they’d be nothing but a stain on his scanner.
Gone.
The ship wasn’t in great condition. They hadn’t sustained much damage during the attack, but the jump to FTL had ripped the boarding craft off their hull and blown out a portion of their aft. The pilot’s quarters, which she guessed had belonged to Alastor, were gone. Pan had never slept there herself. She’d felt closer to Hope on the bridge.
“The damaged sections are sealed, so we’re not losing atmospheric integrity. But we have a bigger problem.”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t input any coordinates before we jumped so... I kind of don’t know where we are. This might not even be Authority space anymore. I mean, I’m picking up systems and signals I’ve never seen before, not even on star maps.”
“I’m sorry,” Hope said. It sounded like she was crying. “I know I shouldn’t have done it but...I just wanted to get as far away from him as possible. I’m...really sorry.”
“Babe, why are you apologizing? You did what you had to do. I don’t like the idea of him being anywhere near you either.”
She trailed her remaining hand over the command console soothingly. It wasn’t the same as touching Hope’s cheek and drying her tears in the rec simulation, but they’d save that for later. Hopefully, she could see what Pan was trying to do and it made her feel better.
“Besides, I kind of like the idea of being lost in space with you. I wasn’t exactly attached to the Authority’s idea of civilization.”
“He’ll come after us,” Hope muttered.
Pan laughed. “If he can find us all the way out here, I’ll actually be impressed.”
Hope didn’t respond. This was where the ability to chuck her chin would have come in real handy.
“Let him come after us. I’ll keep you safe. And you’ll keep me safe. We’ve got each other’s backs.”
Whatever happened with Alastor, if he really was as omniscient as Hope feared or if she was just afraid of the man who’d cast a shadow over her life for too long, they had other things to think about right at that minute. Pan checked the scans and located the nearest inhabited system. The structure she was picking up was close enough to a space station that they might actually be able to find a place to patch their ship up.
This was a whole new galaxy. Maybe they’d never even heard of Rogues. She could be the first. And the baddest.
“Come on,” she said, curling her last five fingers around one stick and feeling Hope take the other side. “Let’s go on an adventure, gorgeous. In space.”
Robert Allen Lupton
Robert Allen Lupton is retired and lives in New Mexico where he is a commercial hot air balloon pilot. Robert runs and writes every day, but not necessarily in that order. More than a hundred and fifty of his short stories have been published in several anthologies including the New York Times best seller, Chicken Soup For the Soul – Running For Good. His novel, Foxborn, was published in April 2017 and the sequel, Dragonborn, in June 2018.
His first collection, Running Into Trouble, was published in October 2017. His collection, Through a Wine Glass Darkly, was released in June 2019. His newest collection, Strong Spirits, was released on June 1, 2020. His edited anthology, Feral: It Takes a Forest to Raise a Child, was released September 1, 2020.
Learn more at RobertAllenLupton.blogspot.com
Where the Stars Don’t Shine
Robert Allen Lupton
Captain Jefferson Redfeather sat up in the Longsleep chamber, rubbed his eyes, and promptly vomited into his own lap. The bright liquid crystal diode lights hurt his eyes. Things didn’t feel right. He was alone. There should have been technicians, human and robotic, welcoming him back to wakefulness.
He checked the perpetual clock on the chamber’s readout panel. Six hundred eighty-four years, two months, nine days, and a few hours. He knew something was wrong. Travel time to Sirius was nine hundred years. He shouldn’t be awake.
; He unplugged the nutrient feed from his left arm and the blood drip from his right. Food came through one arm and blood to be cleaned and replaced flowed in and out of the other. He was dizzy and disorientated. He felt badly dehydrated. That shouldn’t be. Maybe his nutrient feed malfunctioned and his chamber defaulted into wakeup mode.
He drank a container of vitamin water and vomited again.
He looked around the sleep chamber for the ship’s officers and crew. The chamber was separate from the massive rooms where over five hundred thousand colonists were cryogenically frozen for the voyage. The crew and officers traveled in a state of suspended animation rather than as peoplesickles, like paying passengers.
He verbally logged on to the computer. “Athena, Redfeather here, authorization code LR212108. Status report, please. Why am I awake?”
“Good morning, captain. I trust you slept well. This is ship’s day 249,901. Life support is fully functional and we are on schedule and on course. Almost fifty thousand of the cryogenic chambers have ceased to function or are offline.”
“Have the pilots investigated?”
“I have had no communication with either pilot in 195,361 days.”
“No communication? Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”
“Protocol. The ship is on schedule and on course. Lack of communication is not a sleep termination triggering event. Seven hours ago, cryogenic chamber TB2705 went offline. Its failure triggered the ten percent failure threshold that requires me to wake the captain. I have complied.”
“Where are the pilots?”
“As you know, the pilots do not appear on my monitors. I have no ability to detect their locations.”
“What about the status chips embedded in their necks?”
“The chips haven’t moved in 195,361 days. The chips are in the control room, but surveillance indicates that the control room has been unoccupied for 195,361 days.”
Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology Page 3