Outermost

by Blaze Ward

  And it was all men in here. Stupid, chauvinistic punks with no idea how dangerous a woman might be, if you handed her a gun or a length of pipe. Based on the grumblings from little Glaxu on the ride in, it was even worse when you weren’t human.

  She caught the murmurings when he entered fourth, behind Big Guy and Captain and ahead of Kyrie. Hopefully, these fools caught the significance of the two women being at the guard positions on the ends of the column.

  Probably not. Probably they were too busy studying the way her boobs swayed as she walked. They’d never note that she held one, possessive hand on the cold chrome finish of her plasma rifle, just waiting for some lunkhead to need to be chunked into a wall with it.

  The locals had opened up a pathway, which Bayjy mostly followed, taking her time and memorizing the layout, just in case Captain let her come back later and break their electronic security systems down into alarm clocks and pocket toys.

  Not much looked worth stealing in here. Other than Truqtok’s peace of mind.

  There was always that. She smiled, and suddenly realized why Captain had put her up front, instead of the hard, endless scowls Kyrie was probably sending downrange.

  You sneaky bastard.

  She grinned some more. Watched it ripple out across these fool pirates like an electric shock that zapped them one by one.

  Down three broad, shallow steps into a bigger room. Bayjy paid attention to the floor as she walked, but it was all stone here. She’d been aboard a wreck once where the captain of the ship had set up a couple of trapdoors in the floor of his main office. Her guess had been that everyone sat in a chair on one, and the Urlan bastard in charge could drop you into cages below if he got pissed. Or scared.

  She wouldn’t put it past this shitbird here, but she was also the person most likely to prepare for such a trap. So Captain had her on point.

  Damn, that man had a twisted mind behind those cute eyes.

  Space cleared out here. Throne at one end, but only up two steps, so maybe more of a platform than a dais. Big, ugly true human seated. Lawyer-dude was off to one side. Gun-thug of some Variant flavor on the other side.

  No sign of the six dipshits she’d met before, so maybe Boss-dude had a clue about provoking Captain into carrying out his threat to squish them fools like bugs.

  Bayjy flipped a coin in her head and drifted to the right so the rest of the line could stretch out. That would put Kyrie opposite the lawyer, who was probably the most dangerous person in here, looking at the rest. Let the fool mess with her cop.

  They were just the sorts of human specist punks you found underground in shitholes like this. Hell, they probably considered her an alien. Not that she had any intentions of proving that she was one hundred percent woman.

  Not with these losers.

  No, she just smiled up at the Boss-dude and the Gun-thug like she was measuring them for coffins. Granted, if that happened, she probably was the one person here who knew how to build a coffin correctly from scrap, but that was a whole ’nother story.

  Big Dude moved quieter than any being Bayjy had ever met, so he just kind of appeared from nothing in her peripheral vision with that longrifle in one hand. Not that she’d expected them to vanish, leaving her alone down here like that nightmare where you are about to walk into an airlock for the next cutter mission and realize that you’re stark naked in a haunted ship.

  Still, it was nice to have reassurances.

  Captain wasn’t much noisier when he moved. Nor Kyrie. Seriously, only Glaxu made a sound, that eerie clacking when his claws scraped stone.

  He had added the cutest booties on the drive down, explaining that movement on stone was risky without them. His feet were X-shaped, so the things he put on looked like fingerless gloves, letting him grip better with the balls of his feet, while still being able to hook toes on the floor of the repulsor, or, as he explained it, ripping someone’s throat out with all eight toes in a pinch, since the dewclaw was covered under the shock bracers he wore on his ankles.

  Nifty piece of work. And his tailor must have been a stud, to take that shape and make it all work.

  As a woman who had to fit everything over a heatsuit, or bury herself under layers of warm when she couldn’t, Bayjy appreciated the radical importance of good tailoring.

  “I had not realized the Mondi was part of your operation, Captain,” Truqtok began without preamble.

  He had a rough voice. Like maybe he stuffed acorns in his mouth before he talked. High pitched, too. Probably higher than hers, although she wasn’t about to point that out in here. Or laugh at the man and provoke him.

  Yet.

  They were bullies. You laughed at those suckers. That disturbed their whole pecking order, because weakness meant blood, like a pack of sharks.

  “He’s a most effective scout,” Captain replied with a grin in his voice. “Small, fast, and dangerous, so he can sniff out trouble ahead of time. Then we come in and back him up.”

  Huh. Put the fear of God into these punks. Or at least fear of Glaxu. Made sense if they went their separate ways later, to make the locals think the Mondi had backup he could call.

  Captain really was a sneaky shit, wasn’t he? Those poker games were no fluke.

  “When you arrived on Kryuome, you didn’t engage with the humans, Captain,” the warlord stated. Maybe asked. It was hard to tell with that voice. “Only the aliens.”

  “Didn’t realize that there was a split,” Valentinian replied with a long, slow drawl, like honey first thing in the morning for your coffee. “Although as near as I can tell, they’re the locals and we’re aliens on this planet.”

  That provoked a sound from the mob around them. Not a groan. Not a growl. Something.

  Bayjy fixed the nearest dude for a swift knee to the groin if he moved towards her. And smiled at him as she did.

  “Plus, I don’t plan to be here long,” Captain continued. “Needed some supplies and gear, and then heading south to the pole to do some salvage work.”

  “There’s nothing at the poles,” Truqtok growled back. “They’ve never been inhabited. Even before.”

  “Not what the old records say,” Captain breezed at the crowd. “Some sort of secret, Urlan Base left over from the wars. I had a different scout than Redtip confirm that it’s never even been cracked open.”

  Different groan this time. Tasted like suppressed avarice. Like maybe these poor boys had been sitting on top of a gold mine all this time and never realized it.

  South Pole was a nice touch, too. Get them all out of Captain’s hair while he went off to deal with the Muties up north.

  Bayjy glanced over at the trio on the platform. They might not be buying it, but their crew sure was. Captain Tarasicodissa was pretty damned good at this.

  “Anyone salvaging on my planet pays a tithe,” Truqtok snarled.

  “Huh,” Captain’s voice suddenly had a cruel edge she hadn’t heard before. “Nobody mentioned it was your planet. This just happened to be the city where we set down for supplies. There are several other, bigger places we could have chosen. Mistook this place for civilized, when it turns out the locals can barely read.”

  Even different sound. Angrier this time. What was the old saying? A hurt dog will howl.

  Captain must have hit a little too close to home with that jibe.

  Bayjy let her right hand slide down the rifle a little more. Not into the trigger well, but touching it with her pinkie, in case she needed to shoot someone. Safety had been off since the moment the truck landed out front.

  “You’ll still pay, boyo,” Truqtok growled.

  “Maybe,” Captain breezed back at the dude. “And maybe I’ll go visit Basuk’s cousin in Soulrake and ask them if they recognize you as planetary governor.”

  Cold threat, that one. Like a big rock dropped into warm mud. Splash with a hollow thunk and then silence. Captain wasn’t playing nice, any more.

  If he ever had.

  “You might never make it out of here
alive,” Truqtok blustered.

  “Ha,” Captain’s laugh was a rusty razor blade. “Unless you have another twenty-three goons to go with the group in here, I’m not all that worried.”

  “You think you can kill all of us?”

  “No,” Valentinian Tarasicodissa’s voice turned into the single scariest thing Bayjy had ever imagined, let alone heard. “I figure we’ll only kill eighteen before you get us all. Unless we get lucky. And we might. Maybe you all should have a quick vote and determine which five get to maybe escape this room alive? I’m all set to start killing the rest of your punks.”

  Dead silence. Or silence of death. Folks doing math in their heads for the first time since they told their teachers, way back when, that they didn’t need no fancy book learning ’cause they were gonna go off and be pirate bad-asses.

  “But I also recognize that I’m not staying,” Captain dropped the other shoe with a perfect beat. “Planetary government should be compensated for the value of the stuff I plan to loot. And I’m not really in the mood to figure out who the legitimate government is, so I could see hauling a chunk of that gear up here and letting you make sure that it gets converted to cash and all the proper fees and such get paid to whoever should get them. I’m a businessman.”

  Sure, and I’m a princess, Captain. Queen of Thrika in disguise, learning about how all the little people live.

  Some of the fool pirates around her looked like they might need a chiropractor after all the whiplash snapping their silly asses back and forth. Stick. Carrot. You pick.

  “Big words,” Truqtok’s growl sounded more like a purse dog yapping now, after Captain laid the smack-down on these people.

  “You want to come watch, send folks to three degrees north, seventeen degrees west and tell them to stay out of my way so they don’t set off any of the traps and assassin droids the Urlan left behind to guard the place,” Captain’s voice sounded amenable again. “I’ve got specialists in disarming those sort of systems, and you don’t.”

  Bayjy stole a glance and caught Lawyer-dude whispering in Boss-dude’s ear.

  “Very well, Captain,” Truqtok said after a moment.

  Butler used to get that gleam in his eyes when he was about to screw someone. Bayjy just lifted the plasma rifle and pointed it at the nearest goon’s face before any of the shits on this side of the chamber could react.

  They might draw guns now, buddy, but you’re gonna be eating through a straw for a while, as your face heals.

  More murmuring, but nobody was dumb enough to provoke her wrath.

  “Enough,” Truqtok bellowed over his anxious goons. “Captain, I will send a team to observe.”

  “We plan to depart in three days,” Captain replied. “I have some more supplies coming, and then I’ll need to break out all the heavy gear from cold storage and test it while we’re close to a depot for repair parts.”

  “Until then,” Truqtok snarled.

  “Until then,” Captain agreed. “Kyriaki?”

  Bayjy glanced back to see Kyrie leading the reverse, so she chilled until Big Guy was in motion and walked away, eyes scanning left and right in case anybody got frisky.

  She was the last to emerge from the darkness, but something had stopped the rest short, still on the porch.

  Bayjy stepped to one side so she could see around Big Guy. She was just outside the front door, so maybe they couldn’t rush her.

  Some asshole was standing in the back of their truck, with the twin pulsar cannon pointed right at the team.

  Oh, so very not good.

  “Drop your weapons,” the asshole in the truck yelled.

  Bayjy imagined she could see eternity up those barrels.

  Before she could even blink, Kyrie shot the guy right between the eyes with her assault pulsar. Three shot burst. Face shattered.

  All hell broke loose.

  Bayjy had enough presence of mind to turn around and just fire wildly into the hallway behind her as fast as the weapon could cycle. Plasma rifle was not a precision weapon. It fired a ball of plasma in a magnetic shell. Hit like a fist, with second degree burns if it got skin.

  Actually, hit like a medicine ball. Nearest dude got it in the chest and staggered sideways, taking out one behind him and one beside. The rest were suddenly stumbling over bodies down front.

  People behind her opened fire into the darkness as the plasma rifle cycled a second pulse off.

  “Move,” a voice commanded and a hand on her shoulder shoved her to the side, behind the stone facing of the door lintel.

  She kipped her butt up against the cold stone and watched Captain drop to the ground. Big Dude and Glaxu were already hugging dirt.

  Flash of light followed by a hammerblow of sound. The universe ending, maybe.

  A second one, so fast she thought maybe it was an echo, until a pistol came twirling in the air out of the building like a lazy bird escaping.

  Then Kyrie opened up with the twin pulse cannon.

  Bayjy had seen her test fire it into a cliff. Loud and violent, like a Glaxu-sized woodpecker hunting for bugs.

  The cool stone up against her butt began to vibrate in tune with the chick in the turret. Bayjy was nearly blind already, and the strobe of the guns firing right by her threatened to finish the job.

  She ducked low and moved further to her left, looking for anything moving that might be a threat to Kyrie’s blind side.

  Another thunderbolt erupted from the building, and then Captain was up and in motion.

  Bayjy kept up as they got to the truck. She stayed facing aft firing the odd shot while Captain powered things up and Kyrie went Goddess of Fiery Death on the building.

  Weight shift as Big Guy and Glaxu mounted up, and then Captain was backing away from the smoking building.

  Bayjy could see nothing behind them except open desert scrub as they moved, but she kept her section of the battlefield covered, at least until they were back a long ways and the truck dropped to the ground again.

  The twin pulsar cannon had barely wavered in its monotonous chattering.

  “You trying to bring the walls down?” Captain yelled over the noise of the generator, the cannon, the repulsors, and the evening breeze.

  Kyrie ignored everyone and continued to hose the place with energy. Pulsar was good for as long as you had a generator attached, unlike an ammunition-driven weapon such as her plasma rifle.

  “Succeeding,” Killer-babe called back.

  Bayjy had to look.

  Damn, you could chunk a wall apart, if it wasn’t reinforced for this sort of abuse. Part of the roof was already down on the south wing, where the scorch marks on the remaining parts of the wall suggested that a sniper had appeared in a window. Or some idiot wondering what all the noise outside was.

  Same thing in the current circumstances.

  Something exploded inside, flashing a whoof of flames and pressure out of gaps.

  Kyriaki took her hands off the trigger housing finally and smiled at everyone.

  “Now you see why I wanted the twin pulsar cannon, and not something lighter,” she grinned.

  Bayjy watched something flammable inside the building catch with an oily, black smoke. Probably was going to smell like pork soon.

  Long pork.

  Hopefully, the winds would carry the smell out into the desert and summon vultures and salvagers, and they could slip away.

  Captain laughed and slipped the truck into motion.

  “How did you know he wouldn’t shoot?” Bayjy turned to Kyrie and asked.

  She watched the woman pop a part off of the housing and hold it out like a birthday present.

  “Because I had the fire-control safety in my pocket,” Killer-babe laughed. “The rest of those morons expected that we’d be frozen with fear and they could come out and surround us.”

  “Huh,” Bayjy grinned back at her. “Valentinian, was any of what you said back there true?”

  “Only the part where we’d take down at least eighteen of
them before they got us,” Captain said as he drove back around the city through some of the flatlands. “You weren’t looking to see that I had a detonator in my off-hand when Truqtok started getting pissy. He’d have gotten that right in his lap and he knew it.”

  “Are all of your parties this entertaining?” Glaxu asked as he tucked his pistol back into his holster and grabbed on to the rails.

  “Oh no,” Bayjy couldn’t resist. “Sometimes we leave our victims alive to appreciate that they should not mess with Captain Tarasicodissa.”

  The rest laughed along with her, but that was the truth. She just hoped that Butler Vidy-Wooders lived a long, angry life remembering the day that she broke into his ship and stole all her gear back, before turning the heat up to forty-five and breaking the temperature controls.

  19

  Athanasia

  The bridge of Dominion-427 was configured for Important People demanding to be present with an Important Opinion. Athanasia had generally left the captain to run his own ship without her interference, but today was too critical to leave to the amateur politicians of the Armada.

  So she was present in a seat off to one side, above and slightly behind the captain as he in turn oversaw his crew preparing to back away from the station. She was dressed in black. It always seemed to center her mind into darker paths when she abandoned the white robes of the Ambassadors, or the gray of the Household.

  Stephaneria had taken up a seat to one side, close enough to Athanasia to touch her hand, but with a seat between them. She was also in black, a tight outfit that showed off the long, leanness of her whippet body. The woman looked at least a decade younger over the last week, only barely approaching forty, perhaps, rather than having it long since passed and receding.

  Revenge was always a good way to keep you young. Athanasia could speak to that.

  “Ambassador, we’re ready to depart,” the captain announced in a polite, careful tone.