Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihilo Adventure)

by Robert Kroese

  The general strode forward. “We’re looking for a prisoner named Wick Azores.”

  “Your name?” said the receptionist.

  “I’m General Issimo of the Frente Repugnante,” said the general. “Wick is one of my rebels.”

  “I see,” said the receptionist, apparently unimpressed. “Inspecting or receiving?”

  “Eh?”

  “Are you inspecting the collateral or paying for its release?”

  “Oh,” said the general. “Inspecting.” He gave Rex a wink. Rex rolled his eyes.

  “Sign here,” said the receptionist.

  The general signed.

  “I’ll need to hold on to your weapons,” she said, regarding the suspicious bulges in the recruits’ coveralls.

  “Hand ’em over, men,” said the general, handing his lazegun to the receptionist. The other rebels and Rex did the same.

  The receptionist stowed the guns in a cabinet behind her desk. “The collateral will meet you in Reception Room Four,” she said. “Down the hall to your right.”

  The general smiled and nodded. He turned and marched down the hall, with the rest of the expedition following. We entered the room. It was small, only about five meters on a side. There was one other door, opposite the one through which we had entered. A red line had been painted on the floor, midway between the two doors, cutting the room into two halves. On the other side of the line, next to the door, stood a sleepy-looking guard. As we entered, the guard said in a practiced monotone, “The collateral will enter through the door on my left. You will have ten minutes to inspect the collateral. The collateral will remain at all times on this side of the red line, and under no circumstances will any part of your body or the collateral’s body be allowed to cross the line. Do you understand these instructions?”

  “Yep,” said the general.

  “Please understand that this is for the security of the collateral as well as your own safety, and that the operators of this facility, the Incarceration and Self-Storage Company of Gulagatraz, Inc., cannot be held responsible for any damages to your person or property resulting from—”

  “We get it,” snapped General Issimo. “We’re just visiting. We won’t cross the line, I promise.”

  “Please, sir, if you’ll allow me to finish. I’m legally required to explain to you that any attempt to—”

  “We’re in a bit of a hurry,” said the general. “We’ve got a Malarchian battle station to sabotage, and we can’t do it until we’ve resc . . . that is, inspected the collateral. So if it’s all the same to you, consider the warning read in full and we won’t tell anybody. All right?”

  “You waive the reading of the rest of the warning?”

  “I sure do,” said the general.

  The guard shrugged and pressed a button on a wall intercom. “Send in the collateral.”

  While we waited, the general huddled together with his men, whispering something to them. They nodded and he gave them an encouraging thumbs-up.

  After a moment, the door opened and Wick shuffled in, looking surprisingly chipper. “Hey, guys!” he exclaimed. “I was just—”

  “Now!” yelled General Issimo.

  Gabe and Cole leaped forward, Gabe apparently intending to grab Wick, and Cole aiming to take out the guard before he could pull his gun. Neither of them succeeded, as they were instantaneously atomized by an invisible energy barrier just on the other side of the red line.

  The guard pulled his gun, yelling, “Freeze!”

  “Whoops,” said the general. “Run!”

  Rex and I were way ahead of him. There was a blast and a scream, and something about the size of a human hand sailed over my head and out the door into the hall. It smacked against the far wall and fell to the floor. Puzzled, I stopped and picked it up. It was, as it turned out, a human hand, perfectly cauterized at the wrist by a lazegun blast.

  “Don’t stop!” yelled the general, barreling past. He was followed by Fingers, who seemed unaware that everything between his left shoulder and hand had been vaporized. A wisp of smoke trailed from his blackened shoulder as he passed. Rex was several yards ahead of them, sprinting toward the lobby. I shrugged and followed, still holding the smoking hand.

  “What about Wick?” cried Fingers.

  “Wick’s on his own for now!” yelled Rex, sliding to a halt in front of the elevators and mashing the “down” button with his fist. From down the hall, we heard a voice yelling, “Stop them! They were trying to steal collateral!” It was the guard, who had somehow gotten through the energy barrier.

  The receptionist stood up from behind her desk, drawing a lazegun. “Hold it!” she cried.

  Fingers, who was between me and the receptionist, held up his remaining hand to shield his face as the receptionist fired. Her aim was a bit off; the blast hit Fingers directly in the elbow, vaporizing his entire arm between the wrist and the shoulder. Fingers’ right hand fell to the floor.

  Rex and the general dove into the elevator while Fingers stood there in shock, unable to comprehend what had happened. I shoved Fingers forcefully into the elevator, scooping up his other hand as I went. We got inside and waited anxiously for the doors to close while the guard ran toward us. Another lazegun blast tore a hole in the back wall of the elevator and then the doors slammed shut. Rex had hit the button for the main reactor floor and we began to drop.

  “Is somebody cooking hamburger?” asked Rex, sniffing the air.

  “Fingers’ arms got blown off,” I said.

  “Arm,” said Fingers, uncertainly. His face was ashen and he was shaking badly. “I still have . . . gaaahhh!” I had made the mistake of showing him both of his hands.

  “One nice thing about lazeguns,” said General Issimo. “Instant cauterization. Don’t have to worry about bleeding. Does it hurt, son?”

  Fingers seemed to consider the notion for the first time. He nodded slowly and then began to scream. He didn’t stop until we were back at the Flagrante Delicto and I had given him three shots of pheelsophine.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Flagrante Delicto had no bio-suspension facilities but was supplied with a basic surgery kit, so we decided to reattach Fingers’ hands to his shoulders until such time as a pair of arms could be grown from his DNA and inserted in their proper place. Fingers would be pretty severely handicapped without arms, but at least he’d be able to use his hands in a pinch.

  I conducted the surgery while we discussed our next steps. Fortunately, the prison’s security forces seemed unaware that it was possible to escape through the reactor to an abandoned landing bay, so we hadn’t been pursued past the elevator. We were as safe aboard the Flagrante Delicto as circumstances permitted.

  “I think that was a fine first effort,” announced General Issimo. “A few casualties, yes, but that’s to be expected. I can’t think of anything I’d do differently.”

  Rex nodded. “Next time, of course, we should try to actually rescue Wick.”

  “Agreed,” said the general.

  “And not order any more of our men to commit suicide by diving into an energy barrier.”

  “Well, yes . . .”

  “And try to avoid being disarmed,” Rex added. “No offense, Fingers.”

  Fingers, being unconscious, was unable to take offense. I was busily stitching his left wrist to his shoulder.

  “Of course,” said the general. “But now we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Indeed,” said Rex. “And he’s a complete idiot.”

  “I’d like to see you come up with a better plan,” snapped the general. “How would you get Wick out of there?”

  “Oh, no,” said Rex. “I’m not giving you any more ideas. The next time we go out there, I’ll probably end up with my feet sewn to my neck. That’s not a commentary on your work, Sasha; you’re doing a bang-up job there. I’m not
sure what point you’re trying to make by having the thumbs pointing down like that, but I trust your judgment.”

  I stepped back to regard my work and sighed. I’d inadvertently reversed the hands. There was nothing for it now; Fingers was coming around and we didn’t have any more pheelsophine.

  “Yergh?” asked Fingers uncertainly.

  “Don’t try to get up,” I said. “You’re going to be a little woozy for a bit.”

  “Also,” said Rex, “and try not to take this too hard, but your left arm is missing.”

  Fingers’ mouth fell open in horror.

  “Both of his arms,” corrected the general.

  Fingers looked from one shoulder to the other and started screaming again.

  “I was trying to break it to him gently, you callous bastard,” snapped Rex. He turned back to Fingers. “As you see, Fingers, you’ve still got full use of both your hands, thanks to my robot assistant here. Sasha’s skills as a surgeon are surpassed only by her ability to reach items on tall shelves, which is also available to you upon request. And if you’re worried about people laughing at you, you shouldn’t be. Consider the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, whose tiny, virtually useless arms drove it into such a rage that it became the terror of the Cretaceous Period. Let me assure you, no one laughed at T. rex—at least not until well after its kind were extinct and a race of mammals developed brains large enough to appreciate the ridiculousness of its absurdly stunted forearms. Oh, how they laughed then!”

  “I’m a horrible freak!” cried Fingers.

  “Well, yes,” said Rex. “There’s no way around that.”

  “Take it easy, soldier,” said the general. “We’ll get you some more arms eventually. For now, you’ve got to be brave. Can you do that for me?”

  Fingers nodded and tried to give a thumbs-up with his right hand, which turned out to be a thumbs-down with his left. Then he passed out.

  “Just as well,” said the general. “Kid’s been through a lot. When he wakes up, we can head back out and take another stab at rescuing Wick.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Rex. He turned to me. “Sasha, there’s a panel of blinking lights in the cockpit that I’d like you to take a look at, if you’ve got a minute.”

  “Certainly, sir,” I said. We retreated into the cockpit.

  “Sasha,” said Rex, closing the door behind us, “I want you to know that I didn’t ask you to come into the cockpit with me because of any blinking lights. That is, there are plenty of blinking lights here and they confuse and frighten me, but I just have to assume they are blinking in the appropriate order and the correct frequency.”

  “Sir, I don’t want to go on any more rescue missions with that man,” I said.

  “Nor do I,” said Rex. “I don’t know the meaning of the word fear any more than I know why these lights are flashing, and I laugh at danger with the sort of gusto most people reserve for armless freaks like Fingers out there, but suicide missions aren’t really my thing.”

  “What shall we do, then? Should I just plot a course back to the forest moon?”

  Rex shook his head. “It’s too soon. If we return now, the general might try to launch an attack on the battle station before the positronic endoscopy cannon is ready, and that will screw up my plans to have my planet destroyed. We’ve got to try to waste a few more days here.”

  “What if we just stay in the ship, sir? We can let General Issimo try to rescue Wick if he likes. He’ll probably get Fingers killed, but I don’t think we can be held responsible for that. Fingers did sign up with the Frente, after all. He has to know that the average life expectancy of a rebel is three months. It’s in the brochure.”

  “No good, Sasha. After his next failed foray, the general will probably lead the prison guards right back to the Flagrante Delicto. It’s a miracle we managed to lose them last time. I suppose I could just laze the general in the back of the head, toss him off the ship, and then blow a few days taking the scenic route back to the forest moon, but then what do we do with Fingers? I’d feel a little bad shooting an unarmed kid in the back of the head.”

  “Also, all of the lazeguns are back at the prison’s reception desk.”

  “That too. I’d have to club him with a bottle or something, which seems like it could be messy.”

  “What do we do then, sir?”

  “There’s only one thing we can do,” said Rex. “We need to come up with a way to rescue Wick. Something that will actually work, or that at least sounds like it might work. If we can convince the general we’ve got a solid plan to rescue Wick, then maybe he’ll give up his idea of a full frontal assault and we’ll actually make it out of here alive. We just need to waste a couple of days pretending to be trying to rescue Wick and then find an excuse to get the hell out of here.”

  “What do you suggest, sir?” I asked.

  “You said the prison is directly above the reactor, right? What if we said that you had managed to hack into the prison’s computer and found a map indicating the location of Wick’s cell? We could say that by some remarkable coincidence, his cell is directly above the Flagrante Delicto and that we just need to bore through the ceiling to get to him. How far through the rock could we bore in two days?”

  I did some quick calculations. “If we set the ship’s lazecannons to torch mode, we could cut a man-sized hole through about ten meters of solid rock in a day. We could blast through a lot faster, but we’d risk burying the Flagrante Delicto in a pile of rubble and killing anyone above us.”

  “That’s something we’d want to avoid,” said Rex. “OK, ten meters a day. If we set our lazecannons to bore through the rock above us, are we going to actually hit anything within twenty meters or so?”

  “Doubtful, sir. Assuming that reception area is near the center of the prison complex, we’re some distance from the prison, unless it’s much larger than it’s rumored to be. This landing bay seems rather isolated.”

  “Excellent. So we waste a couple of days boring a shaft in the rock, and then when we don’t find anything, we tell the general that we’re out of time and head back to the forest moon.”

  “If you say so, sir,” I said.

  “I do. Trust me, after two days of staring at a hole in the ceiling, the general is going to be dying to get out of here.”

  As it turned out, it didn’t even take that long. The general started complaining after three hours.

  “Are you sure this is the only way to rescue Wick?” he groused.

  “Yep,” replied Rex. “According to Sasha’s calculations, Wick’s cell is twenty meters that way.” He pointed toward the cavity in the ceiling being burned out by the lazecannons. I had pointed them at roughly twenty degrees from vertical so that the molten slag wouldn’t fall directly on the Flagrante Delicto. Even so, it was becoming uncomfortably warm and smoky in the landing bay, which wasn’t particularly well ventilated. Rex didn’t seem to mind; he had found a chaise lounge on the ship and was basking in the crimson glow of the lazecannons with a martini in his hand. He had assigned Fingers to be his bartender, ostensibly as a way of giving the young man some confidence with his reconfigured appendages. Rex was forced to bite his tongue when Fingers’ inverted hands caused him to spill half a gallon of vermouth, but his patience seemed to be paying off. Fingers’ confidence was growing by leaps and bounds as he learned to make cosmopolitans, Bloody Marys, Manhattans, and, of course, martinis. It was the first time he had learned anything like a useful skill since joining the Frente on a dare three years earlier.

  “It’s just not a particularly valiant way of rescuing someone,” complained the general. “There’s no sense of danger. No personal sacrifice.”

  “I never promised it would be exciting,” said Rex. “It is, after all, boring work.”

  “That’s the thirtieth time you’ve made that joke,” the general growled.

  “The classics never get
old,” said Rex. “Now either make me a sandwich or get out of my light.”

  “This is intolerable,” said the general. “I can’t just sit around here watching molten rock drip from the ceiling. Fingers, come with me. We’re making another frontal assault on the prison.”

  Fingers, who was carrying a White Russian and a steak sandwich to Rex, stopped and looked uncertainly at the general.

  “That was an order, son! Stop playing waiter and grab your demolition gear.”

  Fingers looked helplessly to Rex. It was clear he much preferred being a waiter to risking having more of his limbs blown off.

  “Hang on, General,” said Rex. “I haven’t told you about Phase Two yet.”

  “Phase Two?” asked the general doubtfully.

  “Sure,” answered Rex. “Phase One is the boring phase. Phase Two is where all the action is. Valor, excitement, all that sort of stuff. You and Fingers are critical to the success of Phase Two.”

  Fingers leaned over Rex to hand him the drink and sandwich.

  “What is Phase Two, exactly?” asked the general.

  “Well, obviously the prison is going to have seismic sensors to detect any attempts to bore through the rock into one of the cells, right? Otherwise, anyone could just park down here and cut a hole into the prison, much as we’re doing now. Once we get within a meter or so of the prison floor, the detectors will set off an alarm and Wick’s cell will be crawling with guards. So we’ve got to turn off the security system before we cut through that final meter. And the only way to turn off the security system is to cut the power.”

  “How do we do that?” asked Fingers.

  Rex took a bite of his sandwich. “Blow the reactor core,” he said.

  I sighed. Just once I’d like to be involved in a secret mission that doesn’t involve blowing a reactor core.

  “Ooh, I like this,” said the general excitedly. “This is much better than cutting through twenty meters of rock. So what do I have to do, send Fingers diving into the reactor core with zontonium charges strapped all over his body?”