by Amie Kaufman
“Wheaton,” he spits, punching an AAL suit in the belly. “You’re a ****ing dead man.”
The elevator doors ping open. The dulcet tones of Lexi Blue spill into the bay.
“Oooh, ah, yeah, I wanna lick ya”…and so on.
Poet laureate of the twenty-sixth century, chums.
Malikov curses and hunkers behind one of the bulky suits as two members of the BeiTech team, Sara “Mona Lisa” Laurent and Lucas “Link” Castro, stalk into the bay. Link is olive-skinned, dark hair tied back in cornrows. Mona Lisa is pale, with red hair and a zine model’s looks. Not the kind of fem you’d expect to see slinging a burst rifle and filling out a suit of plasteel battle armor. She can invade my space station any day.
Just saying.
The pair make their way to the MÉDECINS SANS ÉTOILES biotainer they were smuggled aboard inside and unload three crates of what might be high explosives onto a handcart. Hard to tell—these cams aren’t great and the light is ****. What’s more important: As Link is securing the load, Mona Lisa notices the corpses of the HoK crew, laid out in a neat row with casino chips over their eyes. Then she spots a dozen cigarette butts crushed about the hangar bay floor.
Fresh cigarette butts.
Told you those things would kill him.
“Hsst.” Mona Lisa snaps her fingers at Link and raises her rifle. “Get on the clock.”
Link seeks cover, pulls out a hand scanner and aims it around the bay.
“Negative on PLoB activity.”
Good thing the Dom Najov weren’t official residents of the station, right?
“Eyes and ears,” Mona Lisa whispers. “Report in to Cerberus.”
The pair engage their cybernetic night vision implants (I can tell because their eyes turn black as their pupils expand beyond the human norm) and begin a sweep of the bay. They move carefully, covering each other’s backs, checking every blind spot. Laser sights cut red arcs through the gloom. Boots silent on the grille. They’re like goddamn machines. I take back what I said about Mona Lisa invading my space station. I prefer my women less…murderbot-y.
Link speaks softly into his headset. “Cerberus, this is Link. Copy?”
A pause for a muted reply.
“Mona Lisa and I have detected unusual activity in Bay 17. No sign of a PLoB. We may have a cowboy loose down here. Request backup, over.”
Link listens to the response, then nods. “Roger that. Link out.” He glances at Mona Lisa. “Rest of Charlie Squad en route.”
“Stay chill. Finish the sweep.”
Malikov’s kinda ****ed at this point. The only ways out of the bay are the elevators (locked), the main door (sealed), the bay doors (with all that lovely vacuum just beyond them) and the air vent system (the closest ingress is a grille six meters above his head). Worse yet, he has a pistol, a cleaver and whatever combat smarts a three-year stint at a juvenile facility in New Petersburg can provide. His opponents have VK-85 burst rifles, sonic grenades, cybernetic upgrades, plasteel body armor and SpecOps training.
Yeah. Sadface for Nikky-poos.
Mona Lisa and Link are sweeping closer, rifles up and ready. But as Malikov looks up at the grille to the vent system and then down to the AAL suit he’s hiding behind, I swear you can see that same little lightbulb go off right over his head again.
The AALs loom about three and a half meters tall—they basically look like big envirosuits. Fully sealed for work in vacuum. Clear plastic dome for 360-degree vision. Magnetic boots for stability in zero gee. Titanium exoskeletons with big servos at each joint, hydraulic-assisted lift action, huge metal hands like three-fingered vises.
The elevator pings. The “Lollipop” refrain fills the bay as the doors hiss wide, momentarily drowning out all other audio.
Sweet as sugar. Sweet as pie. Kiss the boys and make them cry.
But other boys don’t taste as sweet, now that I’ve had you to…
Yeah, you get the idea.
The other two members of Charlie Squad, Kira “Ghost” Mazur and James “Cricket” Orr, stalk into the bay, weapons ready. At the far end of the space, Mona Lisa and Link wait until the elevator doors close and Lexi Blue shuts the hell up before moving again. They round a tall stack of reinforced freight ’tainers and creep down the row of AALs, lit by the glow of the suit control panels. Link whispers their location to Ghost. Mona Lisa’s eyes scan the gloom. And as they pass the fourth suits’ in the row, pistons hiss, servos whine, and a three-fingered fist pushing about 700 pounds per square inch slams right into Link’s chest.
The impact cracks his plasteel breastplate, sends him through the wall of a heavy ’tainer with a spray of spit and a breathless curse. Mona Lisa aims her rifle, yelling, “CONTACT! CONTACT!” She gets off a three-round burst before Malikov swings the suit’s other fist, backhanding her five meters down the aisle. Her helmet and shoulderguard absorb the worst of the impact, but she’s still spitting blood, crashing to a halt against another heavy ’tainer and clutching her head.
Their squaddies are sprinting across the bay, calling for status. Position. Threat level. Mona Lisa can only groan in response, spit more blood onto the floor. Link is out cold. Malikov has popped the top of the actuator suit and raised its arms to reach the air vent above. He scrambles up the hydraulics like his *** is on fire. Tearing the grille loose, he hauls himself into the duct (looks like all those pull-ups he did in juvie paid off) just as Cricket and Ghost round the row of heavy ’tainers. They see Link unconscious. Mona Lisa groaning.
“Vents…” She squeezes her eyes shut, waves at the ceiling. “Little ****’s in the…”
The pair open fire, riddling the ducts with hollow-point rounds. Muzzle flashes cut my visuals to ribbons, audio is nothing but gunfire. At least two sonic grenades get lobbed through the open grille, opening the duct like a love letter. When the chaos dies, Cricket climbs the AAL suit, pulls himself up to peer inside the vent. He looks up and down the length for Malikov before dropping back to the ground—he’s too big in his tactical armor to just crawl in after him.
“Negative,” he reports. “No kill.”
Ghost radios to Falk, reporting two wounded team members and an inability to pursue the hostile without stripping down to their unmentionables.
Falk is less than pleased.
Nikky-poos has escaped.
HEIMDALL CHAT: HANNA DONNELLY
Guest007: Hanna Donnelly, I presume.
Donnelly, H: Oh god, Nik. Where are you?
Guest007: Bzzzzzzzt. No, but thank you for playing.
Donnelly, H: Okay, wh—
Guest007: No time to chat the chit. I’m not Nik. I’m his cousin Ella. They gonna delete this guest ID any second. WhisperNET is dead to us. Use the palmpad Nik gave you.
Donnelly, H: Nik never told me he had a cousin. Give me a way to know you’re not them.
Guest007: Yeah, yeah, jump on the palmpad and we can play twenty questions all night.
Donnelly, H: I don’t have it anymore.
Guest007: You lost it? What the ****, fem, you’ve had it for thirty seconds!?
Donnelly, H: I’m done talking until you tell me something that proves you’re with Nik.
Guest007: Look, Blondie, if I was scamming you, I would’ve just said, “Yes, Your Highness,” and made drooling noises when you asked if I was my cuz.
Guest007: Take a look around you. I’m the only friend you have, and we both of us know some chums who gotta get got. So find that palmpad if you wanna even up with the ****ers who killed—
—connection failure: guest ident not found—
—retry?—
—retry?—
Hanna Donnelly is holed up in the mechanics’ workshop not far from the airlock, crouched behind a stack of toolboxes and spare parts. She couldn’t afford to go far—she had to stop every third step and use her sleeve to wipe the telltale drops of blood from her wounded arm.
In the workshop, she’s found a relatively clean rag and used some bright red-and-yellow electri
cal wiring to bind it over the incision. Though the blood is soaking through, she can now move without leaving a trail for her hounds.
So presuming the transmission she just received was legit, her next stop has to be the palmpad Malikov gave her, which, of course, fell from her pocket in a hallway on a completely different floor. A world away. She leaves the mechanics’ workshop at 21:17, making her way back toward the infirmary. She doesn’t opt for the door—her encounter with the dearly departed members of Beta Squad has left her jumpy. She instead pulls a supply crate over to the ceiling vent, climbing up her makeshift ladder and disappearing into the air ducts once again.
She doesn’t have her PLoB in place anymore, and she doesn’t appear on any cameras until I get her in Corridor A17s again, some fifty-two minutes later. She’s not in particularly familiar territory, so my best guess is she spent a while worming around up there before she worked out where she wanted to be. The grille covering the air vent nearest her palmpad wiggles as she tries to tug it up inside the vent with her.
But nothing in life is that easy. Though she slowly twists it this way and that with the patience of a saint, there’s no way she can pull the grille back into the vent. She needs to find another option—one that doesn’t involve dropping it onto the floor below and alerting any nearby unfriendlies.
One hand dangles down, holding the vent cover as she twists around inside the cramped tunnel and finally emerges legs-first. She hangs from her good arm, supporting her whole weight with a white-knuckled grip, grille held tight in her other hand. Then she lets herself drop, landing with a grunt, knees bent. The edge of the cover hits the floor—not as loud as it would have if she’d dropped it, but not so soft either. With a wince, she leans the cover against the wall and heads up the corridor, stooping to grab the palmpad. Turning it over, she observes the small baggie of dust still taped to the back, and for an instant, her mouth quirks.
Then she stuffs it into her pocket, all business once more, hurrying down the corridor on silent feet. She’s heading for the infirmary and a better bandage than electrical wiring and an old rag. She rounds the corner, straight into the arms of BeiTech operative Abby “Nightingale” O’Neill, who’s just changed course to investigate the sound of the grille tapping the floor.
Nightingale is clad in the same black tac armor as the rest of the audit team, blond hair pulled back in a braid like Donnelly’s—with Hanna in her black Danae Matresco jumpsuit, they’re almost mirror images of each other. They stumble apart, equally quick to recover. Donnelly drops into a fighting stance, but Nightingale has the advantage. She’s already holding her pistol—a .50 Silverback most folks would need a tripod to fire—and with a flick of her wrist, she trains it on Donnelly’s heart. They lock eyes, each holding perfectly still as Donnelly weighs the situation. But there’s only one way it ends.
Very slowly, drawing out each second to buy herself time to think, Hanna lifts her hands.
She was just unlucky, really. Nightingale is one of two medics in Falk’s group, and thanks to Malikov’s run-in with Charlie Squad, she was on her way to the Alpha Sector infirmary to pick up supplies to treat Link’s cracked ribs. Any other time, Donnelly could’ve patched herself up with no one the wiser.
Keeping her hand cannon trained in place, Nightingale lifts one hand to activate the transmitter attached to her headset. “Cerberus, this is Nightingale, over.”
Falk’s only a heartbeat away, his voice audible to both Nightingale and Donnelly. “Nightingale, Cerberus. Go ahead.”
Nightingale’s smiling. “I have somebody you’re looking for, boss.”
“Do tell.”
“Miss Donnelly has decided to join us.”
Hanna Donnelly’s gaze flicks over Nightingale like she’s deciding which limb to rip off first. Which, given her daddy’s training regimen, she quite possibly is.
“Bliss,” Falk replies. “Restrain her with caution, and wait for backup. Don’t make the same mistake as Beta Squad, Nightingale.”
Donnelly’s jaw squares—her hand was nowhere near that airlock button. But though she knows she’s not the one who spaced the four new popsicles in that loading bay, every piece of misinformation is an advantage. She keeps her mouth shut.
“Roger that, Cerberus.” Nightingale’s gun doesn’t waver. Not much of a bedside manner, for a medic. Just saying.
“Good work. Cerberus out.”
And then it’s just the blond twins once more, sizing each other up. Nightingale speaks first. “He likes the ones with some backbone. Let’s do this nice and slow, and I’ll take you in. There’s every chance he won’t kill you. Beta should have been more careful, he knows that.”
Donnelly sucks in a long, slow breath, considering her options, then swallows hard and nods. Silently, she turns away from Nightingale, crossing her wrists behind her back and holding them in place. Nightingale takes no chances, stepping in to press her pistol to the back of her prisoner’s head, pulling a pair of zip ties from her belt with her other hand.
“On your knees.”
What happens next takes 2.7 seconds, so I had to slow the footage down and check it frame by frame to work it out.
Donnelly tucks her chin and rounds her shoulders, shoving her butt against Nightingale’s hips and doubling over, dislodging the muzzle from the back of her head. The pistol discharges—the noise must be deafening, but she doesn’t flinch—and she swings her right hand up over her left shoulder, stiffened fingers finding Nightingale’s left eye. Nightingale screams as the Silverback fires again. Donnelly spins to face her, bracing the woman’s arm across her chest and shoving hard. Nightingale falls backward and twists to land on her side, still screaming, one hand clapped to her bleeding eye. Donnelly drops one knee onto the medic’s ribs, the other on the side of her head, knocking her out cold.
Bet you it’s the first time a Danae Matresco jumpsuit’s seen a workout like that.
Donnelly scoops up Nightingale’s pistol, pulls off the woman’s commset and plugs it into her own ear. Using the zip ties to secure the operative’s wrists and ankles, she leaves her unconscious on the floor, then reaches inside her jumpsuit to pull out her lipstick and leans down to scrawl a message on the floor in bright crimson.
Who’s next?
Come play!
HD xoxo
Hurting she might be, but Hanna Donnelly was raised by a man who thought talking military tactics was a fun way to spend daddy-daughter time. And judging by the set of her jaw, she’s ready to change the rules of the game.
She stows the lipstick, hefts Nightingale’s gun and departs at a run for the infirmary.
RADIO TRANSMISSION: BEITECH AUDIT TEAM—SECURE CHANNEL 642
PARTICIPANTS:
Travis “Cerberus” Falk, Lieutenant, Team Commander
Bianca “Mercury” Silva, Corporal, Engineer
DATE: 08/15/75
TIMESTAMP: 22:33
MERCURY: Cerberus, this is Mercury. Over.
CERBERUS: Mercury, Cerberus. I read.
MERCURY: We may have a problem, Travis.
CERBERUS: You have my undivided attention.
CERBERUS: Though, if this is in reference to Kali—
MERCURY: Negative. That psycho ***** is out of my sight. I’m happy.
CERBERUS: Out of your sight? Am I to understand Alpha Squad isn’t overseeing Engineering operations?
MERCURY: Negative, Kali isn’t here. No one from Alpha is.
MERCURY: Anyways, she’s not the problem.
CERBERUS: An interesting interpretation of the situation, Bi. But pray, do go on.
MERCURY: Taxman is missing.
CERBERUS: Missing.
MERCURY: Yes, Travis. Missing. Unaccounted for. In absentia.
CERBERUS: Last known location?
MERCURY: I sent him to check the coolant towers in the reactor area half an hour ago. He hasn’t checked in. Not answering radio. And I don’t have manpower to go look for him. Getting the wormhole online is going to take longer th
an anticipated.
CERBERUS: Indeed.
MERCURY: I’m talking days here. These computer systems are completely ****ed. This malware is into everything. Half the core code is corrupted. Ballpark is going to have to change the fuel rods for the interchange systems manually, which means a four-hour stint working outside the station and handling live hermium right above an active rip in the skin of the universe. And this ****ing lollipop song is driving me—
CERBERUS: Stop.
CERBERUS: I’ll have DJ help with your coding situation. I’ll send a squad to look for Taxman ASAP. Meantime, I will send you a reminder of just how much you’re getting paid to do your job, which I’m reasonably certain does not include lying on your back and screaming like a six-year-old until you get what you want. Will that suffice, Corporal?
CERBERUS: Or would you like me to come down and personally wipe the dribble from your chin?
MERCURY: That’s…unnecessary, sir.
CERBERUS: Are you certain? I have nothing better to do, after all.
MERCURY: Negative, Cerberus. I’m on it.
CERBERUS: Bliss. Report if you have further issues.
CERBERUS: Oh, and if you happen to see Sergeant Russo in your travels, be a dear and let her know I wish to speak to her, yes?
MERCURY: Roger that.
CERBERUS: Cerberus out.
Donnelly’s reached the infirmary, where she’s grabbed a packet of SimSkin and made tracks. Nightingale might be out of the equation, but Falk will have dispatched backup, and our heroine wants to be nowhere in sight when the cavalry arrives. She sprints down Corridor A17f, Nightingale’s gun in one hand, first-aid supplies in the other. She’s occasionally shaking her head, holding her nose. Maybe trying to coax her hearing into returning to normal after having a gun go off in her ear. She stuffs the SimSkin into her pocket and is headed back to the air vents when a bullet sparks off the wall right beside her head.
Fleur “Kali” Russo is dashing in pursuit of Hanna Donnelly, teeth bared, half grinning, half growling. Looks like she figures if anyone was going to space Romeo, it was supposed to be her, and only after she was done with him. The rest of Alpha Squad are close behind her, rifles up and ready, but it’s clear Kali’s tagged Donnelly for herself.