by Jaxon Reed
“Did you see that shot?” she said, murmuring in Handsome’s ear.
He did not reply.
She looked down at his formerly well-sculpted chest, the blood flowing out.
“Oh.”
She let go of him then, and he slid down to the floor.
She stepped over Handsome’s body and made her way to the other goon.
She grabbed his gun and sighed.
“Can anybody in this place stay alive long enough to bring me to your storage room?”
As if in response, a hail of bolts shot past her from the other end of the hall.
Thoop! Thoop! Thoop! Thoop!
6
The pod sped horizontally for a long time, it seemed.
Two AOJ agents and one private investigator stood in uncomfortable silence with the attractive droid receptionist who insisted on escorting them.
All too aware of how it could be used for eavesdropping, the three kept their mouths firmly shut.
For its part, the droid happily prattled off statistics about the latest production figures, and offered to tell them anything they might wish to know about the newest ship models (provided, of course, the information was not classified, it added in a cheerful tone).
Jamieson opened his mouth to make some smart aleck response, then frowned at Boggs who kicked him in the shin.
“Ow.”
He glared at his old battle buddy then turned back to the droid and decided to ask a serious question.
He said, “Are sales dropping off now that the war is over?”
“Republican Shipworks is committed to providing our Navy with the finest battleships available, and that need has not yet diminished with the cessation of hostilities. In addition, the civilian market is reviving. New passenger liners, freighters and cargo ships will be needed in all corners of the galaxy.”
Jamieson said, “So . . . no?”
“Sales data will be made public in the next board meeting. I invite you to examine our upcoming quarterly report the moment it is made available.”
He looked over at Boggs and Collier and said, “How hard is it to program evasive answers like that?”
“It doesn’t sound evasive,” Boggs said. “Just do what she says and read the report when it comes out.”
Jamieson opened his mouth to argue when the pod slowed suddenly. Then it began traveling up.
“We must be getting close,” Collier said.
Indeed, a moment later the pod stopped and dinged open.
Before them stretched a reception area practically gleaming in bright lights and silvery reflections.
The dominant color was white. Bright white floors, chairs, sofas and counters reflected natural sunlight streaming down from a clear glass ceiling showing the sky above.
Certain elements were accented in brushed aluminum, such as the receptionist’s desk.
Behind the desk, an extraordinarily attractive droid smiled at them. It stood up, an impressive 180 centimeters. With eight centimeter black high heels, the shoes added another three inches to the droid’s height, pushing it well over six feet tall.
It had the look of an 18-year-old Nordic female model, with high cheekbones, green eyes, and hair so light it almost looked white. The hair was long, too, dropping down below the waist in a cascade of glorious, vibrant, impossible curly locks.
It wore a tight, formfitting silver dress hemmed thigh-high. The outfit seemed to be painted on, highlighting every voluptuous curve.
The droid practically sparkled, the epitome of female attractiveness, outshining Molly back at AOJ HQ and appearing even more attractive than the Republican Shipworks’ receptionist accompanying them.
“Wow,” Boggs said. “You look . . . expensive.”
The droid smiled at him, as if genuinely amused.
“I will take that as a compliment, Agent Boggs.”
He grinned at the other two and said, “She knows my name.”
“We gave them at the front desk, dimwit,” Jamieson said.
The droid looked at the lobby receptionist and said, “I will take them now, thank you.”
If affronted by the slightly brusque tone, the lobby droid gave no hint. It nodded politely and stepped back inside the elevator pod. The door swished shut and it disappeared.
“Please follow me to Mr. Kraft’s office,” the Nordic blonde said.
It turned and walked toward the far end of the room. The trio followed.
Collier said, “So what model are you, if I may ask?”
“I do not have a model number, Agent Collier. I was designed to Mr. Kraft’s exact specifications by engineers at Verberger Bots and Automatons Corporation. I am a custom model, one of a kind.”
“Wow. She really is expensive,” Boggs said, mentally wondering how many millions this droid had cost its owner.
“Do you have a name?” Collier said.
The droid stopped at a shiny silver door.
“Mr. Kraft calls me Mimi.”
The silvery door slid opened and they peered inside an office completely surrounded by clear walls.
Behind a white metal desk the great industrialist of the age, I. Jonas Kraft himself, stared back at them.
Behind him, the complex’s terrestrial construction facilities lay sprawled out below.
While the great superstructures of spaceships were assembled in orbit, everything else was fashioned down here in a vast network of interconnected factories.
Metal, plastics and other raw materials arrived constantly via flying trucks and ground vehicles. Hectares and hectares of buildings were sprawled out below, fashioning everything inside their multilevel walls from seats and bunks to tiles and drones and cannons.
Upon completions, components were ported up to the spaceships waiting in orbital factories.
Overlooking it all, from a high perch several stories up, Kraft’s office provided an unfettered view of everything.
He glanced up from his desk and stood to his full height of six foot three and a half, or just taller than Mimi in heels.
He wore a light suit, not as white as other things in the office, but light. No tie. He wore a white t-shirt underneath the suit coat. On his feet, he donned tan leather loafers with no socks.
Topping off his business-casual look, Kraft had a thick curly shock of dense hair, prematurely gray. His face looked tanned, perhaps due to the clear walls and ceiling of his office letting the rays of the sun in all day. His skin matched the shade of his shoes, almost perfectly.
Distinct from all other colors in the room, his eyes glinted an intense cobalt blue. He examined each one of them, lingering for a moment on all three.
Kraft said, “Ah. Jamieson, Boggs, and Collier. It’s about time you three got here.”
“About time?” Jamieson said, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Dr. Hsu has told me about you. We’ve got a problem, and it’s a big one. You’re here about the apparent disappearance of my employee, Holland Bainer. Let me show you how he disappeared, and then you’ll begin to see the depths of our current dilemma.”
A knock came from the door and Kraft seemed to freeze, his eyes growing wide.
“Well, belay that. I should have guessed this would happen. I think you’re about to see the full depth of the problem right now.”
He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling under the white suit coat.
Then he made an opening motion in the air and said, “Come in.”
The three turned to the door.
Another Boggs walked inside the office and grinned at them.
“Hey, Jamie. Ethie. Hello, me. What’s up?”
7
Stormy ducked, avoiding gunfire. Bolts zipped over her shoulder and above her head.
She fired back, taking more careful aim than the three gunmen in the hall.
Thoop! Thoop!
The one in front went down, screaming.
That left two. They redoubled their efforts.
Thoop! Thoop! Thoo
p! Thoopah!
Reckless, she thought. How can you miss in a hallway?
She reached into her backpack and pulled out a stun grenade. She pressed the plunger and lobbed it underhanded down the corridor.
It fell short of the gunmen, making a Clink! Clink! sound as it bounced and rolled.
Their eyes grew wide. They had a split second to realize what was about to happen. The one in back dropped his gun and covered his ears. As he started to squat down, the grenade exploded, knocking the one in front back into him.
Stormy was far enough away the grenade did not affect her. She left her backpack on the floor and quickly walked to the downed gunmen.
The one who covered his head looked up, eyes out of focus, as a beautiful woman in a black sports bra came near.
She examined the first man, blood coming out of his ears and nose. He looked unconscious but alive. She aimed her gun.
Thoop!
A single shot to his head left more blood on the floor.
She moved her aim to the one still alive.
Weakly, he put up his hands.
“Don’t shoot!”
“Where is the storage room with all your tech?”
He raised a finger, shaking, and pointed back down the hall where the goon from the roof lay dead.
“Get up. Show me.”
Shakily, the man rose to his feet.
He said, “It’s . . . it’s secured. Only a few can get in there. And I’m not one of them.”
“Show me.”
She poked him with the blaster and he walked back down the hall, hands raised and to his side.
At the door he pointed, his fingers shaking.
“That’s the one. I told you, I can’t get in there. The access pad won’t recognize me.”
Stormy stepped over Handsome’s body carefully and looked down at the corpse of the goon from the roof.
She said, “He can get in. I saw him coming out.”
The man nodded. He said. “Yeah. But . . . he’s dead.”
“Put his palm on the reader. He’s still warm.”
The man gulped, but he stared down the barrel of the blaster and decided to comply.
Some access pads, particularly those for sensitive or secure areas, were designed to detect if the person using them had a pulse or not.
Stormy suspected this was not such a pad. For one thing, it offered only a touch panel. The more advanced models required people to place their entire hands inside a box.
The lone survivor of her shootout grunted and lifted up the goon’s body into a sitting position. Then he grabbed a wrist and roughly pressed the dead man’s hand against the red panel.
It turned green and the door slid open.
Stormy poked her head around the corner carefully, recalling times when other people she knew got shot doing the same thing. But the room’s interior appeared empty.
She said, “Thank you,” and shot the man who helped her in the face.
He fell back wordlessly, his head blown in, joining the other bodies on the floor.
She stepped into the windowless room, noting all the supply crates taking up space. They were unlabeled. About a dozen had been placed against the wall, ranging in size from one to two meters long.
Crates like this, she knew, filled the much larger containers in the storage holds of spaceships. These were used for the sake of uniformity in those containers, filling up every square meter evenly.
Somehow, these boxes had been smuggled down to Diego, whether by commercial shipping, a passenger liner or some other means.
Right now, Stormy did not care. All she wanted was a personal camo unit.
She opened the lid to the first box on her right. Inside, heavy blaster rifles were neatly stacked.
She smiled and said, “I need one of those. The pigs confiscated mine along with the rest of my stuff.”
She reached in and pulled one out, checked the power pack, and slung it over her shoulder.
The next crate had spare power packs. She grabbed three and stuffed them in her backpack.
The third and fourth crates held egg grenades. She thought she had plenty at the moment, so she left these behind with only a twinge of regret. You can never have too many grenades, she thought. But, she did not want to get too loaded down.
The fifth crate held mysterious contents. Evidently they were bags of powder of some kind, from what Stormy could tell. The packages had labels with a skull and crossbones but remained otherwise unmarked. Poison of some kind, she guessed. She passed them over without further consideration.
Finally, the sixth crate held something capturing her full attention. The box on top was labeled, “Camo Tech, Thespar Industries.”
She pulled out a smaller box and opened it. A metal square, ten centimeters by ten, was attached to a black stretchy belt.
She recognized the components. The item used molecular electronics, so it could fit in the size of a buckle. It would connect wirelessly to an implant. Someone could mentally flip a switch and become practically invisible.
“But there’s a problem,” she muttered under her breath.
She had destroyed her implant when the pigs broke into her building, she thought. It was disrupted somehow, making a wretched noise and causing extreme pain.
In a flash she realized how Marx had been captured. The NID agent in the café approached him from behind and clocked him . . . right after his implant went on the fritz.
The Republican Navy must have developed some kind of implant disruptor, and they used it on Marx when he took a hostage at that café. He was in Plairmont, the Navy town where most of their offices were located.
Somebody used it on him. The pigs did not normally carry advanced weaponry like that. Certainly they did not use secret weapons.
But they used it on her when they attacked her compound. No doubt the Navy was involved in that operation. The gang had used Dirk’s framers to impersonate Admiral Severs and Chancellor Cole, shooting people. Later, they tried to make Severs look like a fool, although that drunken stunt had backfired on Evan Edge.
But if the Navy could disrupt implants, could they disrupt a personal camo unit too?
“Well, I’ll just have to risk it.”
She put the belt inside her backpack, now stuffed almost to bursting. Then she went through three more crates looking for blank implants.
On her third one she heard shouts down the hall.
“They must have found the bodies.”
She rummaged through the second to last container. Near the bottom she found a box labeled “Implants.”
She grabbed it and tucked it in the top of her backpack.
“One container left.”
She walked over and opened the top to see what was inside.
-+-
“Go tell Dirk! Someone is raiding the storeroom!”
One of the six guards clustered in the hallway ran to the stairs. Dirk spent most of his time on the top floor of the building.
In the excitement, nobody stopped to think that they could just call Dirk over the neural net. Bodies were strewn everywhere in the hall, blood splattered all over. They acted on instinct and adrenalin.
To the remaining four the leader said, “Everybody got their guns out? Let’s go, they’re probably still in there!”
Together they advanced down the hall, ready to shoot at whoever came out the door.
A head peeked out and immediately pulled back.
Thoop! Thoop! Thoop!
“Let’s get ’em, boys. There’s no way outta that room!”
Emboldened, they advanced toward the storage area again, with all guns aimed at the door and ready to fire.
Stormy stayed in the room, unseen. With both hands she reached out with a missile launcher from the last container, pointing it down the hall.
“What the—”
She pulled the trigger and a tiny explosive projectile shot out the barrel.
WHABOOM!
The explosion blew down
the walls all around the men, flames licking the wood.
More corpses covered the floor, with body parts and blood dropping down from the ceiling.
Stormy stuck her head out the door one more time and smiled. She grabbed a bag with the missile launcher and the heavy rifle. Then she adjusted her backpack and stepped out into the hallway.
“Well, that wraps up my shopping trip.”
She stepped over dead bodies and made her way out of the building.
8
Jamieson, Collier, Boggs and . . . Boggs all stood in a large laboratory in Republican Shipworks’ huge complex of factories and research centers.
Jonas Kraft stood with them and introduced a new person, Pritchard Hsu, PhD.
Of Chinese descent, Hsu wore a lab coat, white of course like most everything else in the room. He stood relatively short, at five foot eight or 173 centimeters making him the smallest person in the room.
He appeared older than anyone else, too, in his mid to late 60s. But there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that Hsu was a genius.
“So, basically you invented time travel.” Collier said, as they all stared at the little old man.
“That’s a very simplified way of stating it,” Hsu said.
Kraft said, “Explain so they can understand it, Pritchard. Heck, explain so I can understand it. I’ve been trying to fully grasp your work for years.”
Kraft smiled at the others and said, “I’ve been funding Hsu’s side projects for ages as we have explored ways to accelerate spaceship travel. As you probably know, the standard speed for a space ship is to teleport one astronomical unit per second. We’ve been trying forever to increase that rate of speed. I picked up where my father left off after taking over the company.”
Collier said, “How does time travel help speed up space travel?”
Hsu cleared his throat and their attention returned to him.
He said, “Time and space are related. Imagine, if you will, a ship disappearing from orbit around Diego, and reappearing a second later near Epsilon instead of weeks later.”
Everyone’s face dropped.
Jamieson said, “Whoa. Now you’ve blown my mind.”