Robot Awareness: Special Edition

by B. C. Kowalski

  "I heard something about a job, somewhere near where we're dropping Rex and — Stephen — off." She said the latter name by sarcastically emphasizing the "ee" sound. “Maybe Farven Point?”

  "You don't like him, huh?" Joey didn't understand why Isellia seemed to resent him — most of the time he was so quiet everyone almost forgot about him.

  "Eh, whatever,” Isellia shrugged. She crouched down to check something underneath the ship’s hull. She looked more closely at Joey's new ribbon, prompting Joey to do the same. "Sure is a nice ribbon."

  "Yeah," Joey said. "It was nice of her to give it to me. I wonder what it means."

  Isellia chuckled again, much like she did when he first received the ribbon. "I know what it means," she sing-songed.

  "What? You do? What does it mean?" Joey was trying to circle in front of Isellia, who was turning away from him while stifling her laughter. He forgot himself and put his hand on her shoulder as he tried to get in front of her, but she kept turning away.

  "Oh, you'll find out soon enough." She started walking away, humming to herself innocently, but Joey persisted.

  "Come on, tell me!" Joey followed her as she continued teasing him, accenting each turn with a louder hum. Her evasion only made Joey want to know more just what the ribbon meant, and Isellia wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. She was almost at a full run, almost laughing instead of humming as Joey pursued, when Porter called out: "Isellia, put your stuff away and get in position for takeoff."

  She turned and stopped to listen to what Porter had said, snapping out of her playfulness like awaking form a dream. Joey didn't break out of the playful reverie so easily, however, and his momentum carried him straight into her. His face was cushioned from harm by landing in the middle of Isellia's blossoming chest.

  There was a moment of silence, as Joey realized where he landed, and began backing away, nearly as red in the face as Isellia.

  Isellia's eyes shut in anger, and sighed like a kettle boiling over as Joey slowly backed away, attempting to stammer an apology and nearly falling over himself. It was the first time he'd encountered that part of the female anatomy consciously, and his prepubescent mind didn't quite know how to handle it.

  "Joey!!!!" Isellia shrieked, sending Joey into a full run. She began to stomp off after him, hands balled into fists, ready to exact the price for his prepubescent education.

  Porter couldn't help but shake his head and laugh, temporarily waylaying his concern about their latest job. He’d picked up a job on the Sasugan station, a delivery to Farven Point, but that was hardly the job he was concerned about. Even Rex seemed to relax as a grin found his face. Suddenly, however, the grin was replaced by grim awareness, and his hand shot in front of his face faster than anyone in the launch bay could have seen.

  Faster than a cat, Rex shoved Porter’s considerably sized frame aside with one hand. Where Porter had been, and where Rex's arm still was, a thin needle stuck out of his arm, blood dripping on the shiny metal landing bay floor.

  Before Porter could react, a shadow of a figure whisked into the bay, and almost as quickly, Rex sprang to meet it. The two figures barely registered at all as they lunged and dodged, bobbed and swung, kicked and blocked so fast that the rest of the crew could only watch in amazement. Isellia had completely abandoned her pursuit and stood dumbly watching, and Joey peeked out from the corner of the ship's door.

  The separation of the two figures gradually disappeared as they merged into one, connecting as they continued to battle. Suddenly the attacker stopped, her hand extended out as Rex slid across the launch bay.

  Only then did the crew get a glimpse of the attacker — an impossibly beautiful female with long dark hair, dressed in a tight, black outfit leaving little to the imagination, with high-heeled stilettos that somehow didn’t make the slightest sound. Her arms, exposed between her sleeveless top and long, black gloves, revealed muscled, toned arms that simultaneously conveyed feminine grace and precision, and great strength. In fact, her persona wasn’t that of a warrior engaged in the heat of battle, but was like a deep lake, its depths unruffled by interruptions on its surface.

  She reminded them of Rex.

  The glimpse was brief, however — Rex regained his footing and launched back in. The figures re-merged, moving impossibly fast, as the crew struggled to even watch. They realized they should be doing something to help, but had no idea how they could. Whatever was going on was far beyond their reach.

  After a moment the dynamic changed, and something seemed to be banging on the floor. The movement began to slow, and soon they could all see what was going on: the woman in black slammed Rex to the ground repeatedly. Rex's movements grew slower and slower, and soon he seemed a rag doll that the woman was throwing around like child on a tantrum. Every time he tried to regain his footing, he ended up back on the ground.

  Joey stopped staring at the scene briefly, long enough to notice Isellia. Her initial horror, which all of them had felt, had changed to anger, and she was red with rage.

  Isellia shrieked, sprinting toward the woman. Porter tried to lunge his huge frame at her to stop her, knowing there was nothing she could do; but Isellia was too fast, quickly closing the distance.

  Her fist was drawn back for a haymaker punch, but as she came around with it, Porter saw the attacker shift slightly as the blow landed home. Isellia's fist seemed to almost pass through her, and she found herself suddenly face up on the floor, having no idea how she had gotten there. She lay pinned beneath one of the woman’s long heels, which dug painfully into her shoulder.

  Porter stepped forward, hesitating at a look from the darkly dressed woman. "Isellia! Say something!"

  She looked up in a daze, seemingly unsure what was holding her down. "Whuh?" She looked at Porter. “Something,” she said woozily, seemingly unaware of where she was.

  Porter looked away from her, grimacing at the attacker as she stood over Rex, knowing he couldn't do anything. He'd seen the way Rex fought when he took out most of the Company C goons himself, and knew that someone that could handle him that way wasn't anyone they could touch.

  The woman, meanwhile, had Rex pinned to the launch bay floor; somehow, her arm held his wrist and her foot pinned Isellia in place. She looked at Isellia a moment and shrugged, lifting her heel and with a kick, sending Isellia back toward the rest of the crew who watched helplessly.

  She seemed calm, pulling out a communications device from an unseen pocket.

  "You're good," she said to Rex, who gave up struggling, knowing he could only break free if she made a mistake. “Best fight I’ve had in years. Don't be ashamed of this defeat."

  "Not good enough, I guess," Rex said calmly, seemingly resigned to his fate. Everyone watched tensely, not knowing what was going to happen next, to Rex or them, but knowing there wasn't much they could do about it.

  The assassin raised her comm device to her ear. "Well, I am a professional. Hey. This is you-know-who. Target is acquired, prepared to execute contract. I hope you got the money part worked out."

  The bay was silent as the assassin nodded, everyone only hearing one end of the conversation.

  "What do you mean?” the assassin said, looking agitated. "That wasn't part of the deal....No I won't...no, you pay immediately. This isn't the first time we've done this, you know....No, I don't care about budget cuts...Well, find the money from a different department."

  The assassin's hand was on her hip, and she waved the comm device around, rolling her eyes. Rex continued to watch for an opening, but despite the heated conversation, she didn't waver the part of her attention that kept him pinned to the floor. The rest of the crew looked on in astonishment, not quite sure what to make of this ridiculous scene.

  "Okay, listen, I...what? WHAT?" she sighed, shaking her head. "You are making a big mistake. I said 'A BIG MISTAKE!' No one crosses our syn— oh, you didn't just hang up on me?! Hey. HEY!"

  She checked the device, seeing that it was off, put it back into a h
idden pocket from somewhere.

  She looked up at the crew surrounding her, almost as if noticing them for the first time. Rex of course knew that she was aware of them the entire time, but simply had no need to acknowledge them.

  "Well, this is awkward," she said, looking down at Rex. "I believe I've just been downsized."

  He looked up, grinning. "Guess I'm not worth that much after all."

  "Would have been a shame to kill someone as skilled as you anyway." She looked down at him with a smile — not the look of someone ready to kill a moment ago.

  "If I had to go, it'd have to be by someone as good as you.” The two behaved as if they were the only people in the room. The rest of the crew were mute with bafflement, having absolutely no clue how to process the scene.

  As the two looked at each other, seeming to share some kind of moment the others couldn’t appreciate, soldiers dressed like those who’d attacked them earlier filed into the docking bay. They circled the room, armed with ROU rifles. They said nothing, but held the rifles at ready.

  The assassin grinned slightly, eyeing the room out of her peripheral vision as she now understood their plan. It would have been cheaper to eliminate her once she’d finished the job than pay her high salary.

  She decided right then that she would dedicate herself to making sure it cost them much, much more.

  "Well," the assassin said, looking down to Rex. "Looks like things are about to get interesting."

  Chapter 7

  The assassin quietly and calmly surveyed the small militia that surrounded them: Twenty soldiers in a tight, disciplined formation with ROU rifles poised at the ready, each prepared to shoot. They wore no insignia, but everyone knew without a doubt these were sent by whoever sent the first soldiers.

  The assassin knew full well what was going on — her employer thought it’d found a cheaper way of erasing its target, allowing her to weaken this man before these soldiers could finish the job. After what she’d done to Rex, they’d have an easier time finishing the mission they came to complete.

  The corner of her mouth ever-so-slightly turned into a grin. It wasn’t a completely terrible plan — after all, it’d gotten them this far, with her target spitting blood on the floor of this Sasugan docking bay, trying not to get a drop on her sleek black boots, but failing as a splatter touched her left toe.

  But they hadn’t accounted for all the variables. They assumed, based on the code of her clan, that once there was no job, no assassination request, and no money, that she’d simply cut her losses and walk away. And if she’d been any other assassin in her clan, they might have been right. The assassin might have moved this employer further down the priority list, but then, so many of the assassination jobs came from Company C that no one could afford to blacklist the company if they wanted to earn a living in this deadly field.

  In this case, they were quite incorrect, as Celia stood over the beaten man, who now appeared to be regaining strength. It became clear as she surveyed the perimeter that the soldiers weren’t quite sure what to do. A fight with a Black Purl assassin wasn’t exactly what they’d signed on for. Failing to follow orders would result in termination in more than one sense of the word, yet surely at least a few of the soldiers weren’t sure that wasn’t the better option in this particular situation. A life on the run might be better than no life at all...

  This thought process flashed through her mind in microseconds, and in a few more, a plan of attack. Everyone would be wiped out — she would make sure it cost the company much more than her fee. Now there was interest to pay. Every one of these soldiers would be under orders to take out the entire room. They wouldn’t leave any room for any story other than the one its PR team constructed. Everyone reading the morning news or watching their holovision sets would walk away believing Company peacekeepers stopped a group of insurgents.

  An insurgence was exactly what she intended to give them.

  “Can you fight,” she asked, sliding her foot into a Qu'a point. Rex began to feel healing waves of energy flooding his battered body.

  "Good enough for them,” he grunted, feeling wave after wave course through his body. The waves of Qu’a flooded through the meridian in her toe, and it took only moments to feel his life force, which hung in the balance only seconds ago, flood back into his battered body.

  “Not enough time to heal you completely,” she said, looking down at him. She winked. “Maybe later.”

  “Look forward to it,” Rex said. He started to rise, then realized he might have an advantage if they still thought he couldn’t move.

  “You have no idea,” the assassin said, giving him a smile with warmth she hadn’t felt in some time. Rex felt the same, and it had been perhaps longer since he’d flirted with a woman.

  The lead soldier put his hand to his ear, touching an imperceptibly small button. The assassin deduced that the soldiers had been awaiting orders in light of the surprise. She knew it wouldn’t be good news for them.

  “You can follow my lead, right?” She asked, still surveying the group of soldiers as they prepared their weapons and the assassin's gaze found the main line controlling lights in the room. She inched a small dart out of an hidden seam in her pant leg, so subtly even Rex almost didn't see it.

  "Full of surprises, huh?" Rex grinned.

  "You can't begin to imagine," she grinned back.

  The lead mercenary gave the hand signal to ready their ROUs, but before any of the soldiers began to react, the small dart flew invisibly fast through the room, past two docked ships, and severed the jugular of the line supplying power to the lights. A spark flew out of one of the light fixtures, briefly strobing the launch bay with a brief flash, then darkness.

  Porter flew toward Isellia, sending the two sprawling to the ground. There they lay in total darkness, unable to see what transpired. If they had, they might have witnessed a fluid performance worthy of a ballet holo-recording: Rex and the assassin moved in near-perfect harmony, the latter slowing every so often so Rex could keep up in his battered state. The two moved in and out with each other, nearly sharing a conscious that transcended individuality as the two made short work of the mercenary group. A soldier grabbed for them and felt nothing. One punched and felt an irresistible force push through their arm. Another charged and flew 20 feet in the direction they intended to run. The duo became a black hole that sucked in attacks and spit out retreats.

  A silence pervaded the bay after the last mercenary landed in a bone crunching heap much farther down the launch bay than he intended. No one moved, or said a word, save for the sound of the ship roaring to life — Stephen smartly fired up the engines during the skirmish.

  The ship's various lights charged the room with green and red glow, casting a sinister and changing tint to the once brightly lit docking bay. Porter and Isellia, now on their feet and somewhat bewildered, saw Rex leaning against the assassin, the woman who'd only moments earlier beat him nearly senseless, and who'd moments after that, indebted to her all of their lives.

  "Come on," the assassin said, supporting most of Rex's weight as she walked past Isellia and Porter and started up the embarkment ramp. "There'll be more soon. We would do well to make haste."

  Porter grabbed Isellia on one arm and Joey on the other.

  “You heard the lady,” Porter said, hoisting them toward the ship.

  "What the hell!?" Isellia shouted to no one in particular, shaking her head.

  “We’ll sort it out later,” Porter said. “Run ahead and get behind the controls.”

  Isellia looked to Porter, then the assassin, then back to Porter. “Whatever,” she said, shaking her head, shrugging out of his grasp.

  The assassin carefully set Rex down on the floor of the ship inside the decompression chamber, then peered through the hatch as more soldiers filed into the docking bay.

  “As I thought,” the assassin said. “We’ll be long gone before they get back to their ship.”

  The assassin turned to look at th
e others, who looked at her with wide eyes, unsure what to think. She paid little attention as she crouched down to check on Rex.

  "Nice marriage ribbon," she said to Joey as she looked up from Rex.

  "Nice what?!" He said, looking at the ribbon as if he’d just noticed it.

  ***

  Joey’s hand rested on the vinyl control stick, moving it with a certain expertise he didn’t posses several days ago. The chair felt comfortable and familiar to him now. The vinyl control stick moved under his hand predictably and comfortably, and he was becoming at ease with the way its movement transferred to movement in space. Soon they would be far enough into empty cosmos where auto-pilot would cruise them the rest of the way to the coordinates he’d entered, only altering when the ship’s sensors detected asteroid remnants.

  Though at ease amongst the controls, his mind wasn't at ease at that particular moment. No one had said a word since they'd left the Sasugan port. The doors leading outside the station shut down in lockdown mode in response to the violence, and required some clever hot-wiring on the part of Porter, with some assistance from the robot. The robot’s programming allowed them to bypass some of the station’s safety protocols so they could make their escape. They didn’t exactly want to hang around, after all, and explain what had happened. And they didn’t feel like greeting the reinforcements which were undoubtedly on their way.

  There was a tension in the room. Nobody quite had a full understanding of what exactly had just happened, or what was going to happen for that matter. Isellia stared into one of the side terminals, transfixed on whatever she was reading on the buzz, tapping a touch button with her finger every so often to move the page. Porter sat back in his chair (Isellia laughed whenever he called it the “captain’s chair”), arms folded behind his head. His face held a deep concentration, appearing like someone who really wasn’t sure what to do next. Joey had a child’s faith that he must have some idea and would give them all direction.