Head Space

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  “Oh my,” Lucia breathed. “I hope we can afford all that!”

  “Your DECO puke has already approved my invoices. He has also provided us with some solid ground intel. I think we can get an FOB up and running without attracting too much attention. There’s no cops or government to sweat here, but the rumor mill is like to fuck us all up if we don’t tiptoe through the goddamn tulips.”

  Roland nodded his approval. “Good. We need to find out which of the local warlords is the biggest player on Vinland this year. That will be the one we have to deal with.”

  Pike squinted his good eye up at the towering cyborg. “DECO puke gave me a name, said you’d know it. ‘Sven Paulsen’ ring a bell?”

  “Yup,” Roland sighed.

  Mindy grinned. “Oh goody!”

  “Shit,” the commandant shook his head. “I fucking hate it when she gets that look.”

  “We all do,” said Roland.

  “I’mma cause me a ruckus!” the tiny blond killer squealed.

  Pike looked annoyed at the new development. “Does this Paulsen shitheel hate you or her?”

  “Both.”

  “Which one does he hate more?”

  “Me,” said Mindy. “I beat the shit out of him and broke his arm.”

  “Ignore her.” Lucia said helpfully. “It’s probably Roland. Roland killed his best friend.”

  “Right in front of him,” Manny pointed out.

  “With a hammer,” Mindy added.

  This seemed to shock even the veteran commander. “What?”

  “He was in an armature!” Roland growled. “I didn’t beat some schmuck to death with a hammer because I wanted to. It was a veteran mercenary mounted to an AutoCat 8900. Stop looking at me like I’m some kind of psycho.”

  “Do they not have guns on earth?” Pike asked quietly. “I got ten things on board right now that will punch a hole in an AutoCat.”

  Roland threw up his hands. “You had to be there, I guess. It was complicated.”

  “That’s what every grunt says when they fuck up.”

  “Anyway,” Roland’s irritation was transparent and Pike’s reputation did not cow him the way it might others. “Paulsen was a Brokerage stooge. It’s a pretty sure bet he still is. I think we have to assume that once his people spot us, we’ll be made.”

  “That a problem?” Pike mused.

  Lucia answered. “I don’t think so. We want him to come for Roland. Sooner is just as good as later. But Manny and Mindy should get down first and look around. They can blend fairly well when they try. Once they have leads on the objectives, we let Paulie get a good look at Roland. That should bring the fight to us.”

  Pike nodded his approval. “And then while we’re pouncing on your guy, the kid and Mindy go for the objectives. I like it. You ever get tired of picking up the goon’s messes you come look me up. I can always use another sharp wit in the squads.”

  “I’m not made for the military life, Commandant, but I appreciate the gesture.”

  “I hear that,” Pike replied. “Your fire team is on deck C if you want to go meet them. They’ve been informed of their role and that command flows directly from God, through me, and on to you with no pit stops. If it looks like they are struggling with that, you can refer them to me for clarification.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Commandant,” Lucia purred with a disarming smile. “I’m sure we’ll get along just fine. I’m very likable.”

  “I’ve heard as much. I encourage regimental discipline over official shit anyway. Just don’t maim anyone while being likable, please.”

  “Of course,” she replied. “If we are done with strategy, I’ll head down there now. You guys can sort out weapons and tactics better than I can, anyway.”

  With a polite goodbye, Lucia left the conference room. Roland watched her walk out with approval. Pike caught his lingering stare and guffawed. “How bad is she going to hurt my boys?”

  “That really depends on them. Lucia is thick-skinned, but she does not like to be disrespected. If they follow orders and curb the macho bullshit, they’ll be fine.”

  “And what if they just can’t restrain themselves from pulling some of that macho bullshit?”

  “She’ll pick the biggest one and humiliate him.”

  Pike punched a button on his comm and shouted, “Comms!”

  “Aye, sir?” came a voice from his speaker.

  “I want a video feed running on Deck C assembly and recording with audio. We’re about to make us a new training holo.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Pike,” Roland growled from low in his chest. “Just what kind of assholes have you saddled her with?”

  “I needed guys who would fit in on Galapagos.”

  Mindy inhaled sharply. “You picked up some Galop mercs?”

  Pike shrugged. “They were tired of the pirate life and wanted to go legit. They had skills and experience. I make no apologies.”

  “Remember you said that when the boss is done with them.” The warning in the little blond killer’s voice drew a curt nod of acknowledgment from the brawny commandant.

  “I’m going down there,” announced Roland.

  “To save her or rescue my guys?” Pike asked with a smirk.

  Roland was already heading to the door. “Neither. I’m just going to keep things from getting out of hand. I‘m known to have a very calming effect on macho assholes.”

  “Sure you do,” mumbled Pike. Then to Mindy and Manny he asked, “So, you two wanna watch this go down on the monitors?”

  “Damn straight,” said Mindy. “I’ve tussled with the boss before, and I have a 4.6 CGP score for strength and a 3.2 reflex rating. I still lost.”

  “CGP?” Manny asked.

  “Coefficient of Genetic Potential,” answered Pike. “It’s the multiplier of your current capabilities times your unmodified genetic potential. At 4.6, Mindy has 460 percent of the strength she’d have if she had maxed out what her genetics could handle naturally.”

  “I see. So Mindy is a bit more than four times as strong and three times as fast as she could achieve without modification.”

  Mindy nodded, sliding next to Pike to view the monitor. “Yup. The boss has a strength CGP of one, maybe one-point-five at best, but her reflex CGP is like seven or eight.”

  “What?!?” Pike blurted. “Nobody has a seven! I’ve met three people in my whole life with a five, and they all went insane or died of strokes. How’s she rate a seven?”

  “Nice job, blondie,” Manny groaned.

  “Shit,” Mindy whispered. “Forget I said that, Pike.” Then she added a soft, “Please?”

  The intense configuration of the commandant’s face clearly communicated that the conversation was not over, but he relented and turned to watch the action about to take place on the monitor.

  Unaware of the unseen eyes upon her, Lucia was just passing through the hatch to the Deck C assembly room. There she found her four-person fire team seated around a rectangular table. As a whole they looked presentable enough. Their uniforms were squared away to a minimally acceptable degree, their hair was cut to Pike’s aggressively military standards, and each seemed to have at least a passing familiarity with personal hygiene. Her first impression was that Pike may have been exaggerating their faults as only a stern commanding officer can.

  As a group, four heads rotated to take in the sight of what they had been told was their new team leader. Six organic eyes and two bionic took in all five-and-a-half feet of Lucia Ribiero, evaluated her one-hundred-thirty pounds of mass, and squinted at the magenta stripe in her short brown hair.

  The largest of the four spoke first. He stood as she approached, looming to a height well in excess of six feet. Scars ran from a bionic eye down his cheek and half his head was covered in the white and pink remnants of what had to have been a horrific burn now healed.

  “Oh, what the fuck is this?” He whined after absorbing Lucia’s appearance. “Don’t tell me we been saddled w
ith some civvie VIP?”

  A woman, still seated at the table and sporting a sneer of white-hot derision, chimed in with her own disappointment. “Goddammit. Pike said we were going in as local color, but he didn’t say we’d be bringing some soft-bellied civvie with us.”

  A second man agreed. He was thinner than the giant standing before Lucia, but rangy and muscular. He too had a bionic eye, but no matching scars. “Lady, I don’t know what they told you, but you need to change your mind about this mission real damn fast. Galapagos ain’t no place for pretty girls like you.”

  “He’s right,” the big one offered. “You should probably let us do this run without ya.” He let his face settle into a long, lascivious leer. “You can stay in my bunk. It’s real warm there. You’re gonna like it there real good.”

  This drew a laugh from the other man and a groan from the woman. Lucia was less amused. She observed all of them, evaluating their relative discomfort with her appearance and trying to piece together their impressions. She supposed they had a right to be disappointed. These were hard-charging mercenaries, accustomed to relying upon each other in a fight. She certainly did not look reliable to them, so she tried to be sympathetic.

  “Okay, I get it. I don’t look like much to you. That’s fine. When things get hairy, I think you will find me more than up to the task. Now let’s start with...”

  The seated man interrupted her with a snort of disgust. “You civvies always say that. You have any idea how many analysts, observers, and consultants think they got the stones to roll hard? Fuck, every time somebody says that I just know I’ll be dragging them from the field in a bag.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “...and then Pike gets all up our asses about losing a friendly asset.”

  The final man, the one who had been silent up to this point added, “It’s not like the training you get, uh, wherever it is you trained, ma’am.” Lucia noted his calmness. He was relaxed in his chair, leaning back with his hands folded across his chest. His age was impossible to determine, though he looked older than the others. His posture, tone, and body language came across in stark contrast to the obvious consternation of his peers. “You’ll want to avoid Riley’s bunk obviously, but maybe Galapagos is not the best place to get in your first round of wet work.”

  “I’ll give her all the wet work she wants,” crooned the big one.

  “Riley, is it?” Lucia addressed the looming brute.

  “You can call me daddy, baby.”

  “Pig,” Lucia heard the woman hiss.

  Lucia pinched the bridge of her nose between a thumb and forefinger. “Right. Okay Riley, it’s clear to me that you are going to need some special attention if I want you shipshape for this operation.”

  Riley’s meaty hand gripped his crotch. “Oh, I’m shipshape already, baby.” He laughed at his own cleverness and looked over to his team to see if they were as amused as he was. When he turned back, the small civilian woman spun on her heel and kicked him in the hand that still clutched his unmentionables.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Barton “Bubba” Riley was a monster of a man. Even without his Myofiber and OsteoPlast upgrades, he was as strong and tough a fighter as Galapagos had ever produced. He did not fear much, and certainly not small women from earth who thought they could hang with tough bastards like himself.

  When Lucia’s foot struck his metacarpals, the reinforced bones did not break. They did, however, transfer much of the force of her blow directly into his testicles. There was no practical method of reinforcing a human testicle, nor was there any great demand for such enhancement, and this left poor Bubba in a bit of a quandary. If his bones and muscles had been softer or more pliable, they might have absorbed more of the impact and spared his tender bits the brutal shock of a kick that gave the impression a much larger person had delivered it. This was one of those extremely rare cases where his augmentations actually worked against him, and Bubba did not appreciate that at all.

  The kick launched a burst of agony through his groin and sent his guts lurching. His pain threshold was well developed, and despite the waves of nausea twisting his innards Bubba bit down on the hurt and staggered back a half step. With his clenched jaw locking his face into a grim rictus, he reached out to grab the offending woman and remind her of why Bubba Riley was not a man to be assaulted without consequence. Part of his brain understood that she was some kind of VIP and that Pike had put this fire team together for her specifically. A little piece of what remained of his higher-order cognitive functions acknowledged that harming her was probably a one-way ticket to the brig and a long period of severely docked pay. Unfortunately for Bubba Riley, that small voice of reason was drowned out by the howling of an enraged monkey with throbbing balls.

  And so he lunged.

  Objectively speaking, Bubba was more than four times as strong as Lucia, who was no slouch herself. There was virtually no way for the smaller woman to harm him physically beyond the superficial pain of smacking his more tender areas. Bubba knew this, and Lucia knew this. Most of the people in the room knew this. What most did not know was that Lucia had been trained since childhood by a former champion and current trainer of champions named Rodrigo Gutierrez. She had thousands of ring hours with Earth’s best martial arts instructors as well as reflexes entire orders of magnitude better than anyone living. Lucia did not have the strength to hurt Bubba, and she did not need it. Bubba was more than strong enough to hurt himself.

  The brute’s charge was a furious headlong thing. He was not slow, but he lacked the agility to truly make his strength unbeatable. Lucia met the rush with a smile and spun a deft pirouette out of his path at the last possible instant. A booted foot darted outward, and the hard composite heel barked down sharply onto the big man’s instep. It did no serious injury, but the pain was instantaneous and it set Riley stumbling. Before he managed to right himself, the woman had slipped in behind the man and delivered a rising snap kick between his legs and back up into his crotch. The kick arrived with more than a little force, Lucia’s muscular legs flexing hard as she rose up onto her toes to drive her shin into the abused groin. Over Riley’s roar of pain, she heard the sympathetic hiss from one of the men at the table and an abbreviated chuckle from the woman.

  The angry mercenary spun to revenge himself upon her, his face a snarling visage of pain and fury spitting in incoherent rage. He swung wildly, a savage back-handed slap that missed Lucia by a wide margin. She danced under it, sending her tiny fist into his Adam’s apple. With a gurgle and a cough, the giant swatted with his other hand even as he clutched at his spasming larynx. This blow missed as well, and she repaid it with an elbow to the bridge of his nose. The fleshy nodule ruptured in a fountain of blood and Lucia was gliding away from a third punch before the first crimson drops spattered the gray deck plates.

  Even a man as thick as Bubba Riley understood when great tactical blunders had been made. In truth, the pain spreading like liquid fire from his groin and searing outward from his ruined nose was galvanizing his thoughts in a way no educator ever had. For the first time in a great long while, the mercenary questioned many of the assumptions that had driven him into his current predicament. Given a few seconds to reflect, he might have realized his mistakes and found a way to extricate himself from this humiliation without further risk to his health and career. Sadly, he did not have the luxury of a few seconds’ introspection. The pretty hellion with the pink stripe in her hair was not done making an example of him yet.

  A blizzard of strikes followed. Seven or eight per second, the hits peppered the unreinforced parts of his body like hailstones. None injured him too badly, but they all hurt like hell itself. Her knowledge of human anatomy was only surpassed by the precision of her movements. She worked his nose some more, then gave him a cut above his good eye. His neck and throat were pummeled until there was nothing left of them but bruised flesh. He could not see. He could not breathe. What remained of his patience fizzled to pure unfiltered fury, and he roared like
an enraged bull. Searching for an edge, his big hands grabbed the table itself. His fingers seized the corners and thick arms ripped the piece of metal furniture from the deck. With a jerk he raised it aloft, scattering his teammates like tenpins. There would be nowhere for the little woman to hide from so large a weapon and Bubba allowed for a tiny moment of satisfaction with the inspired stratagem.

  It was a moment Lucia did not waste. As the big man began to swing his clumsy bludgeon, her boot found his undefended crotch yet again. She chose a spinning back kick this time. The move was slower than some other kicks in her arsenal, though the turn of her hips allowed her to drive with the full force of her leg muscles in a way other kicks did not. When her foot made contact, she felt the heel sink deep into the softness it found there. Knowing her foe would need the lesson to be truly indelible, she promptly re-chambered and switch-kicked the same spot again with the other foot. At last the light in Bubba’s eyes began to dim. Lucia decided to finish the farce in a manner that left nothing to chance. As a final coup de grâce, she rose up inside the arc of his descending table, grabbed a handful of his uniform jacket in each fist, and launched a rising knee into whatever remained of the poor man’s sexual identity.

  As Bubba let the table fall from nerveless fingers, Lucia simply stepped to the side. The table hit the deck with a metallic crash and Bubba sank to his knees, retching. Tears and blood leaked from his organic eye and small gasping sounds were all that came from his lips. The tiny sobs escaped weakly between great grotesque heaves. Lucia stepped away from the mercenary, contempt oozing from every pore. She addressed the remaining three people in the room. All were standing now, watching her with cool professional wariness.

  “If this is what you guys call ‘shipshape,’ I’m going to need a new fire team. Pike led me to believe that you understood the chain of command and that you were professionals. Can I assume that Riley here...” she shoved the kneeling man forward with a foot, sending him sprawling to the deck in a puddle of his own blood and stomach acid. “...is an isolated case?”