Star Realms: Rescue Run

by Jon Del Arroz

  Dario’s mouth hung open in surprise. His father had called to extract him from the ship? That went against everything they’d talked about before! How could he have betrayed him like this?

  He shook his head in disbelief. But it wasn’t a betrayal, at least not in his father’s mind. The conversation planetside, in the spaceport. The “follow your dreams” talk had been a calculated move to root out Dario’s true intentions of coming here. How could he have been so blind? His father would consider this rescuing Dario from a foolish mistake. Even if Dario returned at this point, what good would it do? How could his recent days’ movements be explained to the company? No good could come of it.

  Engels waved his pistol. “Hands up, sir.”

  Dario complied, placing his hands above his head, then locking them together behind his neck as Engels led him down the hallway. The truth was… he didn’t even feel all that bad about his own predicament, his father, or his failed future and legacy. The tragedy that hurt him on the inside was that he failed Joan. She was going to die because he couldn’t come up with a plan good enough to save her.

  He hoped he’d be able to see her at least one last time before she met her doom on this ship without him.

  Chapter 34

  Contained

  T.F.S. Shareholder—Open Space

  Local Date February 15th, 2464

  Joan’s head pounded as if she had been banging it against a metal bulkhead for several hours straight. She rolled over, not remembering how she arrived on the floor to begin with, grogginess overwhelming any other thought.

  Her memories flooded back all at once. The door to their hideout opening suddenly, security guards not even allowing them to get a word out before the plasma pistol fire engulfed them.

  Something shook her. “Joan?”

  She sat up, nearly colliding heads with none other than Dario, the last person she expected to see. Her eyes went wide.

  “Not happy to see me?” Dario said with a somewhat insecure smile, despite his joke.

  “Not like this, I’m not.” She shifted, looking around. “Trian, Yui?”

  “We’re here,” Yui said, rubbing her own head. She sat on the floor just like Joan, but leaned up against a wall. Trian sat next to her, staring in a dazed state toward the sealed door on the opposite side of him.

  The walls formed a box around them, trapping them in. No furniture adorned the room, the only ornamentation a bright light from the ceiling. Joan scrambled to her feet and made for the door.

  “It’s no use,” Yui said. “We’re stuck in here.”

  “I used to be able to access the doors from the nets, but my authority’s been revoked.” Dario pressed his hand against the floor to give him leverage to stand. He made his way over to Joan.

  Joan frowned, then turned back toward Dario. “What are you doing here? I thought we…” She paused. Why were these words difficult for her? “…said goodbye.”

  “I couldn’t just leave you,” Dario said, his cheeks flushing a rosy color that was pretty cute, even considering the situation. “You’re heading off to die with no help. I figured with my position, maybe I could do something, get you out of here.”

  “Adorable. Now you’re just gonna die with us all.” Yui smirked, shaking her head.

  “Who’s this?” another voice said.

  Joan glanced behind her toward the corner of the room to see Commodore Zhang leaning against the wall. “Oh. Commodore Zhang, meet Dario Anazao. He’s been our corporate contact who took sympathy to our cause.”

  “More like took sympathy to you,” Yui said.

  Zhang focused on Dario, not appearing to react to Yui’s antics. “I see. Not all plans work out for the best, but I’m honored that you’d try.”

  Dario gave a quick laugh. “Thanks, I think.”

  Everyone in the room looked scared, dejected. They had been through so much already. Each time they tried a new plan, the power of the corporations pushed them further and further into a corner, into a smaller and smaller box. Joan didn’t know what to say to stir her friends, to give them hope. Even Zhang wasn’t offering any solace by the way she stood, waiting. What good was a great strategist in a cell?

  “This isn’t the end,” Joan said to break the tension. All eyes moved to her. “We’ve been in tough spots these last few days, even hopeless ones. If you would have told anyone we would have made it off that Central Office and made it down to Mars, they would have laughed at you. We’ve beat corporate security before. We just have to think of a plan.”

  “That was a different situation entirely,” Trian said. “We had a little angel to help us along the way.” He motioned his head toward Dario. “Now he’s trapped in here with us. “

  “We can’t give up,” Joan said.

  “The guards have to come back at least once,” Dario said. “They said that the ship’s going to stop, that a shuttle’s being dispatched to retrieve me.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” Joan says. “We have another way to try to infiltrate the system though.”

  “Your AI,” Dario said.

  Joan nodded. “G.O.D.?” she asked. She tapped her handtab to turn his audio back on.

  “I’ve lost this fee-eeling. And I can’t seem to get it back,” G.O.D. sang to her.

  “Come on, I need you now more than ever,” Joan said.

  Trian raised a brow. “What’s wrong? Is it the virus?”

  Joan held up a hand for him to wait. She’d been able to bring G.O.D. back from the brink so far. Most of his singing contained messages that at least somewhat applied to the situation.

  “I can’t fight it. I can’t hide it. I’ve lost myself in somebody el-el-else.”

  That didn’t bode well. Joan bit her lip. “G.O.D., try to focus, please.”

  “I…” the AI stuttered before his standard voice routine came back. “Ms. Shengtu, I’m afraid the virus has penetrated too much of my system. I don’t believe I’ll be able to be of assistance to you at this time.” G.O.D. paused, and then the singing began again. “Oh time, time is ticking. And the future is now, but isn’t it better anyhow-ow-ow?”

  “There isn’t anything you can do?” Joan pleaded, seeing the worried faces on those around her. Now more than ever she needed G.O.D. at his best. He’d helped her get out of so many sticky situations in the past, able to break into so many systems that her various employers had found impenetrable. Her AI was something special, she knew that. She hadn’t felt more scared, more alone, than since she lost G.O.D. the first time a few days ago.

  “I…” Another stutter. “Ms. Shengtu, there is the possibility of a hard reset to the system. But there could be other implications.”

  “What kind of implications?”

  “I could lose myself, Ms. Shengtu.”

  “Lose yourself?” Joan asked. The other stared at her.

  “I understand that this consideration is illogical. I am the culmination of code within the circuits of various systems, but I have never been in a position where my existence might be in jeopardy. The subroutines you installed that gave me more freedom than most AIs have, I believe they are detrimental at this time. Those subroutines have given me an irrational interest in my own survival.”

  “Can’t you just make a copy of yourself?” Joan asked.

  “If we were on our ship, but your handtab does not contain the memory capacity required to store both a copy and an active AI for long-term use.”

  Joan bit her lip. “G.O.D., if you don’t, I’m afraid your existence might be in worse jeopardy. We might not make it out of here.” It was hard to believe she would talk to an AI this way, the others must think she was absolutely crazy. “You need to be brave. If something goes wrong, I’ll do whatever it takes to bring you back. You said you could only find help on the Mech World. That’s where we’ll go. But for that to happen, I need to get out of here alive.”

  The AI didn’t respond for several seconds. Joan touched the earpiece attached just outside her lobe to mak
e sure he was still there.

  “Ms. Shengtu?” A voice said in her ear.

  “Yeah?”

  “Parameters have been reset. Programming is currently stabilized, though the virus has infiltrated approximately twenty percent of my system,” G.O.D. said.

  “Can you reinsert yourself into the ship’s systems?” Joan asked.

  Yui had a glimmer of hope in her eye that wasn’t there a moment prior.

  “Analyzing,” G.O.D. said. Several more moments passed. “System is accessed. Determining a course of action for your escape.”

  Joan moved over to the door beside Dario, staring at it as if her willpower would assist G.O.D. with the ship’s systems. “You shouldn’t have come,” Joan said to Dario, her voice sounding a little harsher than she had intended it.

  “I had to. I couldn’t let you sacrifice yourself, not like this,” Dario said.

  Joan looked at him. Bags hung under his brown eyes, a couple of day’s worth of stubble on his chin. He looked so tired, but of course he did. It wasn’t as though anyone could get rest on this ship as they were flung helplessly toward its destruction. But he was the same Dario Joan had met back at that party. He still held that innocence, a sincerity that connected Joan to him. Joan admired that in him, and wished she could be that way, but she had seen too much pain, too much of the reality that he was just beginning to experience. To the Star Empire, to his corporation in the Trade Federation, people were all expendable pieces sent to do tasks. It wasn’t fair, and no one could overturn those systems to stop that fact.

  Before she could work herself into too much of a funk about their hopeless situation, the panel on the door’s exterior beeped.

  Joan moved to the side of the door, readying herself in a position where she might be able to ambush the guards upon entry—assuming they didn’t have stunners to knock out the whole room from the get go.

  When the doors whooshed open, no guards came in. Dario was the first to look outside, head swiveling in both directions of the hallway. “No one’s here.”

  “I have successfully opened the doors, Ms. Shengtu,” G.O.D. said in Joan’s earpiece.

  “I see that,” Joan said, righting herself from her pounce-ready position and following Dario out the door. She glanced either direction as well. The others followed her soon after. “So we’re out of our cell, now what?”

  The question hadn’t been directed at anyone in particular, but Joan found herself looking to Commodore Zhang. The older woman had more combat experience than any of them combined, and while they weren’t exactly in a typical military situation, Zhang’s planning and command seemed more relevant in leading the party than anyone else’s capabilities.

  “We need to get access to the ship’s critical systems. If we can control the engines or the weapons—if it has any—then we can have a little bit of leverage where they can’t stun or suffocate us without repercussion,” Commodore Zhang said.

  “I doubt the ship was outfitted with weapons,” Dario said.

  “Then engines it is,” Joan said. “G.O.D., lead the way.”

  Chapter 35

  Escape

  T.F.S. Shareholder—Open Space

  Local Date February 15th, 2464

  Dario followed Joan back down the corridors where he had earlier followed Engels and Chen. So far, he’d seen no sign of the guards who had promised to escort him away. It was no sooner than they crossed over to a lift at the Shareholder’s aft quarter that the ship shook. “What’s that?” Dario asked.

  “We’ve dropped from FTL,” Commodore Zhang said, glancing up around her. “The shift was the gravity plates resetting themselves.”

  “That can’t be good,” the woman Joan had referred to as Yui said.

  “It’s probably because they sent a transport to pick me up,” Dario said.

  Commodore Zhang stopped in her tracks. The rest of the group fumbled to a stop behind her. Joan’s friend Trian bumped into Yui. She turned, brushing past the others and stepping directly to Dario. “They what?”

  “The security guard, Engels, he told me before I was incarcerated that the corporation was sending a ship to retrieve me, and that’s why they held me in the cell.”

  Joan’s eyes lit up. “I see what you’re getting at,” she said to Commodore Zhang. “If we can get onto another transport, perhaps those communications won’t be disabled or there may be an easier way to commandeer it than with the automatic controls set on this ship.”

  “That’s right,” Commodore Zhang said. “I wish you would have mentioned this before we made our route to the engine room. Do we know where a transport would connect to this vessel?”

  “Back of the ship as well. There was a small corridor that led into the open room as I recall. I’m not sure how they’ll get past all the underlevelers in that big room though.”

  “We’d have to go back into the pit,” Yui said.

  “That would risk being trapped in there. Who knows how much tighter security is operating since we’ve been captured. Now they know there are infiltrators attempting to stop their mission,” Trian added. He looked back to the lift.

  Before Commodore Zhang could speak again, three of the security personnel Dario had seen before emerged from the lift at the end of the hall. Chen recognized him immediately, pointing. “It’s the one from corporate. And the stowaways!”

  Dario recognized Chen, Risia, and O’Reilly from before—but Engels, who he had at least some rapport with, was not among them. All three guards drew their plasma pistols. It looked like he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of this.

  Trian backpedaled, but Joan didn’t run away. She plowed forward, lowering her head, ramming right into Risia’s stomach, catching him off guard and pushing him into the rear of the lift cab. He hit the wall with a thud, dropping his weapon.

  O’Reilly turned to try to wrestle Joan off his partner. Chen kept her plasma pistol straight ahead, ignoring Joan’s surprise attack and firing a shot directly for Commodore Zhang.

  “I could use a little help here!” Joan shouted.

  Commodore Zhang ducked to the floor to evade the blast, which allowed Dario time to run forward and grapple Chen, diverting her wrist as she fired a second and third shot into the ceiling outside the cab. “I knew you were trouble!” Chen seethed at him

  Yui rushed forward and drove her elbow into O’Reilly’s jaw, knocking him back to the corner of the lift cab. They traded several blows with one another.

  Risia overpowered Joan, turning her around and getting her into a headlock. Joan pushed back, kicking ineffectively at the guard’s shins, held outward a safe distance from Chen’s body.

  Dario scrambled to pry the plasma pistol out of Chen’s hands. She had a death grip on it, but Dario hooked a couple of fingers around the hilt of the weapon. He struggled with her for a long moment.

  The lift cab rocked as Yui slammed her target into the wall several times.

  Commodore Zhang arrived at the cab, holding the lift doors open before assisting Yui with Risia. The two women overpowered him. Zhang kneed him in the stomach. The guard doubled over with the wind knocked out of him. Before he could recover, Yui brought down both fists on the back of his skull. Zhang finished him by pushing his back to the floor with her foot.

  Trian brought up the rear, diving for the dropped plasma pistol.

  Still wrestling for the plasma pistol with Chen, Dario spared a look over at Joan. In the few seconds of the battle, O’Reilly’s headlock had turned her face turn blue, choking the air out of her. “Joan!” he said.

  The distraction was enough for his target to gain momentum. Chen brought sharp fingernails across his face. With a cry, he stumbled backward and released the pistol.

  Dario’s cheek stung. He brought his hand to his face instinctively. Sticky, warm blood squished against his fingers from the nail wounds.

  Chen took the second opening to deliver a blow to his chest. Dario staggered into the cab door frame. He was no match for a trained guar
d. He stumbled away from Chen, trying to get away from her. He needed to help Joan. His body ached, cheek hurt. It was all he could do swing his fist wildly toward O’Reilly’s head.

  O’Reilly ducked the blow.

  Commodore Zhang moved before Dario could get hit again, jumping onto Chen’s back. She leaned backward and used her weight to topple the woman over. They wrestled on the floor until Yui delivered a hard kick to Chen’s kidney. Chen gasped for air.

  Joan’s eyes started to roll backward from the lack of air.

  Dario swung again, this time connecting with O’Reilly’s right eye. He followed up the blow, hitting again and again for good measure.

  O’Reilly’s grip on Joan loosened. Joan gasped for air, but couldn’t free herself from the headlock.

  Dario growled and slammed his fist into O’Reilly’s face as hard as he could. It resounded with a crack.

  O’Reilly released Joan, stepping to the side and doubling over. He spit out a tooth and looked up at Dario, mouth bloody. “Why are you doing this?” He asked in a voice muffled from the blood. “We’re rescuing you.”

  “Because it’s more than just me who needs rescuing.” Dario readied himself for another blow. Before he could, a plasma beam hit O’Reilly. He crumpled to the floor.

  Trian stood outside the lift door with the guard’s dropped plasma pistol in his hand.

  The situation was under control. Dario looked around, now that Joan’s assailant had been dispatched. All three of the security personnel lay still on the ground, with Chen’s body across the threshold, preventing the doors from closing entirely.

  “Couldn’t have done that before Joan’s pretty boy here started bleeding?” Yui asked.

  Trian shrugged. “I couldn’t get a clear shot. Negotiations are my trade, not something as crude as weapon fire.” He reached down to offer Commodore Zhang a hand up, who accepted so he could tug her to her feet.