Heist

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  It was like a curtain was being peeled back to reveal another scene backstage. More accurately, it was like that curtain had been slashed apart and set aflame, the gaps created in the destruction showing whatever scenes might have otherwise been partially obscured. The memories that the retinal scanner had been extracting from Bentley’s mind were free floating, rattling about in her psyche uncontrollably and coming suddenly to the forefront.

  She was no longer on the Odysseus, but a new ship entirely.

  It was a drab, gunmetal-plated vessel that she stood on the bridge of, staring out at a ship’s captain she couldn’t place. But she could easily recognize his uniform: he was clad in the black and gray of a LaPlacian officer. By his side was an armored adjutant bearing the sword of a Dark Knight. Bentley could only see him from a distance, not standing anywhere of importance. She turned her head to see the pale face of a dark-haired woman with red-tinted goggles pushing her bangs from her forehead.

  “We need to get back to it,” the woman said. “If we don’t have this up and running before shore leave we’re as good as…”

  “Dead!” Bentley heard herself screaming at her foe, the colors bleeding through the scene that had entered her mind to bring her back to what passed for reality. “You’re fucking dead!”

  She didn’t know why she hated this man in her grasp so much anymore. Fresh from the memory that had come and gone from her mind, she felt disoriented and unsure of what this world was or who she was in it. She knew only that this figure of red and violet light that she had her fingers around the throat of was named Ivor, and that she wanted him to stop existing. Part of her believed that he’d taken something precious from her, but by now she no longer could say what that was.

  Ivor was underneath her now. She felt a powerful blow strike her in the stomach, forcing her grasp on his neck to release. The mass of colors then dealt her another powerful blow to the side of the head that shook the entire universe from its frame in her mind.

  She’d been shunted to a new place, a vibrant space station port that, as she looked around, she recognized as the entry port to Dracon station. She was leaning against a ramp, breathing heavily and holding back the urge to retch.

  “Take your time,” an old man’s voice said from behind her. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Legba, smiling at her. “You’ll get used to it, I assure you, but not if you fail to give yourself adequate rest.”

  “I’m ready,” Bentley heard herself answer him. “Let’s go.”

  “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Bentley shouted furiously at Ivor, the phrase repeated in her mind even with its dubious relation to what she was doing. She didn’t know why or how, but she tasted blood. It could be hers, or another’s, or both. She felt a strong hand pushing her to the floor and pinning her by the neck, throttling her mercilessly. Both her hands gripped the offending forearm to dig her fingernails deep into its multicolored flesh. There was a shout of pain, and then when the hand came free of her throat, she sunk her teeth into its knuckles.

  The world went black, and she felt her teeth close to tear off what they’d bitten into. She chewed and swallowed hungrily, finding the taste pleasant and well seasoned, with an oily texture. When she opened her eyes, she only saw she was holding a chicken bone, stripping the meat from it before moving to a part of it that still had a skin of crisp-fried batter.

  “Don’t eat too quickly,” a woman said to her. “I don’t want you getting sick again.”

  Bentley continued to greedily devour the meat, but looked up at the woman speaking to her. It almost looked like she was looking at herself. But an older and kinder-eyed self, with long hair arranged into a single braid. She was also considerably larger than any human Bentley knew of.

  Then Bentley realized it was just that she was considerably smaller. She was a child. And she knew now, deep inside, that this woman was her mother.

  “Put on the show!” she heard her tiny, high-pitched voice yelling to the woman. “I wanna see the ships.”

  “Finish and wash up,” her mother said. “And then you can watch the launch.”

  “But it’s happening now,” Bentley whined. “There’s no point if I don’t see it live.”

  Her mother laughed and gave her a warm smile. “Oh, all right then,” she said. “But this is the last time I let you watch at the dinner table.”

  She pulled up a screen and a video feed was projected above the dinner table that Bentley stared up into at awe. There were hundreds of soldiers marching in their LaPlace uniforms, standing on ceremony while they moved towards Dracon’s port. Bentley glued her eyes to the screen, waiting for it to pan just to the right spot that she’d been waiting for. She beamed when it finally came to display the ship she’d been anticipating the sight of all night.

  “Geburah!” she yelled at the screen enthusiastically. “It’s the Geburah!”

  Her mother stood up and began to gather the plates off the table. “I don’t know why you love those ships so much…” she said. She reached for Bentley’s plate, still bearing a half-eaten piece of meat, and her little hand came down greedily to keep the plate secure to the table.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not finished.”

  “Not. Finished!” Bentley screamed down at her foe beneath her. Her knuckles were aching as she brought her fists down again and again to collide with the shifting glow that she sought so desperately to destroy. “I’m not finished!”

  She wondered for a moment if this, too, was a memory. If it was, it wasn’t a memory she wanted to relive. It was all pain and confusion, lacking the clarity of the worlds that came and went from her mind with an ever-increasing speed. She wanted to go back to them, to live in those worlds where for just a few seconds she felt like she knew who she was. But she also knew, deep down, that whatever time or place she was struggling against this foe in, she needed to continue with it. She needed to emerge victorious. She needed to end him.

  “Bentley!” A voice that rang familiar somewhere deep in her being came from behind her. She was flung hard from atop Ivor and onto her back. Her head struck the ground, and she got back up.

  When she stood, she found herself standing in a training room, surrounded by young men and women in white uniforms. She looked over at the one who had thrown her. It was a gruff, muscular, but heavyset and gray-haired man in a sleeveless shirt adorned with military medals.

  “Come on, Blackie!” he yelled at her. “Do it like I told you. If you don’t drop your center of gravity, you just end up back on the floor.”

  Bentley felt her eyes focus on the instructor, and he smiled at her in a way that almost felt taunting…

  “You don’t get to leave this fucking room until you can make me move an inch,” he told her. “Even if that means missing lunch.”

  Bentley grinned back at him, regaining her footing. “You’re bluffing. Like you’d ever miss lunch,” she cockily answered him. She renewed her attack, charging him with a running star...

  ... and once more she’d leapt upon Ivor. She reached for one of his arms with both hands and felt herself grasping at one of his fingers. She wrenched it back and heard a sickening snap that was accompanied with curses and cries of pain. Her foe backhanded her across the face with his other hand. “Crazy fucking bitch!”

  Her head was swimming now under the force of the blow, and she became fully aware of just how much pain she was in. She was tired and confused. She hated this world, whatever it was. She wanted to be free of it, to live in a world where things made sense. She even felt her resolve to win this battle breaking. She couldn’t even remember what she was fighting for. She staggered back and raised her hands.

  She wiped tears from her eyes, and looked forward to see the image of her mother again. She could see the woman frowning in concern at watching her daughter cry and sob.

  “I should just give up,” Bentley said. “They’ll never take me on. I’m not good enough. They said so.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you,” B
entley’s mother said with a soothing tone. She embraced her daughter. “You’re the most clever, brave, determined girl I’ve ever known, and I couldn’t be prouder to call you my daughter. Don’t ever forget that. And don’t ever stop fighting for what you believe in. I know you have a bright future ahead of you, far more exciting and beautiful than anything I’ve ever known.” She pulled back and met Bentley’s eyes, wiping some stray tears from them. “I want you to promise me you’ll never give up on that future. No matter what.”

  Bentley sniffled weakly before answering. “But mom, I—”

  Her mother raised a single finger to her lips to stop her protest. “Just promise me that,” she insisted. “I know you won’t disappoint me.”

  Bentley lowered her head into a slow, conceding nod. “Alright, mom,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now go and show them exactly what they’re missing.”

  Her mother’s face melted away into the flashing world of the present. Bentley knew that this was the present, and she felt a sudden need to fight for her future. Of all the memories that had come and gone, she knew that the promise she’d made to her mother was one she couldn’t let go of. More than that, she knew she needed to honor it.

  The two-colored figures were grappling with one another again on the ground, both struggling for control of what she could make out as a blaster pistol, which glowed brilliantly each time it let off wild fire. Bentley ran for the two of them and reached for the weapon herself, gripping it tightly and trying desperately to pull it from the fray.

  Then she was holding something else entirely in both hands. It was still a weapon, but not a blaster. She recognized it instantly, staring at its blade in awe as though for the very first time. It was the Sword of the Cross-Roads. “It’s gorgeous,” she said. “I didn’t know they made weapons this beautiful.”

  “Beautiful weapons are no less dangerous,” Legba said, drawing her eye from the sword when she looked at his hooded, smiling form. “And this one is more dangerous still.”

  “If it isn’t dangerous, it isn’t a weapon,” Bentley answered him as she handed the weapon back to him by the hilt. “Isn’t that kind of the whole point?”

  “Perhaps,” Legba conceded, nodding sagaciously. “But there are different kinds of dangers, just as there are different kinds of weapons. And this is a weapon unlike any other.”

  “Which means it has a danger unlike any other,” Bentley said to him, as though she were making a mathematical deduction.

  Legba smiled. “You’re learning,” he said. “As I knew you would. But always remember it’s not what a weapon gives to you, but what it takes.” His bearded face turned to seriousness as he stared at his reflection in the blade of the sword. “A time may come when you need to protect this sword with your life.”

  The words shook Bentley’s world. It became a distorted blur of a thing, and she felt everything spin. When her composure returned, she was still with Legba and the sword. But now they were on the Chesed, and he lay bleeding to death, the scene feeling all too familiar.

  She’d gone right back to the beginning. To that place where her memories both began and ended.

  “...with your life,” he said to her, uttering those final words before he collapsed under the weight of his wounds.

  She felt it all over again; the confusion, the terror, the feeling of being completely lost in the universe. Once again she was that girl with no memories, watching a man die, and she knew she didn’t want to go back to that place. She screamed at the top of her lungs until this world dissolved into the flashing lights.

  When she again returned to reality, she’d found that all of it had totally fallen apart. She could no longer discern shapes in the colors or tell where her limbs were in space. She was certain that she was still fighting, and she knew that she wouldn’t stop while she still had the strength to, but now she no longer felt in control of herself. She felt separate from it all. Each memory once more came over her simultaneously and she found it was too much to bear. No longer was there clarity of her past, nor of her present. And, she knew, the future would soon fade as well.

  Then there was another blaster fire. This time it was so close that she could hear the ring of the reactive noise as though she’d fired it herself. Then someone cried out as though they’d been hit by the shot. Was she the one to fire, or the one fired upon? Or both?

  Whether or not she’d been shot, she knew that she was running out of strength. Running out of time.

  Again, just as when this madness had begun, she found herself wondering if what she was experiencing was death. This time, though, her answer was ambiguous, with the world fading fast and slipping from the grasp of her mind. With her memories still held in what was left of her mind, she embraced the other side and let everything fade away to black.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Aboard the Odysseus, Edge of Klaunox-Orion Sector

  Shango’s battle-cloak swayed behind him as he ran at full tilt down the airlock tunnel connecting his ship to the Odysseus.

  “We’ve lost contact with Bentley,” Jelly Bean had told him on the bridge as he’d been halfway through his glass of wine. “And the Odysseus isn’t responding to any hails.”

  He’d had a niggling feeling of impending danger that he’d been unable to shake. Others might have dismissed such a feeling as paranoia, or perhaps just the rational knowledge that there was in fact danger awaiting them behind every corner. But Shango had, over his centuries of battle and beyond, always known to trust his instincts. Tonight his instincts told him that the androids’ ship was in grave danger, and so was Bentley.

  When he arrived at the Odysseus, he came upon a ship in crisis. It had already been filled with the bodies of injured androids from the previous mission, but what they saw now was renewed carnage. Bodies lay about the bridge, marks of blaster fire having torn apart the lovingly decorated structures of the ship’s interior. Shango drew his sword and approached the bridge’s helm, seeing a female figure standing at it, forcibly operating the console with a handheld hacking device. There were android bodies lying prone all around her, hand-thrown electrode spikes sparking in their backs.

  “What have you done?” Shango shouted to the woman at the bridge. She turned around slowly, smiling contentedly as she continued to operate her device. She was one of the rebel warriors, identified in their mission rosters as Angela.

  “What needed to be done,” she answered with a cruel nonchalance. “And you’re far too late to fuck it up, old man.”

  Shango had questions, but he felt an urgency that told him this was no time for interrogations. “You will drop that device. Surrender yourself now lest you come to harm. I will only warn you once.”

  Angela’s red lips smiled wide, her fingers curling inward and her wrist turning. “Cute,” she said. “But I’ve got…” Her fingers disappeared behind her forearm and then came back with a pair of knives in the spaces between them, “a much better idea.” Her arm shot out with a well-practiced grace to fling both weapons directly towards him, one coming for his chest and the other his head.

  Even against a warrior as seasoned as Shango, this sudden surprise attack could have proven lethal. But as someone who was equally versed in sleight of hand, he had seen her concealment and misdirection just as it had begun. His sword whirled outwards in a perfectly angled motion to deflect both projectile blades in a single chop. Clearly seeing the danger she’d exposed herself to, Angela tumbled away from the helm in a cartwheel that ended with her drawing a blaster pistol and firing.

  Shango swung out his cloak defensively in front of him and felt the stinging of the blaster bolt burning through the protective mesh. When he withdrew the protective garment, he produced a full complement of bit-tools between each finger and threw them in distinctly different directions, with only one soaring towards Angela.

  The girl saw the thrown weapon and swerved to avoid it easily. She raised up her pistol to get a clear shot at Shango’
s head, and he activated his tools.

  The different points where the ball bearings hung in the air around Angela sparked and connected into an electromagnetic net that sent a powerful current through her body. She screamed, immobilized by the shock of the weapons, and within a split-second Shango had closed the distance between the two of them to deal a chopping open handed strike to the side of her neck. The girl fell limp, the electric trap still flickering around her. Shango turned and continued a full run towards the medical wing.

  When he arrived there, he found that this deck of the Odysseus was faring no better. It had been torn apart by explosions and fallen soldiers littered the halls. The doors into the medical bay themselves appeared to have been forced open. He stepped inside to see a pile of bodies, which could not, at first glance, be determined living or dead.

  One rolled away from the pile, and Shango saw the face of Ivor, the rebel captain’s son. His nose was broken and his face covered in blood, with the skin stripped from his knuckles and bite marks all along his right arm. He was, however, breathing.