Two guards grabbed each of her arms while the other two levelled stingers at her head and chest. As they dragged her off, she saw a stretcher emerge from an elevator to her left.
The guards forced Sarah into the same elevator. One of them pressed the button for the basement. As they exited the elevator at the bottom a tone sounded, signifying that she was carrying weapons. Immediately the two stingers were pressed into her skull.
The two guards holding her arms stripped off the jacket and dropped it by the elevator door. When they saw what she was wearing below, they took turns frisking her for “concealed weapons”, all the while making nasty comments in their own tongue.
Sarah accepted their behaviour as if it was normal. She gave no indication that they were doing anything untoward at all. From the looks on their faces she could tell that her attitude was ruining their fun. Instead of responding to their attempts at humiliation, she used their behaviour as an opportunity to take in the room without her guards noticing that she was doing so.
The large basement room was divided into three areas. One was obviously a commercial-grade kitchen. The division in the middle appeared to be some sort of abattoir. The third was, obviously, a holding cell. At the moment, there was one prisoner chained to the wall; a young girl about fifteen years old. She was dressed up, as if for a very adult party. The look in her eyes was pure terror.
Once the guards had finished trying to humiliate Sarah without success, they dragged her across the room and chained her beside the young girl. That’s when Sarah saw the pile of human bones next to the protein re-sequencer. From the size she could tell that they were the bones of children. There were at least three skulls in the pile.
One of the guards followed her eyes to the pile. In Galactic Standard he said, “Yes, we had a party for the diplomatic staff last night.” Giving Sarah a malicious grin he licked his lips, adding, “Delicious!” The young girl next to Sarah began to cry. The guards laughed heartily as they re-entered the elevator.
After the guards left them alone, nothing happened for a short time, until a chef and his assistant came down to the kitchen. They began to warm the stove. “Dinner for one, only,” the chef told his assistant in Standard. As if on cue the elevator opened and the driver of the pod entered in a floater chair.
The chef and his assistant bowed low on his approach. “Ambassador, we’re about to prepare a late dinner for you, which one do you want?” he asked, pointing to the two girls in the holding area.
“Just a light meal, Joln,” the Ambassador replied. The girl from Judge Morrat, I think. I understand that we would need reinforcements for the new girl. Besides we have our General Council coming for dinner tomorrow. I know he likes his meat lean and muscled.”
The assistant went into the holding area and detached the young girl. He led her by the hand over to what Sarah believed was the abattoir. He turned back to the ambassador.
“Sir, how much do you want?” he asked.
The ambassador considered it for a moment. “I think I’ll just have an arm tonight, Tilmon, the right one.
Tilmon, the sous-chef, took the girl’s left arm and secured it to a counter. He reached up to take the neural blocker and attach it to the girl’s right shoulder when the ambassador stopped him.
“When Judge Morrat delivered her he told me that she had been particularly uncooperative at his party last night,” he told Tilmon. “He said that she wouldn’t play nice at all. I don’t think that she deserves any pain blocking.”
Tilmon nodded and replaced the neural blocker on the shelf. As he picked up the cutting wand from the bench the girl cried out in pure terror. That was followed by a scream of pain so intense that she passed out. The laser cutting tool neatly removed her arm just below the shoulder, cauterizing the wound as it cut.
Tilmon then dragged her limp form back to her place in the cell, and reattached her to the wall by her remaining limb. Leaving her for a moment, he returned with a short sleeve that he applied to the cauterized stump.
Sarah looked intently at the ambassador. The look of pleasure on his face was unmistakeable. Now she wasn’t so sure that he was a pervert preying on young girls, but she was certain that he was a sadistic monster. Right then she was sorry that she didn’t kill him back in Brooklyn.
“Ambassador Hmlar, how do you want this meat prepared?” the Chef Joln asked.
Hmlar turned to him, “Medium, as usual, but maybe with the Selarac spices.” He turned back to the elevator and then stopped. Turning again to the chef he said, “I expect that I shall be back on my feet by tomorrow, Chef Joln. I will slaughter the new one myself, later in the afternoon.”
“As you wish, Ambassador,” the chef replied as he set to preparing the meal.
The girl next to Sarah stirred just as the chef was getting to work dressing her severed arm for the oven. She began to cry from the pain in her right stump. Sarah tried to comfort her as best she could. She was able to get close enough to let the girl rest her head on her shoulder. The chains on her wrists had enough play that she could soothingly stroke the girl’s hair. That was how she found it.
The paedophile judge had wanted her dressed for a party. She had been dressed-up in party clothes, with basic make-up designed to enhance her youth. He had also ordered her hair to be done. The hair dresser had left a few hairpins in the deep layers to maintain the style. Sarah slipped one of these out of her hair.
Sarah brought her lips close to the girl’s ear. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Jessica,” came the response.
“Where are you from?”
“Sunset Park”
“Okay, Jessica of Sunset Park,” Sarah whispered. “I’m a hunter, and I think that I can get us out of here, but I need you to do as I say as best you can.”
“I’ll try,” Jessica answered weakly.
“Good,” Sarah said.
Sarah took the pin and inserted it in the lock of her chains. She said a prayer of thanks that they were using old style mechanical key locks here. She had come across an article about them in a book, years ago, and decided to teach herself all about them. Within a few moments her hands were free. Next she freed Jessica.
“We’re never going to get out so long as those two are able to raise an alarm,” she told Jessica. “Stay here and gather your strength.” Jessica nodded, slumping back on the pile of straw in their cell.
Sarah ducked down. Crawling naked on that floor was none to pleasant for her. It was not as clean as she would have expected the floor of a food processing area to be.
She got as far as the abattoir, where she chanced straightening up long enough to grab the laser cutter from the bench. As she ducked down again she tried to activate it. It had the same biometric lock that the ambassador’s identity chip had. It must have been Tilmon’s personal “knife”. She knew that chefs were picky about such things.
Sarah continued to crawl along the floor to the end of the workbench. There was still another two meters between her and the two cooks. She gathered her strength and leaped forward, closing the distance in less than two seconds. She took Chef Joln completely by surprise. She broke his neck with a violent roundhouse kick to his jaw.
As he fell, Tilmon dove at her with another laser cutter. As he tried to strike at her with the cutter, Sarah stopped his forward motion with a heel to his solar plexus. As the wind was knocked out of his lungs, Tilmon dropped the cutter and before he could catch his breath Sarah retrieved it.
She jammed the laser cutter into his crotch and swept upward till she reached his chin. The shock was so great that Tilmon didn’t even try to scream until it was too late, and Sarah had bisected his larynx.
“That’s for all the kids like Jessica that you cut up,” she said as he fell.
She returned to Jessica. Helping her to stand, Sarah put Jessica’s remaining arm around her neck. “Can you walk?”
“I think so,” Jessica replied. With her arm around the girl’s waist, Sarah half carried h
er over to the elevator. She stooped to pick up her jacket, slipping one arm into it. Sarah pressed the call button. Nothing happened. She leaned Jessica against the wall, hoping that the youngster could hold herself up. She ran over to the kitchen area, pulling on her jacket as she went. When she got there, she retrieved the laser cutter once more, and sliced off Joln’s hand. “I sure hope that the lock can’t tell the difference between a living hand and dead one,” she thought.
Returning to the elevator, she picked Jessica off the floor. Sarah realized that with her in that condition, getting out was going to be very difficult. She pressed the index finger of Joln’s hand on the call button. The light around it turned green. Inside the elevator she did the same thing with the button for the ground floor. Just to be safe, Sarah slipped the hand into her jacket pocket.
If luck is something that you make for yourself, then what happened next was a freebie. Just as the elevator doors closed Sarah looked up to see that there was a scanner unit monitoring the space. The luck came in the form of a sleepy guard, who had left his post at the monitoring station to grab a stim drink from the main floor kitchen. He was gone for no more than a few moments. He sat back down just as the elevator doors opened on the first floor.
He was just about to consult his monitors, which meant that he would have caught Sarah half carrying Jessica out of the elevator, when his supervisor came to the door.
His superior had seen him returning from his momentary outing and stopped to give him a dressing down for leaving his post. While he was doing that, the errant guard stood at attention, his body blocking the monitor displaying the elevator’s interior, so neither guard saw the girls making their escape.
The service elevator, for that’s what it was, opened into the first-floor kitchen. In the kitchen three more sous-chefs were preparing vegetables, sauces, and desserts, and anything else needed for the ambassador’s meal. They proved to be no problem. Sarah had her jacket back, and nobody on the security staff had actually bothered to search her jacket for its weapons. As she exited the elevator she drew her stinger, set on heavy stun. The kitchen help fell.
Not knowing the layout of the house, Sarah opted to try getting out through the back door. If all went well she could get into the back alley and out onto the street. This area was much like her old neighbourhood few blocks away. The back alley would open onto the street at some point. She checked her pocket. She still had her credit chip. If she made the street, then she could get a robo-cab to take her and Jessica to her old home.
First she had to get out the door. There was no door knob, only a release pad. She took Joln’s hand out of her pocket and pressed it to the plate, holding her breath all the while. When the door slid open she let out a sigh.
It was still not over yet. Jessica was slumped on her arm. Sarah could feel her shivering; the child was going into shock. She stooped down bringing her arm to Jessica’s thighs, allowing the girl’s body to drape over her shoulders in the classic fireman’s carry. She stood up and ran for the rear gate. One last time she pressed Joln’s hand to a security plate. It slid open and she ran into the alley. Sarah was very glad that it was night. She had not had the chance to close her jacket properly.
Despite the effort it took, she ran the length of the alley to the street. Close by where it exited onto Avenue of the Americas she located the call button for a robo-cab, and inserted her chip. Happily, it still worked in Manhattan, and a cab came immediately.
Sarah instructed the cab’s auto-nav to take her to the servants’ entrance of her family’s home. On arrival, she put her thumb on the square to accept the fare and release the door. So far everything still worked.
Getting out of the cab, she hauled Jessica’s limp body onto her shoulders. Turning to the building’s security door she placed her thumb on the access pad and presented her eye to the scanner. The door slid open. She breathed a long sigh of relief. Obviously, her parents still held out hope that she might return and hadn’t deleted her access.
Carrying Jessica, she called the elevator and punched her code for the family’s private entrance. The elevator accepted her access and rose to the penthouse.
Once inside she lay the girl on the sofa and ran to get a blanket to cover her. “I’ll get an ambulance for you right away,” she promised, “but I need to make a call to cover both our asses.”
Sarah went to the head of the sofa and pressed the “COMM” stud on the remote unit lying there. The entire wall opposite came alive. The voice that filled the silent room asked “Whom do you wish to contact?”
“Call Mommy,” Sarah commanded. The system didn’t respond immediately. Instead the word “VERIFYING” appeared on the screen. A second later a voice print appeared. The system’s voice directed her to read aloud the words on the screen. Sarah read “My name is Sarah Elizabeth Maloney”. A second voice print appeared and was overlaid on the first. They both disappeared to be replaced by the word “CONNECTING”.
A moment later her mother’s image appeared on the screen and an automated message played. “Hello, this is Dr. Mary Maloney. I am unable to take your call at present, please leave a message at the tone. If this is a medical emergency, please call New Belleview or 911.” It just sounded so good to hear her mother’s voice that Sarah jumped when the beep sounded.
“Mom, it’s me, Sarah, Sassy, I’m alive. I’m at home, and very, very soon I’m going to be in a lot of trouble. You need to contact the local authorities right away. More than that, there is something that Daddy needs to know right now. It’s beyond critical!” Sarah went on to tell her mother about the Galoran ambassador and the residence on 70th Avenue.
“End message” she finally commanded. “…and mark Red Priority!” she commanded. The system flashed an acknowledgment. It also verbally responded with “Message sent with highest priority.”
Next, Sarah called an ambulance. Using all the proper terminology, that she learned from her mother years ago, she described Jessica’s condition. She ended the call by pointing a remote camera at Jessica.
She knelt down beside the girl and said, “It will be very soon now. Help is coming.” She stroked Jessica’s hair and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. The girl was only three years her junior, but to Jessica, at that moment, Sarah was mother.
Sarah then turned back to the still shining wall and said, “Locate Dr. Mary Maloney.” She expected that the system would simply tell her exactly where her mother was. Instead an image appeared on the screen. Her father was giving a talk to an assembly at the League of Planets Headquarters; her mother was there, sitting on a chair beside him. They were both here in New York.
As she watched, her mother reached into the pocket of her jacket and withdrew her phone. She had forgotten to put it on silent, and her priority signal was audible in the transmission’s audio. Mary Maloney just happened to look at the screen as she pressed the “silence” button. The shock that registered on her face was visible on the screen, even in the camera’s long shot.
She jumped up and showed the phone to her husband. He was so shocked that he stuttered as he excused himself. Mary activated the message, without realizing that it was being carried all over the world through the podium’s microphone. It was just then that the ambulance and the police arrived at the Maloney apartment.
As Sarah reasoned, the police assumed that she had hacked the security system to get in. They knew where the family was supposed to be, and Sarah Maloney was still listed as “presumed dead”. Also, one of the officers just happened to be one of the mercenaries that she had faced at Greenpoint. He recognized her and drew his stinger.
At the same time, Sarah was explaining to his partner who she was, pointing out that the COMM system wouldn’t accept her commands if she wasn’t.
“She’s lying,” he yelled to his partner. Stepping back and bringing his weapon to bear on her, “She’s that Brooklyn hunter that broke my arm four months ago.”
“Maybe so, but she’s also the Vice-Chancellor’s dau
ghter. Look at the screen.” The video was replaying the message a second time. “See, her parents recognize her voice. The system must have sent her ID, if they took the call in the middle of a speech.”
The officer flicked the safety toggle on his stinger. “They just raised the bounty on her. It’s one mill five now, and dead is okay; Frank, a million and a half credits, c’mon.”
“Digby, are you going to shoot the daughter of the Planetary Vice-Chancellor?”
“She has to be an imposter. The Chancellor’s daughter died seven years ago. A million and a half credits, Frank, she’s gotta be a fake.”
“She accessed the building and the apartment.” Frank indicated the screen. “Her voice activated the COMM system. She has to be the real thing. You don’t want to do this.”
“Look at her,” Digby countered. “Look at what she’s wearing; would the daughter of the Vice-Chancellor be running around half naked? Besides, she’s a hunter, she could have hacked her way in.” He slid the energy setting on his stinger to “kill” and aimed his weapon.
Frank drew his own stinger, but he pointed it at his partner’s head. “Officer Digby, if you do not drop your weapon immediately I will shoot you,” he commanded.
Digby waivered for a moment and then lowered his stinger. He dropped it on the couch. His partner retrieved it, and then turned to Sarah, as the paramedics were moving towards the elevator with Jessica on a stretcher. “I’m sorry Ms. Maloney, he may be wrong about a lot of things at the moment, but for now, you are going to have to come with us.”
Sarah nodded and then glancing down at her state of undress she added, “May I ask your indulgence for a brief minute?” she asked. The officer agreed. Sarah slipped into her mother’s room and emerged a few seconds later still wearing her jacket, but it was now over one of her mother’s exercise jumpsuits. “Okay, we can go.”
Chronicles of the Stellar Corps: Sassy Page 8