The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Metal plates instead of a skull cap, and a sensor array instead of eyes and a nose,” Judge replied. “Probably has other augments too.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Coral said, cringing. “How can someone do that to themselves?”

  “Maybe his lid got shot off and all they had were antique parts?” Foster offered.

  “Didn’t look like Plague Age tech,” Judge replied as he checked the charge on his stunner. “More like the Home Machinist’s Self Improvement Kit. I think we should hit him first. Not with stunners either, that would probably just make him angry.”

  “You’re right, the cyborg wasn’t on the mission plan,” Davi said. “Coral, Kipley, use rippers. Hit that cyborg until it’s a pile of scrap and meat.”

  “Knew I’d get a chance to use this on this hop,” Kipley said as he pulled his ripper, an old fashioned blade shooter out from under layers of clothing. It was a snub-nosed version of an ancient design that fired one point five millimetre wide blades that were thirty to fifty microns thick. On the lowest setting the weapon’s projectiles zipped through the air at just under the speed of sound. On the highest setting, the blades could move at many times that speed and pierce medium-heavy personnel armour. The clip he slipped into the grip was filled with rounds that would slip through skin, or even thin metal before shattering into tiny fragments that tore through the body. It didn’t use a power cell or explosives so it passed as non-lethal on most worlds’ port scanners.

  “Foster and I will grab the target, Judge will clear the room,” Davi looked to Kipley specifically. “When you finish with that cyborg, help Judge, but make sure you switch to your stunner. The intel on this world tells us specifically that most of the law enforcement doesn’t see infighting as much of a priority until they have a death on their hands.”

  “What about the cyborg?” Kipley asked. “We’re going to shred him like coleslaw.”

  “There’s no helping that, and he’ll probably survive anyway.”

  “Definitely,” Judge added. “Looks like his brain is cased in some kinda heavy armour. Too bad he couldn’t afford to do the rest.”

  “Right,” Davi said. “Everyone set?”

  He waited for nods all around then let Judge lead the way back to the club. It was a run down watering hole with faded plastic seats and walls that featured more grime than paint. Their target sat near the door with his cyborg friend facing them. He wore a dark green long coat over well made, clean city dweller’s clothes - a loose shirt and dark pants. He was out of place, wealthier than anyone else there by far.

  The cyborg had his back to them. Judge started things the moment they were all through the door. He expertly tossed a pair of stun grenades towards the back of the room where several unsuspecting patrons were having a few drinks. One landed in a pitcher of Naganto Red ale, the other glanced off of a drinker’s shoulder.

  Davi leveled his stun pistol at the kidnapping victim, a well dressed, well kept man wearing a crossover belt and a pair of holstered heavy pistols. Silence descended upon the bar room, and it felt as if it took Davi an hour to check his aim and squeeze the trigger. It couldn’t have been more than two heartbeats. The instant the bolt of energy flew from weapon’s emitter and stunned his prey, the world around him started up again, only in fast forward.

  The stun grenades went off, disabling most of the patrons at the other end of the club. Coral and Kipley opened fire on the cyborg, sending flesh and bone fragments from the half-man’s torso, neck and arms spattering across the table. Judge took stun shots at patrons who scrambled for weapons or scurried for cover, he didn’t make the distinction between anyone running for cover or drawing a weapon. There was no time.

  Davi knocked the nearest table over so it rolled between himself and the cyborg. With all regard to speed and little to safety, he snatched his target’s long coat and dragged the stunned man behind cover.

  He caught a glimpse of the half-ruined cyborg getting to his feet as though whole sections of his torso wasn’t hanging in tatters. He caught Davi in the side with an inhumanly quick kick, sending him half way across the width of the bar room. A bar stool stopped his progress across the floor abruptly, and Davi knew immediately that the light armour he wore wasn’t quite good enough. At worst he had three broken ribs, at best he’d feel the bruises for days unless he got treatment. Either way, breathing was painful. He pulled a patch from his pocket as quickly as he could and slapped it onto his cheek. A cocktail of pain killers and a rush of emergency nanobots surged from the it.

  He looked up in time to see the cyborg stand up, his head hanging at an awkward angle on his bloody neck. His remaining arm - made of old metal, gears and wires - snatched Coral by the forehead.

  She fired into its face, only to scrub the flesh away from the half machine’s visage, revealing an armoured skull beneath. Kipley buried the muzzle of his weapon into a rip in the cyborg’s back and bashed the thing’s encased spine with his free hand. The shock was enough to drive it to the ground twitching.

  Davi heard a sickly crunch. The cyborg’s hand had closed around Coral’s head. Whether the act was involuntary or intentional didn’t matter. The metal fingers mingled with blood, bone and grey matter. Kipley’s boot came down on the cyborg’s spinal support column, finally crushing the case protecting critical veins, muscles and nerves.

  “Coral!” cried Foster, about to abandon his attempt to pick up their kidnapping target.

  “She’s gone!” Davi said. He pulled a three centimetre long tube from his pocket and dropped it onto Coral’s body. In a few minutes all identifying features would be corrupted, making it impossible for anyone to get useful DNA trace. He joined Foster and pulled one of the unconscious kidnapping target’s arms across his shoulder. “She’d want us to get out of here alive,” Davi told Foster. “Let’s go.”

  Foster was in complete shock, his mouth hung open, quivering as tears blurred his vision.

  “Foster! There’s a backup!” Kipley said as he took cover behind the upturned table and pulled Foster down. He started firing at the three patrons who were holding out, firing back with lethal pulse sidearms.

  “A scan? She was scanned before we left? She never told-” Foster asked, hope dawning in his face.

  “You know her, she didn’t want to jinx the mission!” Kipley said.

  Davi dragged their target behind the table as quickly as he could, sparing a warning glance at Kipley, who rolled his eyes and returned his attention back to the firefight.

  The table Judge took cover behind began turning white under the heat of pulse rounds. “Converting clip!” he shouted, dropping the stun weapons’ main mechanism from the stock of the gun and setting the internal trigger’s timer. Judge tossed the improvised grenade but didn’t make the shot thanks to the restricted space he was in.

  Kipley jumped out from cover and landed almost on top of the stun grenade. He slapped the blinking device so it skidded and spun across the tile floor. It exploded before hitting the back wall, catching him in the outer radius, but exploding with their assailants in the centre.

  Judge stepped out from his deteriorating cover, checking the corners as he approached Kipley. He checked his twitching squad mate and stood up, grinning. “He’s good,” he announced. “Ought to shut him up for a while, give him the spaz’s for an hour or so.”

  Davi and Foster moved ahead, carrying their target between them. Judge tossed Kipley, who was only barely unconscious, over his shoulder. They moved as quickly as they could, heading down the hallway at the back of the club. It wound up in a tight corkscrew until they passed through a pair of doors. The dance floor wasn’t abandoned, but filled with party supplies. Several decorators were busy at work, setting up for some grand event.

  Davi and his squad mates stopped dead in their tracks. Wary eyes and surprised stares greeted them. “Where’s the party?” Kipley said unsteadily.

  “Told you the dance hall was closed honey,” Judge said, slapping Kipley on the rump loudly. “
Sorry, he just had to see that the place wasn’t open even though he’s too drunk to stand, let alone dance.” He started for the door on the opposite side of the hall. “Mind if we cut through? Need to take our drunk friends home.”

  No one made a move to stop the group, and had to make a real effort to stop himself from laughing at Judge.

  They spilled out into a run-down section of the port. There were other bars, cheap restaurants, and an open meal gallery. Who would be impressed with the view of Longshadow VII’s more dug out side, where the light of smelting fires and open pit mining were visible, Davi would never know. It was the main feature of the gallery through the transparent ceiling. Beneath there was a sea of cheap tables and chairs surrounded by booths and storefronts serving badly materialized or long-preserved food. A few even offered food from forma, a tasteless protein and grain substitute that could be retextured and shaped into different dishes. It was cheaper than materializer food, but the telltale signs that your meal was made from forma were difficult to get past.

  The few diners didn’t pay them much attention, especially since Kipley was starting to put on a convincing act as a drunk. “Put me down, I want a drink!” he shouted. They dumped most of their weapons in trash bins on their way through. Davi, Foster and Judge kept their rippers.

  Davi braced himself as they entered Lander Section C14, where their ship waited. There were two port guards leisurely standing in the disembarking centre at the end of the hall. The doors leading to seven landing platforms surrounded them. In the centre was a scanning pillar, the reason why they dumped their used weapons. If it detected recently fired energy weapons they would have been stopped cold.

  “Had a bit too much of a good time?” one of the port guards said through a smile.

  “Yeah, figure it’s time to hit the bunks,” Davi replied.

  “Hold on, let me check the scan,” the other guard said, projecting the results from his chitinous gauntlet. “Gotta do these random audits sometime or they’ll dock my pay.”

  Davi knew they’d detect no trace of inebriates in Kipley, and find signs of a stunner on the man hanging between him and Foster. The whole mission was seconds from going completely wrong. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a medical sprayer. He stumbled intentionally, drawing the attention of the guard who wasn’t fiddling with the scan results. “Sorry, can I get a hand here?”

  The guard was already reaching down to help, and Davi took the opening, spraying the guard fully in the face with the contents of the long range injector, it started blinking.

  “Son of a bitch! What the-” the guard stumbled back, wiping his face.

  “I just hit you with half an ounce of nanobots that are programmed to start chewing through your brain stem. They’ll stay dormant if you clear us to leave,” Davi explained, holding up the blinking injector. “This light tells me when you’re out of range, and I can’t activate the ‘bots. We get out safe, your body flushes them from your system. If we don’t, I give them the go-ahead and your brain gets cut off from your body. I hear it’s pretty painless.”

  The other guard drew his weapon, his look of alarm and confusion disappearing under his armoured visor as it lowered. “Don’t move!” he shouted.

  “Are you deaf or stupid?” Kipley slurred. “Fuck this up and your hombre gets dead.”

  “I said don’t move!” shouted the unscathed guard defiantly.

  “My bet’s on stupid,” Judge commented.

  “O-okay, hold on,” said the guard with a head full of nanobots. “We’ve gotta let ‘em go Sam,” he told his partner.

  “Fuck no! This is our first chance to bag terrorists and I’m not going to pass it up because of some nanobot bullshit. For all you know that bastard could have sprayed you with water and iron filings.”

  “Iron filings are a lot bigger than nanobots, dick head,” Kipley said.

  “Get on the ground, now!” shouted Sam the guard.

  Davi slowly started to lower to the ground, but made eye contact with the guard he’d infected as he rolled the blinking injector between his fingers. The guard looked at him nervously then snatched his weapon from it’s holster and fired at his panicked comrade. He got three shots off before Sam turned his attention from Davi to his partner.

  The firefight was over before it started. The infected guard already had the upper hand and blasted Sam wildly, who fell in a smouldering heap.

  The infected victor turned on Davi then, the steaming muzzle of his weapon pointed directly at him. “Now you’re stuck with me, no way you’re leaving me here to get killed or shipped to a mine on Longshadow.”

  “You got it, just let us through,” Davi said.

  “Not part of the plan,” Foster said.

  Davi got back under the arm of their kidnap victim and watched as the defecting guard opened the hatch that stood between them and their ship. “Judge, take his weapon.”

  Judge put out his hand and accepted the guard’s weapon. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Terrance, Terrance Gerani.”

  “Welcome to the crew, Terry,” Judge said. “Lead the way, quick.”

  Terry did exactly as he was told and opened the inner airlock door for them.

  It didn’t take them long to settle into the shuttle. While Davi wasn’t looking Judge had put Terry in manual handcuffs and stripped him of his helmet. “When do these nanobots get deactivated?” he asked nervously.

  “Right, the nanobots,” Davi said. He clicked the button on the injector.

  Terry the former guard went wide-eyed for a moment before passing out.

  “What the hell?” Kipley slurred from where he sat across from Terry. “Killed him anyway?”

  “No, he’ll be out for about two days though,” Davi replied. “This is an old emergency stasis dose, from before your time.”

  “You have a twisted sense of humour,” Judge chuckled.

  The deck of the disguised needle-type shuttle shook as the mooring clamps decoupled and the ship accelerated towards the stars. Davi joined Kipley in the cockpit and started checking the navigational calculations. “How long until we’re in a wormhole?”

  “The emitters are charging now,” Foster replied. “About twenty five seconds. Doesn’t look like anyone’s targeting us from the orbital station.”

  “Three retrievals in a row,” Davi said.

  “You gonna finish that thought?” Foster asked as he set the target for the wormhole emitters.

  “Nope,” Davi replied. “Just realized it would be the biggest jinx of my career.”

  “I just hope this kidnapping is worth it,” Foster said. “I can’t believe they didn’t tell you who he was.”

  “Some high level mover and shaker in the Order who likes slumming it,” Davi replied. “Lucky for us.”

  Chapter 17 - Fresh Pain

  Their course took them through the Spilt Sun Nebula, a precautionary measure. Kipley was in an upper bunk sleeping off the last tics of the partial stun. Judge was putting together the abridged version of their after action report and Davi was watching Foster open the fifth and last wormhole.

  As soon as the wormhole opened, Samuel Davi sent a signal to the Sunspire requesting classified information.

  “What’s that about?” Foster asked, pointing at the older dates on the file list.

  “I have a hunch about who our guy here is,” Davi said. “If I’m right, he’ll appear in some records but have no file of his own.”

  Foster locked the controls as the autopilot took over and made a record request of his own. Davi didn’t notice until the records were downloaded - they were Coral’s. “Don’t you think events are a little too fresh?” Davi asked.

  Foster looked at him suspiciously and opened the file. “I want to see this scan Kipley was talking about.” The small holographic display flashed red and a recording of Coral in uniform appeared. “Sorry folks, there can be only one of me. If you’re seeing this, you’ve looked for an emergency revival scan, or something like it.
It wouldn’t matter if you found one, since one of my last wishes is that no one try to re-create me. There’s really not much point, since the source is already dead, and I wouldn’t benefit from an imitation running around. Like I said, there can be only one. I hope you liked having me around. See you in the big after.”

  Foster looked for records of a scan again, despite the message and punched the terminal when he didn’t find one. “Motherfucker lied!”

  Davi tried to get a grip on Foster before the man rushed from the cockpit to the main cabin but missed. “Judge! Stop him!”

  To Davi’s surprise, Judge didn’t lift a finger. Foster pulled Kipley out of the upper bunk, sending him straight to the deck. “You lying piece of shit!” he howled as he followed him down and pummelled Kipley as he woke up.

  “Get him offa me!” Kipley shouted, trying to fend him off.

  Foster managed to get one last, devastating shot in before Davi managed to pull him off. Kipley sat up, a fount of blood pouring from his smashed nose. “What the fuck?” he asked, incredulous.

  “You told me Coral had scans, that she had a body waiting!” Foster said.

  “I assumed! Hell, a connected chick like that had to have something set up,” Kipley replied.

  Judge pressed an emergency medical injection into the side of Kipley’s neck and looked at his nose. “Get your hands out of the way,” he said. After a moment’s inspection he nodded. “Want me to straighten that up or let the ‘bots do it?”

  “Whatever,” Kipley said, spitting blood onto the floor.

  Judge straightened Kipley’s shifting cartilage back into place with quick, expert fingers. All the while his patient pounded on the floor and grimaced. “God dammit! All this for a piece of ass!” he shouted when Judge’s work was finished.

  Davi barely caught Foster before he lunged at Kipley again.

  “What? Someone had to get you moving when she got her head crushed, you morose bitch!” Kipley said. “If it weren’t for me you would have just stood there moping and gotten yourself killed.”