The Gilded Cage

by Blaze Ward

  Sykora just nodded, her eyes a little bigger than a moment ago as she realized the new one was much larger.

  “You were sad it wasn’t armed, as I remember,” he continued. “I fixed that with this version.”

  “Who let you have a weapon?” she snarled quietly.

  Javier pointed to the one in her hand.

  “Probably the same people who wanted me to rescue you,” he retorted.

  She refrained from commenting. Or doing anything stupid. Probably for the best. She might be fast. Suvi would be faster. And didn’t particularly like Sykora.

  “Everybody step back behind me,” Javier said, fiddling with buttons. “I need to pretty much overload the turret to do this.”

  Hopefully, the stunt pilot was listening. He didn’t even have controls for that turret programmed on his console. She would have to handle everything. Besides, it was her ship now.

  A bright red targeting reticule appeared on one of his screens, blinking lightly. Oh, yeah. Stunt pilot to be sure.

  Javier felt like he was flying a World War One Red Baron game. It had that feel to it. Maybe that was what she’d programmed for herself.

  He made a note to ask her later. She had access to most of history to look things up.

  Right now, he moved the impact point up and left a little.

  “Everyone close your eyes,” he called over the wailing sirens.

  He did the same as he pushed the button to fire.

  A light strobed through his eyelids.

  Javier blinked. A new message appeared on his console

  Warning: onboard power at 9 percent. Please charge as soon as possible.

  Nine percent? But that would mean…

  Javier looked up.

  He had meant to blow the locking mechanism apart, so Sykora could crank the door open manually.

  Suvi had damned near blown the thing off the rails.

  So much for sneaky. Everybody on the ship probably felt that one.

  “Sykora leads,” he said. “’Mina follows. I’m last with the remote.”

  Nine percent power? Wow. But that was still good enough for the rest of the day, assuming nothing bad happened from here.

  Or rather, nothing Sykora couldn’t handle with a pulse pistol.

  Which was nothing at all.

  Part Four

  Abraam Tamaz came awake at an alarm beeping madly.

  He was tired, he was groggy, he had drank way too much Sambuca last night. His head rang with the pounding of large industrial machines making fender panels again, on the inside of his skull.

  It wasn’t the duty alarm. That had a much different tone. And it wasn’t a system alarm. They were docked to a station. What kind of emergency might strike them here?

  The world did not want to come into focus.

  He knew it should make sense, but the alcohol had evaporated into a lovely fog this morning, making his head feel like a field in Flanders on a quiet, fall day. Nothing but bundles and rumbles of clouds moving about.

  He staggered to the console and pushed the red button to silence the alarm, mostly on auto–pilot. Two still did not want to work with two to make any number, let alone four.

  The sideboard was close. Tamaz grabbed a dirty glass and poured in a dollop of bitters and a finger of rum, followed by a good zap of soda water. He swirled the mad concoction around the glass a few times to stir it, then slammed the whole thing down the back of his throat in one go, letting the fire burn all the way down and sort out the mess it found in his stomach.

  That seemed to cut through the fog. He felt sunrise slowly begin to burn away the clouds that had taken root in his head.

  Tamaz blinked furiously a few times, willing himself to conscious thought. It was a hard road this morning.

  Why was he awake?

  Thought grew slowly concrete, but he got there.

  The alarm.

  The laboratory.

  Someone had opened the door without putting in the correct code combination. Nobody but he and Igor knew that combination. Nobody but the two of them had any reason, any business whatsoever, going in there.

  Tamaz lunged suddenly at the console. He took three tries to enter his password correctly into the keypad, coming dangerously close to locking himself out and forcing him to reset the entire authentication suite from files in his personal safe.

  There.

  That was the alarm from the lab. Bring up the camera.

  She was gone.

  His love, his treasure, his little titmouse in her gilded cage. She had flown.

  Someone was going to die for this.

  Slowly, painfully. Someone would take years understanding the depths of his vengeance. Who?

  Quickly, Tamaz cycled through cameras.

  There. In the hallway. Several figures.

  NAVARRE!

  I would have given that man Sokolov’s head on a stick as a holiday present.

  It was all a sham. He was here to rescue the woman, not avenge himself on her. Not like Tamaz would do.

  Frantically, he toggled the comm until he found the channel he wanted.

  “Security station,” he growled. “We have intruders aboard. Lock down all access ports to the station and scramble your teams. I want them alive.”

  Let that bastard make his way forward. Most of the crew would be at the front of the ship. And waiting.

  “Acknowledged, Captain,” the man replied. “Stand by.”

  Tamaz watched the man begin to push buttons on his own console.

  Somewhere, heavily armed men were moving towards armaments lockers. Death would not be quickly coming for Navarre and his woman. Women.

  Tamaz watched the group approach the starboard axial corridor on deck one. That made logical sense. It gave them access almost all the way to the bow airlocks if they moved quickly enough.

  What? Why are they headed aft? What was in engineering?

  Tamaz slapped his hand on another red button and held it down.

  “Warning,” a woman’s computerized voice filled the corridor. “Enemy boarding parties at large. All crew shelter in place. Security teams to red alert.”

  Normally, that was recycled on a loop when they had played dead and allowed another vessel to try to take them. Wolf in sheep’s clothing. Let them think the crew was in a total panic, but also it let his crew know to lock themselves away from trouble, because the hunters were armed and stalking.

  Tamaz opened a secondary drawer close by and pulled out a larger pistol than he normally carried. This was a stun–only model, a neural whip designed to overload someone’s brain, without actually killing them.

  It would just put them down, so he could capture them for play later.

  Navarre was not allowed to steal his toys. He would keep the other woman as a prize.

  But they were all going to die for this.

  Part Five

  “Are you sure about this?” Javier heard one of the women yell. He wasn’t paying enough attention to tell them apart right now. Around them, flashing red lights and a painfully overloaded siren wailed.

  “Do you want to be here when Tamaz arrives?” he yelled back, pounding down stairs, almost flying, and letting his feet touch about one in three as he went.

  Suvi cheated and dropped straight down the outside of the stairwell. She would beep if she saw anybody, but her gun was pretty much just for show at this point. Still, it had saved them a lot of time at a moment when the sands might be running out.

  Sykora probably could have passed him if she’d wanted to, but she was too busy looking everywhere to move around him without falling on her face. And how Wilhelmina ran down stairs in fourteen centimeter heels was a mystery for the ages. But she did.

  At least Piet and Afia kept up.

  Javier hit the main deck as a hatch opened one level above them, at the far end of the open space, from the forward sections. Men poured through it. Javier didn’t take time to count. It was enough.

  The pirates opened fire
wildly, beams ringing off stairs and rails and metal but not hitting anyone. Not yet.

  Sykora was apparently in her element now. Javier was facing enough of the right direction to see her pop off three shots in rapid succession.

  The first one blew up a significant chunk of railing on the catwalk, right about dead center of the guy moving behind it. He survived because the metal exploded instead. The second and third hit the two men in front of that other guy. They got drilled dead center, from fifty meters away, both shooter and target moving rapidly in three dimensions.

  Seriously, that woman was scary.

  Javier raced across the open space toward the open airlock hatch, three steps behind Suvi. Fire erupted behind him.

  After a moment, Javier could identify when the girls were firing versus when the boys upstairs opened up. The pulse pistol had a higher pitch than the rifles the boys were toting. It took him a second to identify that sound.

  Neural lash.

  Crap. Someone over there was playing rough.

  There was nothing like getting tagged with a beam of coherent sound designed to scramble all your brain cells. Easy way to take prisoners, especially the kind you might sell on the open market later.

  Not that Javier figured Tamaz would be selling him, if it came to that.

  Another round of incoming fire.

  For one giddy moment, Javier considered venting all of engineering to space. It would end the threat of the neural lash, at least until someone went back for something heavier, something that would work without atmosphere. And he’d be long gone by then.

  Javier made it to cover and turned back to check on everyone. Afia had apparently been in his hip pocket the whole time. She was already past him and back to the far deep end of the airlock. Piet was right behind that.

  That left the girls.

  They had both paused midway to provide covering fire for the rest of the crew. There were already half a dozen men down over there, but more were pouring into the room from other doors every second.

  Wilhelmina moved first, apparently responding to commands from Sykora. That one was a black widow spider. ’Mina’s movement drew several men from cover to take a shot.

  Sykora got most of them.

  Did that woman actively worship Death, or something? Were these human sacrifices to appease her harsh mistress? How could anybody be that good?

  Sykora was off like a jack–rabbit as everybody over there ducked, perhaps cowed into submission by the havoc she had just wrought. The body count was certainly impressive.

  Javier watched her move. The ballerina of death.

  Slow–motion.

  She had a smile on her face that looked almost orgasmic for a moment.

  Someone got lucky.

  Sykora’s hair haloed around her head as a beam found her.

  Her face screwed up in pain, slackened into nothingness.

  She toppled, fell, slid, halted.

  Javier was off without hesitation.

  “Cover me,” he yelled frantically at Wilhelmina as he ran past her into the valley of death.

  There was no time for thought, just action.

  Zig.

  Fade.

  Beams.

  Drift.

  Race.

  Javier slid into home with the game–winning run, grabbing Sykora’s pistol and firing three shots randomly before stuffing into a pocket as he grabbed Sykora’s belt and used her mass to anchor him in his slide.

  Somewhere, Wilhelmina was pouring fire back up–range at the bad guys. Nothing fancy, just keep them ducked.

  No time to think. No time to breathe.

  Javier hoisted the massive woman up into a fireman’s carry and staggered to one side, fueled by adrenaline and fear. Tamaz would not be a pleasant captor. Not like Zakhar. Not even like Sykora.

  Somehow, he made it to the airlock.

  Wilhelmina went to close the airlock hatch, but he grabbed her hand before she did.

  “Keep firing,” he said.

  ’Mina nodded and leaned out, randomly potting panels and catwalks as quickly as she could pull the trigger. The charge pack wouldn’t last very long at this rate.

  It didn’t need to.

  Javier dumped Sykora full out before him. He squatted long enough to peel an eyelid, both eyelids.

  Unconscious, but not permanently scrambled. Hours recovering, instead of months.

  It happened, from time to time. Instead of just fuzzing everything, the beams would hit something important and scramble it like an egg. That was like suffering a medium–sized stroke. Curable, but months in rehab learning to walk and talk again. Most unpleasant.

  It was his lucky day. Or hers. If you could call it that.

  Javier would have liked to take the time to put on a proper space suit on Sykora for what was coming next. This would shortly qualify in the top ten dumbest things he had ever attempted.

  They’d all be dead if he took the time.

  Outside, the room grew quiet.

  Javier considered his options. None of them were good. Conversely, not all of them were suicidal.

  “Navarre,” Tamaz yelled from somewhere outside. “I’ll give you credit for style and balls. You almost pulled it off. If you surrender right now, I promise to kill you and the girl quick. I know Sykora is done. Let it go.”

  Wilhelmina muttered a word under her breath that would have made Javier’s career–navy father blush.

  Javier nodded at her, with a hard smile. He reached into the bag and pulled out the vial of green liquid, weighing its immense gravity with one hand.

  “What are you doing?” Wilhelmina whispered fiercely as she glanced over at him.

  “It’s not enough to escape them, ’Mina,” he murmured back. “It’s not enough to rescue everyone. He must be stopped, destroyed.”

  “There’s no other way?” she asked.

  “Do you want him to keep doing this to people like you and Sykora?”

  He watched the flicker of pain cross her face. He knew there were stories untold about Tamaz. He could guess the script.

  Add that to the bill.

  Wilhelmina ground her teeth for a moment and closed her eyes.

  Javier wondered if it was a prayer, but Hadiiye looked back out of them when they opened.

  “Paladins are men and women of the sword, Javier,” she said calmly.

  It was almost frightening the way she could do that. But it was enough.

  Javier took a second to locate his target.

  There. Primary air intake vents for the life–support generator. Suck in all the bad air, pass it through a hydroponics system to feed the fish and plants, push cleaner air up into the ship. Repeat. A lovely, efficient design.

  Javier took a step and snapped his arm forward, gunning for the runner coming around third in the bottom of the ninth.

  His aim was perfectly timed, dead accurate. The vial impacted on the vent cover with a satisfying thump.

  And fell to the deck unharmed.

  Javier muttered something that might have made Wilhelmina blush. He dug for the pistol in his pocket, pulled it out, and began to sight.

  “Navarre?” Tamaz called. “What’s it going to be?”

  Apparently, he had missed the vial flying in the dimness and haze.

  Javier felt Hadiiye’s hand on his before he got settled.

  “Can you use that thing?” she asked.

  Javier shrugged. “Probably.”

  “I thought so,” she continued.

  Javier watched her raise her own pistol in one motion and fire a single shot that dead–centered the vial. It shattered, spewing a greenish slop that was quickly sucked into the vent.

  That was the lovely part of a pulse–pistol, as opposed to a disruptor. It used a force bolt instead of heat. Rupture, without the risk of cooking the green liquid and killing all the nasty bugs floating in it.

  Javier watched just long enough to be sure, and then slammed the airlock door closed.

  “Afia
,” he said, turning. “Deploy the emergency cocoon and get Sykora into it first. You and Piet next.”

  He turned to the control panel and emptied three shots into it in a rapture of smoke and sparks.

  “What about the suits?” Wilhelmina asked.

  “Can you get one on in thirty seconds?” he replied.

  “Watch me,” she said, pulling her tunic over her head.

  Javier would have liked to watch more as her nudity unfolded, but there was no time. He stripped as well.

  Part Ten

  The little runabout was quickly packed to the gills as people poured out of the airlock. Javier watched Piet and Wilhelmina carry Sykora’s body to the bed and carefully lay her out.

  He went straight to the flight console and brought everything live.

  “How much time do we have?” Afia asked from his elbow. With him sitting and her standing, she was barely taller.

  “You planning on coming back to Meehu Platform anytime soon?” he replied.

  “Not on your life, sir.”

  “Me, neither.”

  Javier pushed a button that triggered the emergency overrides on the docking mechanism.

  Every station had one. Usually, the station master would use it to push back a ship in danger of exploding, to keep it from venting nastiness into the interior and killing lots more people than just the crew.

  You could set them off from inside a ship if you had to. If you suffered an emergency. Or needed to flee and didn’t mind angering the stationmaster.

  Somewhere nearby, bank vault doors were slamming shut and atmosphere alarms would be going off. People were going to be pissed.

  Javier was in a stolen ship, fleeing a criminal enterprise, in the middle of a running gun fight, after using biological weapons. He really didn’t care if they were going to give him a parking ticket after this.

  The runabout lurched harshly before the gravplates could compensate.

  “Piet,” he called to Storm Gauntlet’s navigator. “I’ve calculated a course. Take us out that way as fast as she’ll go.”

  “Roger that,” the man replied, flowing into the seat.

  Javier watched just long enough to confirm they were in safe hands, then he went to stand next to Wilhelmina, seated next to Sykora.