by Jake Bible
“Get my hopes up? They have been dashed to Hell and back,” the Thin Man said. “They could not even come close to getting up.”
“It is just that, well, I am not sure we are dealing with a cerebral data retention and storage situation,” Kinchminch said. “It could be, and this is just theory so please do not kill me if I am wrong, but it could be that the boy contains a more mundane storage device.”
The Thin Man blinked several times. There were the sounds of far-off explosions and the hint of men and women screaming as they died, but he ignored it all and stared at the Ferg. Kinchminch swallowed hard and tried to smile, but his face was too bruised to allow his cheeks to raise properly.
“Do you need to use the restroom, Kinchminch?” the Thin Man asked in a very, very quiet voice. “Because you like you need to go to the restroom, Kinchminch.”
“No, sir,” Kinchminch said. He coughed and ignored the blood that splattered onto his chest. “I, um, am wondering what you think of my theory?”
“And I am wondering why you let me harm you as I did when you had this tidbit of information still to play,” the Thin Man replied. “Telling me this theory before I broke you might have saved us both a good deal of aggravation.”
“I know, sir, I am sorry, sir,” Kinchminch said.
“A device,” the Thin Man mused. “Implanted inside the boy?”
“Implanted inside the boy,” Kinchminch said. “As I said to your before, there seemed to be much more data inside him than was possible. It is why I had such trouble extracting it. As you can see by the boy’s death.”
The Thin Man’s lips twitched at the side. Slowly, they raised into a grimace of a smile.
“Would you care to come over here and get to work so you may prove your theory, Kinchminch?” the Thin Man asked. “I would appreciate it if you did.”
“As much as I want to please you, sir, which I so want to do,” Kinchminch said then nodded at his broken limbs, “I am no longer able to perform the delicate surgery needed to remove the storage device, if it is indeed inside the boy, without possibly damaging it.”
“May I be of assistance, Kinchminch?” the Thin Man asked and waggled his skinny fingers at the Ferg. “I am not a surgeon, but I do have a deft touch. Just as Vexia. She knows first, well, hand.”
The Thin Man chuckled for a few seconds then let the sound just peter out.
“I could instruct you, sir, yes,” Kinchminch said. “But may I ask for some help in standing up? I seem to have lost the strength in my legs.”
“Oh, get up,” the Thin Man snapped. “I am not your nurse.”
“Yes, sir, of course,” Kinchminch said and slowly, painfully got to his feet. He hobbled over to the Thin Man, gave a short bow, then moved past to the dead boy. “I will need to scan his corpse.”
“Did you not scan him when he arrived?” the Thin Man asked.
“I did, but I was not looking for an actual physical storage device then,” Kinchminch said and winced as the Thin Man moved directly behind him. “My apologies. I had him scanned for any physical ailments so I would know what his body could handle while I interrogated him.”
“You seemed to have failed on that, Kinchminch,” the Thin Man said.
“Yes, again, my apologies,” Kinchminch said. He nodded his head at a steel wand set on a tray of instruments next to the dead boy. “If you would be so kind, sir?”
“I am nothing if not kind, Kinchminch,” the Thin Man said and picked up the wand.
It glowed slightly as the Thin Man waved it slowly over the boy’s corpse, moving it up and down, back and forth. After a couple of passes, the wand dinged and a holo projected straight out of the tip.
“There!” Kinchminch exclaimed with pure relief. “It is embedded behind the boy’s left orbital socket!”
“Oh, goody, we get to pluck his eyeball out,” the Thin Man said.
“Uh, yes,” Kinchminch said. “We do. Now, we must be careful when removing the—”
The Thin Man tossed the wand aside and dug his fingers under Dylan’s lifeless eye, he curved them and gave a quick flick. The eyeball tore free and came out with an audible popping and sucking sound. He tossed it aside, leaned over the boy’s head, and squinted into the dark, bloody socket.
“I don’t see it,” the Thin Man said.
“It will be very small, sir,” Kinchminch said. “And very fragile. I will instruct you on how to remove it, but I must ask you use slightly more care than you did with the boy’s eye.”
“I will, I will,” the Thin Man snapped. “Do not chastise me, Kinchminch. You sound like my father. You do not want to sound like my father right now.”
“No, sir, of course not, sir,” Kinchminch said.
There were more explosions, more screams, but the two living occupants of the interrogation bay ignored the sounds as they set about their very delicate task.
Thirty-Eight
“Sheezus, look at this place,” Geist said as he crept down the corridor, careful not to come in contact with any of the bodies of the Syndicate thugs that were everywhere. He was too high strung to fight his body from taking on aspects of the dead men and women’s obviously useless body armor. “This is nuts.”
“Foing BooshGon,” Hole said.
Cookie and Wanders regarded one of the blasted corpses, its body armor distinctively different than the thugs’.
“Extraction job?” Cookie asked. “You think the councilman hired them?”
“More than likely,” Hole said. “Doesn’t matter. We have our own job.”
Geist moved to the end of the corridor and the rest of Zero waited as the Tcherian worked the door controls. The door slid open and two Syndicate thugs stumbled into the corridor, their heads bloody, their arms draped across each other for support. They saw Zero and froze, their eyes locked onto the Marines that stood halfway down the corridor in front of them, pistols up.
“Don’t do it,” Hole said as one of the thugs twitched a hand to the rifle slung across the other’s back. “You can still walk away from this.”
“That a good idea, Hole?” Cookie asked. “Letting them walk away?”
“They can barely walk,” Wanders said. “We don’t have to kill them. Not that I’m opposed to it. Hole?”
“I’m letting them decide,” Hole said. She took a couple of steps forward. “Your call, boys.”
The twitch thug calmed down and nodded at Hole. He shook his head and started to speak, his face relaxing and taking on a grateful look. Then his face exploded outward followed directly by a plasma bolt. His buddy screamed then met the exact same fate.
“Down!” Hole yelled and flattened herself on the floor, using the many corpses as cover.
She lifted her pistols and opened fire, sending plasma down the corridor, through the door, and into the other corridor. They were wild shots, no aim to them at all, but some of the bolts still hit their marks. Men and women screamed, but those sounds were drowned out by the shouting of the other BooshGon troopers.
“Son of a gump!” Wanders yelled as he took a bolt to his lower right arm. “Ah, come on! That’s my trigger arm!”
“Geist!” Cookie yelled. “Do something! I’m pinned down here!”
Cookie didn’t have anywhere near the corpse cover that Hole and Wanders did. He curled himself into a tight ball, his arms covering his head, as bolt after bolt flew over him.
Geist, completely concealed against the side of the door, reached out and snagged an ion grenade from a dead BooshGon trooper that lay only half a meter away. The second he revealed himself, plasma fire was turned on him, but he was much faster than the men and women of the BooshGon squad. He had the ion grenade activated and tossed into the corridor in a split-second.
“Frag out!” Geist yelled.
The grenade exploded as the squad tried to retreat. Bodies were vaporized instantly and those that only caught the edge of the blast started screaming their lungs out. Some of them literally, as they caught the blow back from the ion
ic explosion and their lungs exploded out their throats.
Geist was up and running into the corridor, his knuckle spikes stabbing over and over as he sprinted past the fallen BooshGon troopers. Stabs to temples, to throats, through body armor and into hearts, tearing open bellies, shredding arteries in legs that held arteries. Geist didn’t stop moving until every last trooper was dead or close to it. He stood in the corridor, blood and gore dripping from his spikes, his chest heaving from the excursion.
“Nice job,” Hole said calmly as she walked into the corridor. She put a bolt between the eyes of a trooper that was weakly struggling to put his intestines back inside his abdomen.
“You didn’t leave any for the rest of us,” Wanders said, following right behind Hole.
“Is it cool?” Cookie called out, still in a tight ball.
“It’s cool, man,” Wanders said. “You can come out now.”
“You’re hurt,” Geist stated as he looked at Wanders’ arm.
“It’s not bad,” Wanders said. “Not like what you did to these poor fools.”
“We keep moving,” Hole said, nodding for Geist to take point again.
Geist obliged, wiping some bloody gunk from his face and flicking it onto the floor. He shivered slightly and most of the gore that coated him shook off and his body once again changed to match the color and texture of the corridor’s walls.
Zero made it through the next two corridors before they came up against a sight they hadn’t expected.
“Mug?” Hole asked.
“Well, crud, there y’all are,” Mug said, shoving Sha Morgoal ahead of her. “About foing time ya got here. Did you know they’ve been keeping me in a stasis beam cell? Ain’t no fun, I can tell y’all that.”
“I would assume it is not,” Hole said. She grabbed Sha Morgoal by the wrists and gave his arms a hard shake. “You. Where is the Keer boy?”
“I do not know,” the Slinghasp hissed. “I have been held captive in the cell next to your bear friend this entire time. They did not ask me a thing and they did not tell me a thing.”
“We were of a secondary concern,” Mug said. “But I do not believe it will be hard to find the boy, if that is our goal.”
“It is,” Hole said.
The base shook as something very big exploded.
“You sure about that, Master Sergeant?” Mug asked. “Because way I see it, this moon ain’t gonna be fit for us much longer. My ears are hearing a lot more than just those explosions.”
“They are? Like what?” Wanders asked.
“We are not alone in this moon,” Mug said. “I believe I understand why this was chosen by the Syndicate. There is a natural defense that they have suppressed, kept in check, but it is now itchin’ to make itself known.”
“I’m not following anything you are saying,” Cookie said. “Can you just tell us what it is, Mug?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Mug said and shrugged. “But there are a lot of them and they are very angry. I can hear their rumblings like whispering mice in the walls. I believe the Collari kept them fed and happy, but all this ruckus is getting them a might stirred up.”
“That’s very poetic, but it does not help us,” Hole said. “Do you know which way to the interrogation wing?”
“Behind me,” Mug said. “We passed the junction a few turns ago. Two levels down by lift.”
“Can’t risk the lift,” Wanders said.
“Then two levels down by some other means,” Mug said. “I might know how.”
“Lead on,” Hole said.
“You take care of this guy,” Mug said as she nodded to Wanders, indicating that Sha Morgoal was now his responsibility.
“No way!” Wanders snapped. “The guy has foing mites!”
“Mites!” Mug exclaimed and rubbed her paws on her chest. “What kind of mites?”
“Volgassian mites,” Cookie said. “They don’t bother me. I’ll take the Slinghasp.”
“Oh, well, then I’m fine as well,” Mug said. “Volgassian mites don’t bother Urveins.”
“Well, they bother Gwreqs,” Wanders snarled. “So keep the snake away from me.”
“I don’t like them too much either,” Geist said. “So stay towards the back, Cookie.”
“Not a problem,” Cookie said. “I’ll let you take the heat when we meet up with more BooshGon bastards.”
“Your teamwork is not very sharp,” Sha Morgoal said.
“Shut the fo up,” Cookie said and slapped him upside the back of the head. “You don’t know a foing thing about our teamwork. Oh, wait, yes you do. We ripped your palace apart because of it.”
“Then you lost me to the Collari,” Sha Morgoal said, a smug look on his face.
“And how’d that work out for them or you?” Cookie asked, his look even smugger as he leaned in and nearly touched his feline nose to the breathing slits in Sha Morgoal’s face. “Looks like we got you again and the Collari Syndicate is having a very bad day.”
“Can it,” Hole said. “We’re moving. Mug, lead the way to your other option.”
“Follow me, friends,” Mug said. “It ain’t gonna be a pretty ride, but it’ll get us where we need to be a lot faster than backtracking to the lift and climbing down an open shaft.”
“Good,” Hole said. “But understand that if we get to the interrogation wing and there’s no Keer kid, we are out of here. We clear, Zero?”
“Loud and,” Wanders said.
“Totally,” Geist replied.
“Not getting an argument from me,” Cookie responded.
“I say we just leave now,” Sha Morgoal added.
“Shut the fo up,” Cookie said and smacked him again.
“Where are we going?” Geist asked.
“Trash,” Mug said, tapping at her nose. “Trash goes everywhere in this base.”
Thirty-Nine
The doors to the interrogation bay slid open and the BooshGon squad hurried inside, rifles sweeping the bay. Tnort was on point, but he stepped aside for Z to see what was going on.
“Hello, Gorma,” Z said.
“One moment, please, and I’ll be right with you,” the Thin Man said as he held a pair of micro-tweezers steady, most of the instrument buried deep into the dead Keer boy’s eye socket. “This is very delicate, delicate work and I’d appreciate some courtesy as I finish what I am doing.”
“I don’t think that is going to happen,” Z said. She made a show of ratcheting up the power on her plasma rifle. It hummed until it almost whined. “Step away from the boy, Thin Man. I won’t ask again.”
The Thin Man sighed and slumped his shoulders. “That is disappointing.”
“Sir, if you stop what you are doing then we risk losing it all,” Kinchminch said.
“Did you hear that, Z Gon?” the Thin Man asked. “We risk losing it all. You don’t want me to risk losing it all, do you?”
“To be honest? No,” Z replied. “I know what you have there and it would be so very valuable to our company. I can barely imagine what a game changer it would be. There is only one problem.”
“Oh? And what is this one problem?” the Thin Man asked, the micro-tweezers still in motion. “Is it a problem that might be solved with an exorbitant amount of chits? Because if you hold on for just a moment, I will be able to make your wildest dreams come true. At least when it comes to chits. If you have some perverted fantasies then I’m afraid I can’t help you. Not right now. Give me a day and I’ll have my guy call your guy.”
“The problem is that I need that boy alive and it doesn’t look like you are caring too much about his safety and well-being,” Z said. “Let me take him off your hands, return him to his father, carry out the job we’ve been hired to do by your father, and then we can talk about exorbitant amounts of chits.”
The Thin Man paused and glanced over his shoulder. “The job for my father? What job is that?”
“Oh, huh, looks like you aren’t in the loop,” Z said. “I’m sure the elder Collari has a reaso
n for that, so I’m afraid I can’t break his confidence and tell you. Professional ethics. I am sure you understand.”
“I do not,” the Thin Man said. “I’m afraid when it comes to my father, ethics do not apply. Sure, sure, we have a code within the Collari Syndicate, but that’s more about guidelines than actual rules.”
“I do not believe your father sees it that way,” Z said. She took a few more steps, her rifle perfectly straight and still, its scope sending a tiny red dot onto the back of the Thin Man’s head. “Thin Man? Gorma? Step away from the boy before you do him anymore harm.”
Kinchminch snickered.
“Something funny, Ferg?” Z asked.
“Boss lady? I suggest we blow them both away and be done with it,” Tnort said.
“I’d like that, I really would,” Z replied. “But the elder Collari didn’t hire us to kill his son.”
“He also didn’t hire us not to kill his son,” Tnort said. “Slippery slope, I know, but we are short on time.”
“You see the rock and hard place I’m stuck between?” Z asked.
The Thin Man looked back at her again and squinted as the laser dot hit him in the eye. “Ow. Stop that. Z Gon, dear, it looks like you are stuck between ugly right now. Why in the galaxy would you choose a Skrang skin to take? Makes me shudder just thinking about it.”
“Did you just call me dear?” Z asked. Her lizard brow dropped a couple inches and her tongue darted out fast then back in. “You did not just call me dear. You have got some set of skinny balls on you, Thin Man, to call me dear.”
“Ah! There we have it!” the Thin Man said, ignoring Z. He held up the micro-tweezers and squinted at the almost imperceptible thing that was held between their tiny tips. “Everything I could ask for is right here on a just a few hundred nanoparticles. How delightful!”
“What is that? What do you have?” Z asked. She craned her head and looked past him. “Is the boy dead? Sheezus and the Eight Million Gods, Thin Man! Did you kill the kid to get that out of him?”
“What? No,” the Thin Man said. “He was dead long before I ripped out his eye and started digging around in his bloody socket. Right, Kinchminch?”