Avenger

by Robert E Colfax

  Perhaps most dramatically of all, Urania’s foreleg, the walking pad discarded, after penetrating the ceiling, stabbed down and through Kraft’s body, embedding itself in the floor. With the optics installed near the tip of each leg, once through the ceiling Urania precisely aimed the leg so as to drive though the top of the man’s head and on through his torso. Messy, and really gross but effective, Urania thought as she extracted her leg, scraping the body off as she pulled the leg through the small hole in the ceiling. It landed on the desk with a squishy sounding thud. I may want to throw up. Sadly, as a starship, I can’t throw up, can I?

  Lexi stepped forward to pick up her sword, intending to clean it and the knife with somebody’s shirt. Withdrawing it from the scabbard had been slightly awkward due to its length. She was thinking of a mechanical scabbard that opened for easily drawing and sheathing the blade. It could clean the blade too. She liked that idea, immediately adding it to her to-do list.

  She looked up, thoughts of designing a sheath abandoned, when she heard Jis remark, “Frighteningly effective.” Jis was squatting on the floor, one hand on Benut’s shoulder, her eyes looking into his contorted face as he died in pain. Lexi put down the blade and moved to squat next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Are you alright?”

  Jis turned an expressionless gaze on Lexi. “Can’t you sense my emotions yet, Lexi?”

  Lexi frowned slightly. “I get the sense you’re OK. I don’t understand how you can be.”

  Jis stood, no longer looking at Benut. Instead she was looking at Lexi’s blood coated sword. From there, her gaze traveled to the other dead in the room. Lexi stood with her. “Yes. I suppose reaction might set in later, but for now I’m OK.” Her voice was deadpan to a worrying degree. “This is not the only time I’ll be working with you, Lexi. I’m going to need to get used to havoc like this, won’t I?” She paused, looking up at Lexi. “This is relatively mild. I’m going to go talk to the other captives. You might want to offer Geena some comfort. She seems a trifle shaken. You aren’t ready to admit it, but you are too.”

  Before Jis made it through the door, Lexi stopped her, asking, “Jis, why did you use the word ‘havoc’?”

  Jis looked back and shrugged. “The storm winds are restless.” It wasn’t an answer and she wasn’t smiling.

  Chapter 33

  No Loose Ends

  While Urania stalked around outside the chalet, killing the remaining weapon emplacements, ignoring any missiles in the towers, Geena and Jis held serious discussions with the hostages. Ron and Lexi fully expected to participate in those discussions until Jis grabbed them each by the forearms and pulled them into the hallway. “We’ve got this, my loves. You need to be quick, let’s go with under an hour, but go upstairs and find my room. It’s the third one on the right. The bed is really nice.”

  They wasted no time arguing with her. It had been more than eight weeks, seven of which when they couldn’t even talk to each other. Taking into account the short span of their relationship, eight weeks seemed a very long time. As they were getting dressed, Lexi said, “You haven’t lost your touch, lover.”

  Ron smiled at her. His ribs still hurt, but he wasn’t complaining. Lexi had been considerate. “Glad to hear it.”

  “Urania, would you start listening in again?” Lexi asked. “Ron, while we’re alone, I want to tell you we may need to be concerned about both Geena and Jis. Geena knew she would have to kill people. She was quite professional, if that’s the right word. She seems to be handling it OK, so far at least. But just a head’s up; we want to keep an eye on her. Jis says she’s shaken.”

  Ron nodded. “Mom’s tough, but, yeah, as far as I know, she’s never done that before. Thanks for the warning.” He frowned. “You’re the only one of us who has. Well, I suppose I might have killed a Helgan or two. But, you’re OK, right? How is Jis doing?”

  “I’m OK, well, maybe only ninety-percent OK. Neither Geena nor I liked killing the guards. We know they rotated with the overseers at the mine. We know what the overseers at the mine did to people. We know those men deserved death or worse. Still, we were the executioners. We’ll have to deal with it.”

  She paused. “It’s not easy being the incarnation of justice, Ron.” With both of them dressed and standing, she pulled herself to him, hugging him tight while resting her head on his shoulder. Speaking into his chest, she added, “Jis is so OK that it’s scary. She killed a man with her bare hands. It doesn’t seem to bother her. Ron, she looked around at the four dead men in Kraft’s office. Her face was nearly expressionless when she said she’d be working with us again and what we did here was mild in comparison. Maybe I shouldn’t be our team leader. What am I leading us into?”

  He grunted as Lexi stepped back, reminding her, “She also told us when she came on board that precognition wasn’t as useful a tool as one would think. I don’t believe we should worry about it, especially when we have so much else to worry about here.”

  Lexi shook her head. “I disagree. I think we do need to worry about it, but maybe not right now. What about you, Urania, are you handling this OK?”

  “It’s new for me too, Lexi. I am grossed out, definitely grossed out, but not emotionally disturbed. Thanks for asking, honey.”

  Lexi nodded. “Good. Let us know if that changes. I also want to know if anybody told Jis who Aeolus was in Greek mythology.”

  “Huh?” Ron said. “I’m almost completely ignorant on the topic, so not me. Why?”

  “I know why she’s asking, Ron,” Urania said. “I’ve never heard Geena mention it to her. Jis used the word ‘havoc’ describing the carnage in Kraft’s office.”

  “So? I saw the aftermath. It’s an apt description.”

  “Sure it is,” Lexi agreed. “It also happens to be the word I used when we first came up with the name for our partnership. Aeolus released the storm winds to wreak havoc when he was ordered by Zeus to do so. There are a lot of better words to describe, as you say, the aftermath, in Kraft’s office. When I asked her why she called it havoc, she answered ‘the storm winds are restless.’ She’s not telepathic, Ron. I doubt she knows anything about Greek mythology. So where did that come from?”

  ***

  In preparation for leaving Hepca, they raided the chalet, taking all of the non-perishable foods and beverages they could find, stuffing them wherever they could find a nook on the ship, including in the shower. They also loaded their cold room with as many of the perishable items as it would hold. The rest they dropped off at the mining camp before returning to the chalet to pick up additional supplies and their new guests. The first time Jis saw Urania’s gutted interior, she shook her head and remarked, “Somewhat minimalist. I think you could use a fresh coat of paint.”

  While Jis and Geena, with the help of the chalet’s former prisoners, went about acquiring and squirreling away bedding materials and supplies, Lexi and Ron took care of the pigeon launchers and the exoskeleton. Most of the captives were still marveling, not only that they were actually being rescued, but that one of the women on the rescue team was Jis Boc Seckan, the future Plicora of Ackalon. Lexi lamented that they couldn’t take the launchers or exo with them. Space was going to be cramped with twenty-six passengers, some of whom would be sleeping on mattresses with improvised straps in the cargo hold. To that end, they abandoned the remaining hull metal. It was expensive and a waste to just leave it behind, but they needed the room. Urania, still less than thrilled by the whole walking business, spoke up, suggesting that not taking the exo might be considered a good thing. She left it at that.

  Using the two surviving pigeon launchers, they cut larger holes into the walls of the house and dragged the four dead units inside. As the exo was disassembled, the power units for the Zappers were removed and set to one side. As a final step, they would be added to the pile of scrap they were building in Kraft’s chalet. The legs themselves and the framework that held Urania were cut into pieces small enough for the pigeon launchers to pull in
to the house.

  Lexi took care of scrambling over the hull, using special knee pads and gloves designed for the purpose, to apply hull patch to the holes. Geena and Jis were occupied doing their best at keeping the former hostages happy. Ron did have cracked ribs that were healing nicely, but climbing over the ship wouldn’t have been the best thing for him. Neither was having sex, but she was gentle with him.

  Patching the ship was easy enough to do. You painted the area with a primer, filled the hole with a putty-like material, covered it with a piece of special tape and covered that with another coat of primer. The final step was annealing it with a high-intensity particle beam. She wore a respirator for that step as the fumes given off are toxic.

  Lexi found it both exhilarating and somewhat disturbing at how easily her hand-held Zapper cut through the hardened hull-metal legs. The phrase “a hot knife through butter” came readily to mind. It was the first time Ron witnessed a hand Zapper being used. He was pleasingly impressed, despite already seeing what the devastation the primaries were capable of. His only comment was to shake his head and say, “Well, you did promise me ray-guns, kiddo.”

  The power units for the legs and the larger Zappers were no different than those Lexi designed for her hand-held ray-guns. There wasn’t time to work up direct wiring to either Urania’s power plant or the batteries powering the pigeon launchers. So she went with what she had. The primary-sized Zapper had sixteen of the units wired in parallel. Each of the anti-personnel-sized ones were powered by four of the units.

  The power-packs for the hand-held Zappers were basically single-use batteries, designed to be ejected when discharged. What made these different from traditional batteries was the charging unit which infused them with zero-point energy. She couldn’t miniaturize the charger sufficiently to fit the handguns. When she built the larger weapons for her ship, and she would eventually find a way to arm Urania, those would be large enough to dispense with the storage batteries and use the output of the zero-point converters directly.

  For ease of use, she designed the Zapper power packs to go in the same as the clips on their recently acquired Glocks. Of course, she made sure there was enough difference so that a Zapper power pack couldn’t be shoved into a Glock or vice versa. At some point she was going to have to test them to see how long a single charge lasted. Assuming her calculations were correct, one power pack should support heavy fire for six to seven hours. It might be a good idea to add a gauge showing the remaining charge. So much to do.

  The power packs boasted another design feature that she was proud of. They could be set to explode and used as timed demolition charges. If the thrower had a good enough arm, they would serve as grenades as well. Except no one has an arm that good. Fortunately, we didn’t try it. I kind of went off half-cocked with that notion. She was also grateful she resisted the temptation to use the same power-packs instead of the chemical charges in the exploding clay pigeons used in the assault on the chalet. The Accord-tech explosives packed into the pigeons did more than enough damage.

  Chapter 34

  The Voyage Home

  Ten minutes after Urania lifted from the planet she sent the signal triggering all of the power packs to simultaneously detonate. Even Lexi was a bit awed by the size of the ensuing explosion. She wasn’t sure whether Kraft’s missiles, and they verified that two of the towers held missiles, hadn’t detonated along with her power packs. The other two towers housed message drones, which also might have exploded. Whether they had or not didn’t matter. On the viewscreen, they watched as a vaporous mushroom cloud billowed into the upper atmosphere. The explosion was so intense very little material was thrown into the atmosphere. The miners they were leaving behind were warned to lay down outside of the buildings, cover themselves with a mattress and brace for the explosion. It was a wise precaution, one of the buildings did collapse as the ground shook.

  Of her Zappers and other equipment, nothing was left except a bubbling mass of superheated metal at the bottom of a quarter-mile-deep crater nearly a half-mile in diameter. She couldn’t allow her Zapper technology to fall into criminal hands. Thinking about it, looking at the devastation her technology just wrought, she remembered the warning Jis made about offering it to the Accord at large. She understood now; she wasn’t sure she wanted the Accord to get hold of this much destructive power either. I still have to discuss that with my partners. Her thoughts hesitated a moment. And Jis.

  ***

  The return trip, direct to Borgol, proved difficult to the point of torture. On board Urania, in addition to the three E’Krets, Nina, and Toby, they brought all twenty-one of the other prisoners from the chalet. That number included both the hostages and those who had been servants. Having so many people on board a ship designed to carry eight seriously strained not only the ship’s resources and everyone’s patience as well.

  Early in the trip the two Xeason women made it clear they expected the ex-slaves to wait on them as they had on Hepca. Like the other rescued hostages, the two were of the privileged class. None of the former hostages lived on worlds where slavery was legal, although they all employed people who waited on them. Some, most even, treated servants more like employees whereas for others it was a fine distinction between employment and slavery. The Xeasons weren’t home now, they were on her ship. Lexi put a quick stop to that behavior, only having to bruise one of the privileged idiots.

  Within the first week, the ship began to smell, the overloaded waste recyclers and air scrubbers unable to fully keep up with the stress of so many passengers. The fact that they couldn’t filter enough water for their shower-cum-storage room didn’t help. The smell would only get worse. Geena, alone for a moment with Lexi, asked, “Any techno-wizardry you can pull out of your hat?”

  Lexi shrugged and shook her head. “I wish. But, no.”

  Somehow on the trip Lexi became Aunt Lexi to both Kacen and Koe. Ron was elevated to family member status by the children too, a position Jis already held. In fact, Koe planned to marry Jis when he grew up. He seemed quite serious when talking about it with the other passengers.

  The gym saw continuous use despite the restricted rations everyone was on. Many of their “guests” indicated various degrees of interest in working out with the team during their unarmed combat practice. They let anyone interested play with the firing range. KumKum spent a lot of time with it. A few others came close.

  Lexi let a few of them swing a training sword, instructing them in the basics. The meditation sessions Jis conducted were very popular. As there was really nothing to see, practically ever, in hyperspace, most of the time they had one or the other of the movies from Lexi’s collection running. Lexi spent several hours coding software to separate the sound track so she could pipe it through Urania’s processors. Since Urania could speak both English and Ritue, the language everyone on board spoke, she was able to add verbal translations in real-time. The mouth movements didn’t match, but still, the alternative would have been subtitles.

  Of course, other than through the comm-gear, Urania was forced to remain silent. She found that more than slightly frustrating. In turn, she found the fact of her frustration interesting enough that she mentioned it to her friends over the comm. After all, she hadn’t initiated conversations for the first hundred and forty years or so of her existence. Now it seemed natural to her.

  KumKum, during his interview, looked around the crowded ship and said, “It almost seems like Kraft was collecting important people as a hobby. I mean, I don’t believe that, it’s a bizarre notion, but look at who you have here. None of us are actually world leaders, or likely to be, at least any time soon. But I think all of our parents are.”

  Among the captives was the nephew of the Chairman of Cardin’s Paradise. He claimed his uncle barely acknowledged his existence. He doubted he was worth kidnapping in the first place. They also had on board the wife and step-daughter of a prominent citizen of Xeas, a high-tech non-Accord world. From Talmon were the parents of Dakman
Drisson, the Talmon ambassador to Naragene Nine. They mentioned their son was likely to run for president in a couple of years. Six passengers were the adult children of six of the nine corporate magnates who controlled Naragene. Then there was Jis Boc Seckan, expected to succeed her father as Plicora of Ackalon in the near future who let slip that she had an unknown sister. Despite all having speculated about it for months on Hepca, not a single one of them could come up with a reasonable explanation as to why they had been taken.

  Jis spent time with both Nina and Toby, as well as any of the other other hostages, whether slaves or not, who felt the need for counseling. Jis explained she wasn’t a trained counselor, but if anyone felt the need to talk, she was capable of being a sympathetic listener. They talked in the cabin she was now sharing with Geena. That and the one used by Ron and Lexi were the only cabins left with four walls and a door. Lexi and Geena were quite thorough when gutting the ship’s interior. The tiny head still had a door as did the airlock and the shower, all of which were ridiculous places to meet with a patient.