“Well, we’re karked,” Jrill said.
“Defeatism is not authorized,” Loritt said. “Options? Crazier the better at this point.”
“Sabotage the air handlers,” Sheer said. “Maybe the only thing these people will choose over money is oxygen.”
“Too big a risk to the patrons,” Loritt said. “If even one of them actually suffocates, we’re charged with murder. Besides, that ignores the 15 percent of this ship’s guests who aren’t oxygen breathers and rely on their own self-contained methane, chlorine, or hydrogen supplies.”
“Hack the PA system and put out a meteor storm alert accompanied by an evacuation order,” Hashin said.
“No good,” Jrill said. “Then we really will have a riot on our hands as people fight to get to their transports or the escape pods. Someone will die for sure, even if they’re just trampled to death. We were lucky it didn’t happen with the cruise ships. This is an order of magnitude more people and there’s no convenient dock for them to offload onto.”
“I agree,” Loritt said. “C’mon, someone give me something that has a chance to work.”
A sudden insight snapped First out of her fugue of self-recrimination. “The escape pod.”
“What was that?” Loritt asked.
“The escape pod on the Wolverines’ tour bus!” she said. “They don’t have to evacuate. They’re already right where we need them to be.”
“Explain, quickly.”
First backed out of the Luck’s internal user interface and returned to a mission screen showing the whole ship from stem to stern. “This is just a modified cargo ship, right? Every restaurant, cabin block, theater, and gaming floor is just a giant converted standard shipping container of one size or another. They all have independent power sources, independent life-support, independent lockouts, independent thruster packs. Their systems are all redundant. They just draw off each other because they’re all working together on a common network.”
“Okay.” Loritt rolled his fingers for her to come to the point. “So?”
“So they’re all basically self-contained escape pods,” First said. “All we have to do is eject all the ones with customers in them and the rest of the ship is ours.”
Loritt’s eyes widened. “Can we do it?”
First dove into a schematic of the ship’s systems. “There are safeguards in place to prevent an accidental release. There are four physical breakers that have to be flipped at the four corners of the ship at the same time before we can cut any of the modules loose. Guess some drunk handlers must’ve dumped their cargoes once.” First flicked a couple of prompts, and four icons glowed amber on her display. “But there are five of us, so it’s possible. I didn’t include you in the count, Fenax, only on account of you don’t have hands.”
“I understand.”
Loritt rested a hand on Hashin’s shoulder. “What does this do to our payout?”
“Give me five.” Hashin was already busy on his handheld working through calculations and estimates. After a few tense beats, he let out a slow whistle. “At minimum, we lose a third of our commission. Worst case, half.”
“Glot,” Jrill said.
“Half is still the biggest payday we’ve ever had by a Proxima kilometer,” First said.
“Whatever that means,” Fenax added.
“She’s saying half is still good,” Sheer said.
“And infinitely preferable to zero.” Loritt scratched at his errant muscle. “All right, we’re going for it. Everyone, pick the closest breaker to you and get moving. Report back when you’re in position, but do not flip your switch until First gives the signal.”
Everyone acknowledged their new instructions before signing off and getting to work.
“Well,” Hashin said, “this is exciting.”
“Did you take something for it?” Loritt asked.
“Nope.” Hashin shook his head. “Not even a popper.”
“Oh, good,” Loritt said. “I thought it was just me.”
CHAPTER 27
The sound of First’s feet pounding through the hallway was only matched by the sound of her heartbeat pounding through her ears.
She was barefoot, in her comfy clothes, running, sweating, swearing, and generally looking as little like a duchess as one could imagine, unless one just happened to be a member of a hereditary duchess’s house staff, in which case this would just be another typical Tuesday in the midafternoon.
“Make a hole!” First shouted at a knot of gawking patrons just ahead of her. Loritt was behind her somewhere. But for all the adaptability and immortality their communal body arrangement afforded the Nelihexu, sprinting was not one of their natural talents.
Whatever. He’d catch her up. First charged ahead at a dead run until her lead foot caught the edge of a slime trail left by an invertebrate patron and collapsed her to the floor in a tumbling pile that came very close to proving the axiom of “breakneck speeds.”
Dazed, First struggled to get back to her feet until a helping hand reached down for her.
“Slow is fast,” Loritt said as he helped her up. “How far to the switch?”
“Not far.” First gingerly poked at the nice little goose egg forming on her forehead. “Ow.”
“Let’s walk the rest of the way, okay?”
“No arguments here.”
* * *
Jrill signed herself out of the ship’s security center and was granted permission to grab a stun weapon and go join up with one of the rapid-response units deploying to respond to flashpoints erupting around the Luck.
She wasn’t alone. On duty, off duty, all the crew compartments emptied to respond to the burgeoning crisis. Not that Jrill was concerned with their problems. No sooner than she was on the other side of the bulkhead, she dropped down two decks and made a straight-line march for the nearest switch. The others had farther to go, as the head security office was located very near the front of the ship, so there was no rush. But she still felt an urgency to get into position.
“Where you going, rookie?” Jrill’s pint-sized security supervisor barked at her from a cross corridor.
“Uh, equipment lockers, Chief,” she said. “I need to check out a stun gun.”
“That’s two levels up from here. You lost, Vertok? Need a map?”
Jrill gritted her beak and pushed down the urge to redecorate the corridor with an evenly spread layer of his viscera. “No, Chief. Sorry. I must have misread a sign.”
“Well, get up there. Something’s karked on this ship, and we need all hands on deck to keep these rich glotheads from killing each other over an open holo-spinner until we figure out what.” He shook his head. “Really, you’d think they had enough money already.”
“Apparently not.”
The chief gave her an appraising look, then dismissed her. “Don’t rough them up too bad unless you have to. I know how you Turemok can get your blood up.”
She saluted. “Affirmative, Chief.” He left, and Jrill resumed her previous course.
“Standing by,” she announced into the burst com as soon as she found the switch.
* * *
Sheer’s foot claws clicked and popped against the floor like someone furiously typing away on a keyboard as she awkwardly scuttled down the hallway. Her gait was off balance, as she was still down a leg, and would be for most of a cycle.
“You there!” a voice rang out from behind her. “Stop!”
“Sorry!” Sheer shouted without looking back. “Nature calls!”
The unmistakable fript sound of a weapon clearing a holster cut into her bravado. “I said stop!”
Sheer skidded to a stop and put up her claws even as she bounced off a bulkhead, barely catching herself on her weak side before hitting the deck plates. “What the glot, man?” she said incredulously through the dark passage.
“This is a restricted area. What’s your business down here?” the guard said in a tone that invited no levity. His stun gun was level squarely at the vuln
erable spot where the plates of her mouthparts and eyestalks met. Someone had been trained in Ish armor chinks.
“Just looking for the ladies’ room,” Sheer said deferentially.
“The ladies’ room?” The guard snorted and pointed at her dominant claw. “You’re no lady.”
“Did…” Sheer’s claw clicked involuntarily, causing the guard to tense, but she didn’t care. “Did you just assume my gender?”
“What?” The guard was suddenly on unsteady ground. “But, you’re a—”
“A what, sir?” Sheer moved a click forward. “What’s your name? Employee number?”
“I can’t give you that.”
“You can’t?” Sheer waved her claws in indignation. “Don’t you know who I am?!”
“No.”
“Good.” Without warning, Sheer grabbed the man’s weapon hand by the wrist and pointed it off in a harmless direction, then picked him up by the torso with her dominant claw and threw him against the bulkhead. He crumpled to the floor in a most satisfying heap.
With a feeler, Sheer checked for a pulse. He was alive, but out cold. Served him right. She gathered the guard up and stuffed him in a nearby equipment locker and smashed the lock, then took up his stun gun with her big claw and snapped it in half.
A short scuttle later and she was in position next to the switch.
“Standing by.”
* * *
No one paid the slightest attention to Hashin.
“Standing by.”
* * *
“Everyone’s in place,” Loritt said. “It’s just us now.”
“I can see the panel.” First pointed to the end of the hallway. “We’re almost there.” She was starting to feel dizzy from what was almost certainly a concussion, but there was still work to do. She threw an arm over Loritt’s shoulder to steady herself as they advanced on the switch.
They were not even five meters away when it all came apart.
“Well, well, well,” Soolie the Fin said as he stepped out from a side corridor and leveled a weapon at them. “What are the odds I’d run into you two here?” He pointed the gun at Loritt. “Drop the mask, Chessel; I know it’s you.”
Loritt shrugged, then let his true face assert itself. “Soolie. Well done, especially sneaking a weapon past the body scanners and luggage searches. That must have taken some doing.”
“Not at all. I didn’t exactly come in through the front door. Lovely ship you left behind in port, by the way. Very … discreet.” He motioned to the outer hull. “It’s just outside. My crew is waiting for you to finish this repossession so that we can, ah, accept the handover.” He pointed the gun at First’s head. “So don’t keep them waiting.”
“You’ll have to kill me,” First said.
“Now, that just won’t do,” Soolie said. “You’re the brains of the operation; killing you won’t do me any good. But killing your bodyguard…”
The gun swung over to Loritt’s chest and fired. The bang didn’t come from the muzzle but from the impossibly tiny point on Loritt’s chest where a ninety-kilowatt pulse of coherent light struck and instantly flash-boiled all of the water in the tissues of the component it struck, sending a cloud of steam exploding outward, rending, scalding, and tearing surrounding tissues as it expanded.
Loritt staggered backward and put a hand to the gaping wound in his chest. First screamed in horror as the grievous injury to her mentor registered. Loritt looked down at the cavernous wound, then up at First as he fell wordlessly onto his backward-facing knees.
“Loritt!” First dropped down to him. “No, no, no…”
“Get! Up!” Soolie adjusted his aim to First’s left eye. “Unless you want to lie there with him permanently.”
First stood up slowly, ignoring the muzzle through a force of will and choosing instead to glower right in Soolie’s face.
“There’s the fire I remember,” he said. “Fresh off the transport. Not even two months on Junktion and you’d already come to me with a stolen aircar, dictating your prices like you owned the place.” Soolie smiled at the memory. “Trouble is, you didn’t then, and you don’t now. Your recently former boss liked to pretend power has ever come from anywhere but the tip of a spear or the barrel of a blaster. But he was wrong. The only difference between me and the rest of the people on this hulk is I still remember how to hold the gun myself instead of having generations of lackies do it for me.”
Soolie ran his flipper down the side of the archway. “But with a score like this? Maybe my kids won’t ever have to hold a blaster. Maybe I’ll carve out a big enough piece of the action that they never have to get their hands dirty. That’s all leaders are, you know. Go back far enough in any ‘royal’ bloodline and you’ll find someone just like me who had the vision to launch a dynasty and the moral flexibility to make it happen.”
“You’ll have to find someone dumb enough to kark you first,” First spat.
“Ha! That won’t be difficult. A few hundred million credits in the bank opens bedroom doors, if you know what I mean. Speaking of opening doors.” Soolie waved his gun at the switch panel. “Be my guest.”
Something rustling to her left caught both First’s and Soolie’s attention. Loritt’s body, in diametric opposition for one’s expectation of bodies, began writhing violently inside its clothing as waves of spasms ran through it, propagating outward from his core and into the extremities, which whipped around wildly. As First watched in fascinated horror, Loritt’s body just disintegrated. His clothes collapsed as hundreds of individual components scattered like rats from a burning barrel on tiny, furiously spinning legs.
Soolie reacted to the eruption before First did, pointing his gun at the swirling horde and firing three times in quick succession. The first shot hit only deck plating, but the follow-ons vaporized one component and mortally wounded another. But it wasn’t enough. In a coordinated swarm, the pieces of Loritt charged Soolie from all directions, gnawing and shredding at any bit of exposed flesh they could get purchase on.
The gangster spun and twirled in a rage, repeatedly slamming himself against the walls to dislodge the parts of Loritt he couldn’t see who were diligently chewing on his back.
“Flip it!” someone shouted from the floor. Overwhelmed by the chaos, First looked down to try to identify the source and saw Loritt’s jaw alone on the deck.
“Flip! It!” the disembodied mouth insisted once more. This time, First obeyed.
“This is First! I’m at the switch. Everyone in position?” she yelled into the burst com. A trio of affirmations followed in quick succession. “Acknowledged. Flip switches in three.”
She curled her fingers around the thick handle of the breaker.
“Two.”
First looked back over her shoulder to see a hundred parts of her boss trying to deal Soolie the Fin death by a thousand cuts.
“One!”
She strained down against the breaker switch with two hands until its oxidized base gave way with a pop and swung free. With little additional effort, it swung up into its new position and locked in place with a click.
“Got it!” she shouted to no one in particular. Throughout the ship, emergency doors snapped shut; umbilicals disconnected with sparks, puffs of atmosphere, or water vapor; and locking clamps released their metallic dead grips. The lights on the gaming floors and in restaurants flickered as the modules they’d been built into switched to internal fuel cell power. On the outside of the Change Your Luck, first dozens, then hundreds of hexagonal modules moved away from one another and the spine of the ship, gently pushed by low-power counter-grav thrusters. Then they peeled away from the ship entirely like petals falling from cherry blossoms in early summer. In less than five minutes, every guest and crewmember of the Luck would be an unwilling part of the temporary constellation.
Unfortunately, more immediate concerns prevented First from enjoying her victory. Behind her, Soolie was regaining a measure of control over the legion of Loritt. Pulse racing, but
still worried about her boss, First reached down and grabbed an armful of his parts, several of which scratched and bit at her exposed skin, unaware of their change in circumstances.
Not knowing what else to do, First ran back down the hallway in search of more familiar territory. Behind her, she could hear Soolie cursing as his footsteps kept pace.
“Jrill!” she called out on the burst com. “Soolie is here! He’s got a weapon. Loritt’s hurt, I don’t know how bad, and I can’t carry all of him. I’m being chased. Can you intercept?”
“Moving,” was Jrill’s one-word response.
First ran in her bare feet, bits of her boss biting her arms, zigzagging through unfamiliar corridors trying to throw her pursuer off the trail, until she came to a dead end and had to climb up a level. The ladder required at least one arm, and she lost two parts of Loritt in climbing it, despite her best efforts. Soolie could follow them like bread crumbs, she realized bitterly.
Whatever. The best she could do was put distance between them, so she ran as fast as her aching feet and growing vertigo allowed until she rounded a corner and slammed sidelong into a Turemok in a security uniform. It was only once she’d fallen back and landed on her ass that she looked up and realized it was Jrill, the first time First was genuinely relieved to see her.
But it was short-lived. Jrill was still in her disguise, and that was why the stupid, stupid eye patch kept Soolie out of her field of vision long enough for him to line up a shot from the far end of the corridor. The shot seared away the fabric of Jrill’s uniform and dug deep into her stomach with a sickly pop, leaving a smoldering hole in its wake.
Jrill, implacable, indominable Jrill, slumped down the wall and to the floor, leaving a smear of purple blood in her wake. She looked up at First with her one exposed glowing red eye.
“Girl, run.”
First dropped what she had left of Loritt into Jrill’s arms and followed instructions for once. Not far ahead lay the welcoming hall they’d entered the Luck through not three days earlier. With the cruise well under way and everyone glued to their seats on the gaming floors, it would be completely deserted. Except for the Grenic actor who played Baked in the Volcano, whose legs First ran between while he single-mindedly made his long way to the nearest game of Peaks and Valleys.
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