The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Box Set

by J. D. Oppenheim

  Barth had the Jaylen’s arm in his tri-grip. He squeezed as hard as he could and there was a popping noise as her hand fell onto the deck. The energy blade disappeared into the handle and landed near Barth. The Jaylen didn’t cry out in pain like a human, she just scrambled to grab the knife with her one good hand. Jolo kicked her and she fell back and that was all the time he needed. Soon she was laying on the deck, rain falling on her face and in her blue eyes, hissing steam rising from the small hole in her forehead.

  Jolo stared up into the darkness hoping to see the Argossy, but there was nothing but the cold rain. He looked down at the ragged human clinging to life that used to be Barthelme. His breathing was erratic, his face was as white as a ghost, and his skin was clammy. If they didn’t come soon Barth would die or Jolo himself would eventually get killed. He wanted to save the girl, to save all the humans. He started to run for the stairs again. He’d grab the kid and make it back in time, but then logic set in. I’ve got to save Barth first, he thought.

  Jolo put his hand on the closest Jaylen’s back. Still warm. He dragged her synthetic body over and put it right up against Barth, then moved the second one to the other side of the old man. Barth wasn’t moving, so Jolo leaned down to check his breathing. At first nothing, then a shallow, tentative breath. He sat down and watched the door. He put his hand on the old man’s chest, his heartbeat at one moment thumping steady and strong, then at the next, fluttering lightly at high speed. Jolo kept looking off to the sky, then back at the white rectangle at the other end of the roof. He concentrated and listened for the tell tale sound of the Tellesar Twin thrusters of his ship. He knew Katy would come barreling in with the guns hot, but right then there was nothing except the rain tapping on the surface of the roof.

  Jolo’s gaze went back to the door and suddenly the white rectangle had turned gray and three Jaylen’s were streaming out, followed by the big, black mech Lord. Jolo remained still, but the Jaylen’s fanned out to surround him. They’d changed tactics and were now using infrared. I guess Merthon didn’t have time to add thermal masking to the suit, he thought. He took a deep breath, stepped back so the girls didn’t move beyond his peripheral vision, their wet blond hair sticking to their white suits.

  He killed two before the third one tried to ram her knife into his neck. It didn’t penetrate the suit, but he was choking and fell back, and this time Barth wasn’t there to bail him out. He fell, then rolled away and shot the girl in the leg, but she wasn’t finished.

  He felt the presence of the black giant before he saw it and instinctively ducked. It came down with its long energy blade just as the Jaylen jumped to escape the next volley from Jolo’s Colt and the BG Lord’s red sword cut her in half, covering poor Barth in a white, oatmealish goo.

  Jolo jumped back, firing as many rounds as he could at the worm’s chestplate. The bullets pushed it back, but the mech held its ground and laughed. Jolo continued to fire but couldn’t do much more than keep it from advancing forward. The worm inside must be feeling it, he thought.

  “Did you come to die, Jolo Vargas?” said the hissing, electric voice of the worm, both ends of the long energy staff lighting at once. “The Emperor will give me a title for this,” he said, taking a step forward, the big, metal foot coming down right next to Barthelme. “Maybe a Fed planet!” he yelled, and started that terrible laugh that sounded like something between a coughing fit and a child screaming.

  Jolo heard the Argossy before the mech did. He wanted the heavy metal beast to move further away from Barth so Koba could get a clean shot with the rail guns but it didn’t budge.

  “Jolo, we’re coming!” screamed Katy into his earpiece.

  “I know. Don’t use the big guns. It ain’t safe for Barth. Get Greeley here now!” Jolo said.

  Soon the Argossy was right over them and Greeley jumped down onto the roof from the back hatch, cursing when he landed. He started firing at the mech, while still laying on his back, even before he got up. Katy tried to swing the nose around and knock it off the roof, the forward thrusters fighting to keep the big ship from crashing down onto the harvester. Jolo waved Katy back after nearly being blow off his feet in the Argossy’s thruster blast.

  Meanwhile Greeley continued to fire on the BG, BOOM BOOM BOOM, its black chestplate starting to dent. Jolo could hear the worm inside, and this time it wasn’t laughing. It shrieked and cried, unable to get its energy blade around to strike. Its thick alacyte armor and the force field around it were designed to do one thing: absorb energy weapons attacks. But it had no answer for tiny balls of lead.

  It slowly stumbled back towards the edge of the roof. Jolo joined in and finally it fell off the side and crashed down onto the rubble eighteen levels below, one of its long metal legs snapping off at the knee. It lay unmoving as the rain continued to fall.

  Greeley carried Barthelme into the Argossy and headed straight for the med bay. Katy held the big ship steady a meter off the roof without putting the landing pads down.

  “Jolo, come now! We got BG boats inbound!” she screamed into the comm.

  Jolo touched his earpiece. “Pick me up at the bottom. I’ve got to get a few more. Go without me if you have to. Save Barth.” He started for the stairs then changed course and thinking to save time, jumped off the top of the harvester all the way down to the ice below. He’d covered distances greater than this, but worried about the landing surface. The cold wind rushed up, biting his face, and for a moment he though he might land on the tangled mess of black metal laying beneath him, the dead Lord, but nearing the bottom he realized the unmoving mech was thirty yards back. Both feel sunk into the mush at the rear of the harvester and he sprinted for the lower level door.

  Jolo slipped inside the big machine, still moving across the ice, and scanned for the blond girls with the red blades. A sharp pain stabbed at his left side if he took a deep breath, his hand instinctively reaching around to support his ribs. He jumped onto the ground, careful to stay moving with the harvester lest he get run over by the rear track wheels. He jogged to the right side and there was the girl, running along with the harvester as always.

  “Come with me,” Jolo yelled over the sound of the machinery.

  She didn’t respond. Didn’t even look his way.

  Jolo looked around and saw two men, the rock humpers, sitting on the edge of the platform.

  “Come with me if you want to live,” Jolo said.

  “They’ll kill us,” one man said in a shakey, fearful voice.

  “Most of them are dead.”

  Both men looked at each other and then gave Jolo a nod.

  “She don’t speak,” one of the men said.

  “I’ll be back,” said Jolo. Then he ran up to level 5. Four of the men were still alive, two claimed they could walk, so Jolo carried one, ordered the Med bot to carry the other one, and they made their way down to the bottom. Jolo grabbed the girl and the two men followed him out onto the cold, wet rubble.

  Jolo, the girl, and the six ragged men watched as the harvester slowly moved away from them, still grinding away at the earth, as the Argossy came down to take them home.

  Misha

  Duval

  24 days left

  Jolo sat on the exam table in the med bay at Marco’s house. His shirt was off and his ribs and shoulders were covered in a patchwork of black and blue bruises. Each dark spot a gift from the Jaylens on the ice harvester. Merthon’s suit had done its job and the Jaylen’s knives couldn’t penetrate, except for the gash on the side of his face that Merthon had stitched up.

  Marco’s and the Argossy’s med bots both tended to the survivors, each laying in a cot nearby, IV lines nourishing their bodies, and soft music in the background, which was Katy’s idea, to help ease them back. Even Jolo could tell they all looked better. Barthelme’s color was returning, but it was still difficult to imagine this frail creature so close to death only a day before, was the same large, loud, strong man who’d kept the Jessica in one piece long ago when he was
fully human, and who’d rescued him from jail and given him his gun. Had given him his life.

  Katy walked in, her smile turning sour when she saw Jolo. “What happened to you?” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder and he winced in pain, but he still enjoyed her soft touch. He sat up a little taller, but another sharp pain pierced his side.

  “Do not touch my patient,” said Merthon, torn from his lab work to help take care of the survivors.

  “I’m fine,” said Jolo, pretending to be annoyed, though happy to have Katy concerned about him.

  “You’ve got a few cracked ribs, a facial laceration which will undoubtedly win you some points with the pirate contingent, and a few deep bruises,” said Merthon. “Otherwise you came through nicely. I’ve given you a pain killer and—” but then Katy cut him off.

  “Nicely? He looks like he was whacked with a hammer a hundred times. I thought the suit was gonna protect him,” she said in an icy, accusing voice. And now Merthon, the greatest creator the galaxy had ever know, last of his kind, felt the wrath of the former trash hauler pilot. Jolo couldn’t help it--a big grin broke out on his face.

  Merthon took a deep breath and tilted his head, staring down at the girl. “It did,” he said, and walked out.

  Jolo started laughing and suddenly sharp stabs of pain shot through his side. And then he was sort of crying and laughing all at once and it came out like a strange howl. “Merthon,” Katy yelled down the hall. “Is he okay?” But the Vellosian kept walking away, his back to them both. He waved his hand and continued towards his lab on the lower level.

  “So you were worried about me?” said Jolo.

  “Of course. I care about you,” said Katy.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” She stared at him and her smile faded.

  He shrugged and stared down at the dirty floor.

  “When you gonna learn?” she said. “I don’t care what anyone says. I know you are a good person. I know what’s in here.” And she tapped on his chest right on a bruise. He took a deep breath and another sharp jolt to his side and he grimaced, hoping Katy would go back to being worried about him, but her expression, kind of sad and concerned all at once, didn’t change. “You’re gonna have to grow up, Little Boy, and let somebody in at some point,” she said, and walked out.

  Jolo sat on the table alone, the med bots tending to the other patients, trying not to breathe too deeply.

  “You never did know how to talk to a woman,” said a soft, raspy voice. Jolo started to turn and look behind him, yelled out in pain, then eased off the table and gingerly walked over to Barthelme’s bed. He stared down at the old man and for the first time since the harvester, the one-armed man looked like the engineer he once knew, the man who found him in the dirt on Duval almost a year earlier. Though it seemed like ten years.

  “You look like you,” said Jolo.

  “I suppose that’s a good thing, Captain.”

  “I ain’t your captain. I’m not the man you knew.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I’m sorry you saved me,” Jolo said, and suddenly he couldn’t look Barth in the eyes. “I have no idea what you thought to gain. But I’m so sorry you lost your family. Just to save me.” Jolo stopped, looked back at the door to make sure no one was there, and continued in a whisper. “I’m not even the Jolo you knew. I’m just a synth, or at least half a synth. Only part of the Jolo you knew is left. I have a computer chip in my head. And now I’m just a pirate stealing Fed rations and ship parts.”

  “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for the Federation.” Jolo shook his head. Barth put his hand on top of Jolo’s and squeezed it. “Did you find the girl,” he said. Jolo nodded, yes. Barth took a deep breath and smiled, then started coughing. The med bot came over to monitor his vitals. “There were four, in the beginning. She used to speak then, used to smile occasionally.”

  “I got her. But I don’t know her name.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Get some rest,” said Jolo. “I’m glad you are back. We need you.” The med bot came over to check on the old man and Jolo put his shirt on.

  “Misha,” said Barth. “Her name is Misha.”

  Jolo stood over her bed and watched her breathe. She’d been given a bath and suddenly had changed from a dirty trackhead on a BG harvester to a beautiful little girl with dark hair. She looked even smaller somehow laying in the med bay. Jolo wondered how old she was. Seven? Eight? How had it come to this? Without the grime and track wheel grease, Jolo could see she had the smooth, perfect skin of a child. Her body would recover, he thought. But he hoped she would eventually talk and play like other kids.

  On Merthon’s orders, Jolo went to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He just stared at the big picture frame on the wall that showed a rotating video of the topside landscape right above Marco’s. Usually it was just a wide swath of orange earth then blue sky above, but all day small boats shuttled back and forth: the tower busters resupplying.

  Jolo didn’t know what to do with down time, especially when the planet was going BOOM in a little over three weeks. Finally, after watching the umpteenth hover craft, weighed down with heavy charges and riding low, racing across the flat, Duval landscape, across his picture frame, he put on his clothes and went up to the staging area. His head was pounding and his mouth was dry. George was there with a thin screen in his hand keeping tabs on the inventory of charges, magna hooks, and energy rifles. He was shouting something to a tower buster crew as they left. He saw Jolo and frowned.

  Jolo noticed something different in the synth, but couldn’t place it. And then Jolo’s headache got worse and he started to sway a little. His vision got dark around the edges, the darkness closing in until there was one tiny point of light. He came to again in his room and wondered if it’d been a dream. George was there.

  “How’d I get back here?” said Jolo.

  “I carried you,” said George.

  “How? You’ve only got one—” and then he saw it: George had two arms. He smiled.

  “A gift from Merthon. And you got a gift from the old frog, too.”

  “What?”

  “A tranquilizer shot.”

  Jolo reached up to touch George’s new arm, warm and muscular. “Very human,” said Jolo.

  “I know,” he said, grinning.

  “I don’t feel like I got shot,” said Jolo, and then the drug took effect and he slid off to sleep.

  A few days later Jolo was feeling better so everyone got together to hammer out a plan. It was nearly dark and there was a cool breeze so everyone met topside and sat down on the orange earth in a circle, the light of the portable holo display in the center illuminating their faces, the stars above just starting to show in the sky.

  George stood up, holding his data screen. “I’ll start with the good news: we’re much better at tower tippin’. That’s what we’re callin it. We’re taking out more and more each day. Three days ago:49, yesterday: 52, today so far: 54. Everyone is excited. But… Numbers aren’t good. The math says we still aren’t gonna make it.”

  “So can we start the evacuation?” said Jolo.

  “How far off are we?” said Barth, sipping on one of Merthon’s green energy drinks.

  “It’s close. We only have about three weeks left. The BG haven’t bothered us in a few days and Jolo and Katy’s tower busting method has spread to most sectors,” said George.

  “There is time to see if Captain Barthelme can bring the military to our side,” said Marco.

  “Okay. If we do this,” said Jolo, “it’s got to be done now. There’s no time to waste.”

  “Why don’t we talk to the President?” said George.

  “I don’t trust him,” said Jolo. “He gives the BG too much. We should target someone high enough up in the military to make a difference, but no too high up.”

  “Filcher?” said Barth. “He was with us on the Jessica,” he said to Jolo.

  “Can you find him?” said
Jolo.

  “Yeah, unless they’ve relocated all my friends to BG work planets.” Jolo started to laugh, but then realized that might be exactly what had happened.

  “Okay,” said Jolo, “we go for Filcher. He was under me on the Jessica and he knows Barth. He’s moved up the chain so he’s got influence.”

  “How you gonna get close to him?” said Katy. “If you run up to a fleet of Fed ships and they know its us, they may shoot first.”

  “We need a clean, Fed military comms channel,” said Barth. “Jolo, can you steal a Fed ship? Maybe something small?”

  “I got a better idea,” said Jolo. “Marco, you still got the junkyard down in the basement?”

  “Yep. Ain’t got no Fed ships, though.”

  “Don’t need a whole ship, just the comms module.”

  “Ahh. That I may have.”

  That night Jolo went down to the lower levels to search for a Fed comms module in Marco’s junk pile. Marco was a tinkerer at heart and was always on the lookout for the raw materials to bring his creations to life. The Argossy, which he considered to be one of his greatest creations, was restored using components from a dozen other ships: the thrusters came off two Michiban Xlite space runners, the logic array was from a Fed privateer ship no longer made, the kicker he’d scavenged off a moth-balled Argossy from a fellow trader on Tichel. And on it went.

  Jolo walked through Merthon’s lab to make it down to the lowest level where the junk pile was. The old frog wasn’t there and the water tanks cast a blue glow on the walls, the sealed jars, and the glassware in the lab. Near the stairs he noticed a light on in a storage room. The door was bolt locked and reinforced with steel. He peered into the room and there on the floor was a blond girl. A Jaylen.

  He reached for his gun, but he didn’t have it with him. Then realized there was a five centimeter thick steel door between them. What could that skinny-armed synth do to him? he thought. And then he took a deep breath and pain shot through him, and suddenly he could feel every bruise. He touched the eighteen black stitches from his temple to his jaw line, the gash that burned and itched and wouldn’t let him sleep.