Quote:It was hot. Anika beside her radiated heat. Maico’s mouth had gone bone dry, while the woman beside her was panting like she’d run a marathon. Her eyes shot around the cell, the the hatchway wtih it’s oversized lock, a single bed with no sheets, a single head, an overhead light and nothing else. Maico’s camera set was thrown on the bed, offline for now.
I’m trained for this, Maico assured herself. She dug down into parts of her mind long locked away, and set about figuring a way out of her bindings. Plastic zip ties around her wrists could be fatigued loose if she twisted them right.... it was just a matter of effort.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Anika murmured, her voice quivering just a little.
“Then what was?” Maico demanded. “What were you planning?”
Anika looked right at her, her eyes narrowing just a little as if she was trying her damnedest not to cry. “We didn’t hire mercenaries. This is someone else attacking us,”
“But what was your plan?”
Anika gave her a pained look, but remained silent.
“You planned a trap, didn’t you? You planned to trap me out here but someone else sprung the trap before you could”
She heard her voice echo back off the metal walls. Anika shrunk away.
“There was no trap. We just arranged a meeting is all.” Anika’s voice went very small, trying to hide inside her mouth.
“Well this is some meeting!” Maico snapped back at her.
The flame haired girl sat there, still panting. Maico could feel the astonishing heat coming off her breath. She was ready to burst into fire.
“I’m trying to think of something. They should be nearby,”
The door opened at about the same time Maico’s mouth did, cutting her off before she had a chance to speak.
“Well ladies, now that you’ve had a chance to sit and think, maybe you wouldn’t mind clearing up a few things for us,”
It was the same, lazy drawling voice who’d hailed them over the radio, attached to a face that was far cleaner than she expected. A face for radio, but still clean shaven, sharp cheeked, with wider eyes and a soft nose. He wore denim jeans and a light jacket over a simple white t-shirt. For a brief instant, he seemed perfectly harmless with a breezy smile on his face.
“Miss Maico Tange, a pleasant surprise,” his voice oozed, “I hear tell you’ve been looking into things you shouldn’t, and that’s made my employers get a little bit concerned.”
She tasted bile, “The Knight Sabers?”
Their captor’s expression blackened. The cheery light had gone out, and all that remained was a cold, dangerous darkness. “Those cyber sluts killed my men, why the hell would you think I’m working for them?”
Anika gawked. “Belt Alliance?”
The smile came back, a cheerful mockery. “Since you won’t be getting out of here in a position to tell anyone,” he glanced at Maico, “I’m still not going to tell a word.” He gave a throaty laugh at his own private joke. “My employer wanted me to hunt down a shuttle leaving Frigga and kill the crew, that’s all you need to know. Only reason you’re still alive now is that pinko here is wanted in one piece,”
Anika whined through her nose.
“Why me?” Maico demanded.
“Because they think you’ve been investigating them, and they want to know what you know,” The smile grew savage, “But I think you’ve been investigating something they’d be willing to pay a far larger amount for.”
“And what’s that?”
“Don’t play stupid. You thought I’d been hired by the Sabers, so I’m willing to bet that you’ve been chasing them. And if you think you know enough to think they’d chase you down, I think you know enough to be worth selling on,”
I know who they are, Maico thought. A knot twisted deep inside her. She could see Anika glaring at him. She was shivering... physically shivering... breathing quick through her nose.
“So. I’m going to make you a deal. Give me the passcode for your headset and the files on it. I’ll let you go. I’ll give you a spacesuit, two days air and water, and a transponder,”
“No,” whispered Anika beside her.
Jet’s voice seemed to ring in Maico’s mind. Why do superheroes use codenames, Maico? It’s so the villains won’t know who their family is.
“It’s a fair deal,” he said. He sounded like he didn’t really care less. “That information’s worth more than your are to them, and if I don’t get it, I’m going to be after a little added value from you pair.”
Anika squeaked and hid ibehind her knees. Maico swore she heard her whimper “Never again,”
“I....” Maico started, and found the words had lodged in the back of her mouth. “I can’t do that,”
He feigned a sigh. “Well, it’ll take use a few days to get to our destination so, I’ll let you think about it. But once we hit that station, you’re fucked. I let you off here, you get picked up.... and nobody need ever know.”
Maico closed her eyes. “No. “ she stated. “I can’t do that,”
He snarled at her again. “Have it your way, but...”
His comm-set chirped, interrupting him. He pulled it from its holster on his belt, flipping open the lid. It seemed to be an old trekkie model.
“Brannigan,” he barked.
“Hey Cap,” a woman’s voice drawled through the speakers “We got a shuttlecraft coming up behind us at a rate of speed. It’s doing fourteen percent easily. Only,” she paused. “only...it don’t have an engine signature like a shuttlecraft”
“Explain,”
“It’s burning big enough to be Peacemaker Cap’n. Radar signatures smaller than a fencar,”
“It’s them!” Anika gasped.
He blinked. “Who?”
“You’re fucked,”she grinned cheerily.
“Well, so are you,”
Maico saw him draw his gun. She tried to yell out some useless, inarticulate warning, but it was drowned out by the crack of a single gunshot chased by a stunned shriek that stabbed at her ear. Anika hit the deck with her eyes staring open, a moistening hole growing dark over the left side of her chest.
“You murdered her!” Maico glared hard at him.
He shrugged. “I do the job, I get paid.” He checked his communicator. “Frizz, you still there? Because that shuttlecraft coming up behind us is going to be real hostile, real soon,”
He could be heard laughing as the door slammed shut behind him.
Maico glanced down at Anika’s lifeless body, glassy eyes still staring at the opposite wall. She felt physically sick. her bindings must’ve popped open with the shock of it, but it wasn’t going to do her much good now that she was bleeding onto the deck. Dead as a doll.
Maico screamed when Anika sat back up.
“What?” enquired the zombie girl, poking at the leak in her chest like a curious child might poke at a scab.
“You’re shot,” Maico pointed at it. There it was. A nice hole in a pretty orange blouse, steadily turning dark with blood.
“I know,” she stated, frowning. “It hit a hydraulic line which fused safely. My processor had a thermal trip caused by a momentary overclocking.”
“You’re a....” Maico suttured. “You’re a....”
“Cybernetic intelligence,” she completed the sentence for her, blushing just a little. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she finished, shyly.
Maico blew through her lips. “Phew... you scared me there for a second,”
Anika just blushed a little.
“Now, we have to get out of here Anika, before he comes back and finishes the job. You’re bindings popped. See if you can undo mine,”
Anika shuffled over. Maico could feel her oil-slick fingers working at the plastic where it had been weakened. She could feel the ship heel over underneath them both as it started to turn.
“The Knight Sabers are going to rescue us,” Maico assured her. “That’s the KnightWing following us,”
“I know,” Maico nodded. “But he might come back to finish the job anyway out of spite. Or they might lose”
With a pop, her hands came free. She pushed herself to her feet only to be thrown immediately down to the deckplates again as the whole floor beneath her suddenly jerked about three metres to the right. She yelped as she came down hard on her arm. Overhead lighting flickered and died, battery backed red emergency lights coming up moments later, throwing a bloody glow over everything.
Anika’s hair shone in the red light.
They both clambered back to their feet. Maico’s first thought was to reach her headset and destroy it. Prevent the information inside from ever getting out. She stumbled again as another hit sent the world spinning. The deck beneath tucked at her back as she slid along, impacting feet first against the door.
Anika crashed into her with an ‘oof!”
Another explosion shook through the deckplates, decompression alarms sounding. She could hear cackling gunfire, mixed with sounds she couldn’t identify. She thought she might have heard a man’s scream cut off.
Scrambling to her feet again, she tumbled over Anika’s prone form, catching herself against the bed’s railing. Anika herself was standing a moment later. Another blast shocked through the deck, causing her ears to pop. The alarms died.
Sounds of battle were quickly getting closer as she struggled against a gravity field that still felt like it was spinning. Her body kept trying to twist away to the left. She braced herself against the bed, taking the headset in her hands.
It took only a second for it to boot, then only a few seconds more for her to trigger the chip destruct.With a puff of blue smoke, the information on the Sabers was beyond anyone’s reach.
“Yatta!”
The door burst open.
Standing silhouetted was the Captain, Brannigan. Anika jumped back out of his way. Maico got a clear look at the stunned bewilderment on his face.
“You’re... alive.”
It gave her a second to charge at him, pushing all her strength into propelling herself forwards. She hit him square in the gut, puffing the air out of his lungs. Being half his weight, but having momentum on her side, she pushed him against the outside bulkhead, dislodging a lightweight fire-extinguisher that hit the deck with a hollow plastic crack.
The air was heavy with the smell of ozone and burning electronics. Someone screamed, and she could hear heavy footsteps banging on metal. Her whole body was fizzling with energy, riding the crest of an adrenaline wave. She wasn’t just reporting the story this time, she was in it and she was winning the fight.
The thought was rudely interrupted by an irresistible boot to the gut that kicked all the air out of lungs and propelled her backwards against the door frame. The back of her skulled cracked off the metal and seemed to ring like a bell.
Her vision blurred. She saw a humanoid mass bend over, picking up the nearest weapon to hand. Slowly, it coalesced into the form of the Captain, wielding that carbon fiber fire extinguisher in his hands.
“Hostages don’t have to be conscious,” he smirked.
Then stumbled. He looked down. Anikla was clinging to his left leg, trying to drag him over. He braced himself with his empty hand, kicking out at her fingers with his free foot. She yelped and snatched them back, freeing him.
He had just enough time to swing the extinguisher through a wide arc, aimed straight for Maico’s head. She felt her arm begin to move, but it was moving far too slow. She saw his leering eyes and grinning white teeth.
She saw behind him, unseen by him, the dark form of a hardsuit approaching rapidly, trailing ribbons behind her wrists.
Maico never got the chance to see the blow that killed him. She was knocked clean out by the blow to her temple.
And on that bombshell, I'm off to a local convention.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?