Rocketship Patrol (6 page)

“All right, you’ve got your body,” Vei said. “Now, where’s that pay you promised us?”

“All in good time,” Igon said, sitting up and looking his “new” body over. It was humanoid–two arms, two legs, and an oblong head, all of three foot tall. Its metal skin was splotched with rust where the several dozen coats of paint had been worn away, and there was an irregularly-shaped aluminum plate freshly welded over a jagged beam scar in his chest. He stretched his new arms, flexing the years of inactivity and neglect from the servos of his stubby single-jointed fingers. “I’ve been in worse,” he declared, and plucked the transfer cable from the back of his neck with a shrug. “You’ll get your money as soon as we track down Gladys. ”

Dag scratched at his crotch. “Who’s Gladys?”

Vei let out an impatient bleat. “Feh, power up the magnet.”

“No… please,” Igon said. “She’s got some data. Valuable data. We stole it, me and her. We were gonna sell it to a warlord. My share was gonna be huge, and I was only in it for ten percent. But if we track her down and take the data, we can cut her out of the deal. A hundred percent, all mine. –Except for a very generous two percent I’m willing to give you, of course, for the help.”

“Two percent of nothing is nothing,” Vei mused. “You said you could pay us. Now.”

“I can,” Igon said. “I will. All we need to do is find Gladys, then Klakraw. Gladys wouldn’t tell me exactly where he is, but he’s in the Otulak system, that much I know. ...Unless Gladys was lying about that. Wouldn’t put it past her... she’s a crafty one. Sexy, but crafty. See, she actually put the deal together—only brought me on to crack a safe, take her verbal abuse... fall in love... no, wait... love?” Igon made a fist and whacked the side of his head. “Damn, I think some of my bits got flipped what with all the blowing up and magnets... Does anybody else smell almonds?”

“Erase him,” Vei told Feh. “He’s insane.”

Feh stopped scrubbing at the shell-rot mold on his left knee with a wire brush and reached for the electromagnetic crane controls.

“No, wait!” Igon stood, stumbling a moment before getting his balance on his creaking new legs. “I’m not insane. I’m serious. It’ll be a huge payday for all of us. We just have to get the data back. And that won’t be hard at all—Gladys is probably still stuck in the life boat.”

“There’s a life boat?” Vei asked.

“Yeah. That’s how she survived my little ambush. Really should have disabled the thing, now that I think about it.”

“Now there’s something that could be worth salvaging,” Dag said.

Vei croaked at Dag to shut up. “Are you offering us the life boat?” Vei asked Igon.

“It’s all yours.”

Vei scratched at her neck mold. “All right. If the life boat isn’t a total piece of crap we’re partners for it and two percent of this deal you got going. Otherwise, you’re erased.”

“You’ll see,” Igon said.  “We’ll all be rich. Now, this bucket got any weapons?”

“To take on a life boat?” Feh asked.

Igon walked up the engineering nest-station and looked up at Feh. “Gladys is human. They’re tricky. Especially this one. She’s a monster. She’s half machine, and not the good half. No morals whatsoever. I mean, look at what she did to me, right?”

“We have a plasma cannon,” Vei said.

“It work?” Igon asked.

“Sometimes,” Dag said, “you kick it right.”

Vei again croaked at Dag to shut up, emphasizing her point by cracking her elbow against Dag’s shell. “Doesn’t matter if it works or not. Ammo costs money.”

“Make it three percent, then,” Igon said.

Vei extended her hand. “Agreed.”

FIVE

“And voilà! A lunch fit for a sexy queen.” Lieutenant Detective Hackenthrush put a single red Drantini rose atop the eleven-course meal stacked high on the cart. Bottle of wine tucked under his arm, he pushed the cart towards the mess hall’s exit. “I’ll let you know how she likes it. I’m guessing long and hard, so she’s in luck.”

Rikki stepped in front of the cart. “Not so fast.”

Hackenthrush stopped, but not before banging the cart into Rikki. And then backing up and banging into him again. The plates under their chrome presentation domes clanked together. “My boat, my cart.”

“Sure,” Rikki said, rubbing his knees while his tail flicked out to pluck the bottle of wine from under Hackenthrush’s armpit. “But it’s my wine.”

Hackenthrush arched an eyebrow at Rikki. “We’re going to have to fight over this, aren’t we?”

Rikki’s ears flattened against his head. “To the death. Or until we get bored.”

“Choose your weapon,” Hackenthrush said, his eyes slowly – and he hoped unnoticed – drifting towards the autorifle on the nearby table. “I’ll take the–”

“Dibs on the autorifle.” Rikki quickly swiped the rifle off the table and hugged it to his chest.

“Damn!” Hackenthrush jabbed a finger at Rikki. “But you’re wearing a blindfold.”

“Fine.” Rikki shrugged and handed Hackenthrush the autorifle while he tied a napkin over his eyes, then reached out blindly in front of him.

Hackenthrush handed the rifle back and opened his jacket to stare at his empty shoulder holster. Growling, he turned to examine the table. He picked a plate off the stack and examined it dubiously. “Guess I’ll use a plate, then…”

“Excuse me, Lieutenant Hackenthrush,” 8724 called over the mess hall intercom.

“Can he get back to you?” Rikki pointed the autorifle at Hackenthrush. “He’s about to get shot. Right between the eyes.”

Hackenthrush swallowed – the rifle was aimed dead at his crotch. He lightly grabbed the barrel and lifted it, pointing it at his chest instead. “It’s okay, 8724. Go ahead.
Please
.”

“Junior Officer Loy needs to see you on the bridge.”

“The
what
, 8724?” Hackenthrush asked.

8724 sighed. “The cockpit, Lieutenant Detective.”

“Heh, heh,” Rikki chuckled, and whacked his palm against the autorifle’s power stud, slapping it up to full charge. It came on with a dull, teeth-shakingly lethal hum. “You said
cockpit
.”

Hackenthrush looked at the autorifle, then at his plate, then back at the autorifle. Then up at the intercom speaker in the ceiling. “Well, if it’s important… we’ll be right up.”

“What’s up, rookie?” Hackenthrush asked as he climbed up through the hole in the deck and onto the bridge. “You manage to get Jack Benny to come in clear on that thing?”

“No… sir.” Junior Officer stood in front of the bridge’s main CRT. A mug shot of a slender, athletically built woman in her mid-twenties rotated on the screen. “I took the liberty of running our guest through the DUPES Criminal Database. And good thing I did.”

“Hey, that sorta looks like Miss Swartzbaum,” Rikki said as he climbed up onto the bridge and saw the mugshot on the CRT. “Only she’s a brunette.”

Loy nodded. “And her name’s not Swartzbaum.” She pointed at the printout spewing from the chattering dot-matrix next to the CRT. “It’s Hershell. Didi Hershell. Or, it’s Vivian Lee. Or Myrna the Torch. She’s also been known to go by Dorothy Wynant, Maureen O’Sullivan, Minna Gombell, Natalie Moorhead, Nora Charles... Point is, she’s had a lot of names.”

“And apparently some breast work,” Hackenthrush said, plopping down into his commander’s chair. “
For the better
.”

Loy tore the first ten pages off the printout and walked it over to Hackenthrush. The printer continued to spew behind her. “She’s some kind of criminal mastermind. Look at this record. Hundreds of arrests in dozens of star systems... Grand thefts. Extortions. Confidence games. Rigging elections. You name it, she’s been arrested for it, or is wanted for it.” She scanned the printout, her eyes getting wider and wider. “How is she not locked away for life?”

Hackenthrush shrugged. “She’s hot. Special rules apply to people like her and me.”

“Ha!” Rikki blurted.

“Hot?” Loy asked. “She’s clearly an anti-social psychopath–”

“Sure,” Cortez said, “blow up one elementary school and they brand you for life.”

Loy looked up from the printout and past Hackenthrush to see Cortez’s head and shoulders popping up through the hole in the deck, her robomechanical hand on the lip of the hatch, ready to close it, and her other hand around her needler, aimed at the back of Hackenthrush’s head.

“Hold it!” Loy shouted, fumbling with the printout while reaching for the service raygun at her hip.

Cortez disappeared down through the deck hole, slamming the hatch shut behind her. A moment later, the wheel spun, and the
clank
of a locking bolt being fitted into place on the other side of the hatch echoed ominously through the bridge.

Which is when Loy finally managed to get her raygun out of its holster. She pointed it at the closed hatch. “You’re under arrest…” Her voice trailed off.

“Don’t look so glum, rookie,” Hackenthrush said, leaning forward to pat Loy on the shoulder. “You’ll get her next time.”

Hopping off the ladder onto Deck 5, Cortez holstered her needler and tapped commands into the underside of her robomechanical arm. “Still with me, Ship?”

“I am here,” 8724 said. “How can I serve you?”

“Lock your controls to me only. Then kill all power to the bridge except for emergency lighting and life support. Then get your ass over to the Otulak system.”

“Controls locked. Bridge powered down. Charting a course to – excuse me, but did you say the Otulak system?”

“Yup.”

“You are aware that is a prohibited system?”

“So I hear,” Cortez said with a enthusiastic nod. “Completely lawless, neutral no-man’s land territory. Anarchy from one end of its Oort cloud to the other. Pretty much lethal for anybody who isn’t backed up by a war fleet to slip into.”

“Just checking,” 8724 said. “Charting a superluminal course now. It will take a couple minutes.”

“Ooh,” Cortez said, clapping her hands together hungrily as she hung a left into the mess hall. “Just time for a snack.”

“8724?” Junior Officer Loy asked again, staring at the black screen of the CRT. Every gauge, indicator bulb, and CRT on the bridge had gone dead and silent just moments before. The only illumination came from the dim red emergency bulbs in the bridge’s conical ceiling, and the only sound was the rattling din of the air exchangers. “Please respond. Now’s not the time for a joke.”