BLOOD AND CIRCUITS
A Sol Blazers Short Story
Jacob Holo & Edie Skye
Aiko had seen this movie before.
A spaceship of Average Joes and Jills just minding their own business when suddenly a uniformed stiff with a secret military budget shows up and says, “We have a problem, and your unique set of skills just happens to be the solution.”
There were a handful of sentences a woman—well, preserved consciousness spread across multiple synthetic bodies—wanted to hear in her life, and she’d spent her entire extended life (and most of her meat life) waiting to hear that one.
Today she’d chosen the body best suited for it: fashionable combat android, red armor accented with gold filigree, triangular head as sharp as an axe wedge, leather jacket she didn’t need for warmth but deemed necessary for maximum badassery.
In short, she looked the part.
Trouble was, she couldn’t figure out why the man needed her. It wasn’t like there was a shortage of people in the solar system who’d shoot stuff for pay. But he’d requested her by name, so now she and her captain stood outside the Neptune Dragon while their potential employer strode to meet them.
Her initial characterization wasn’t exaggerated. He was a uniformed brick right down to his hard-lined blocky face and clay-red skin, modified from human baseline. The rest of that angular body was clad in a dark green uniform with black trim, tailored so precisely it looked like he’d been born in it. A patch bearing the black silhouette of a horse rearing marked him as belonging to the Neptune Concord Space Force, while his rank insignia designated him a commander.
He looked like the kind of man who could bust heads, whether by his own hands or through a well-targeted order. The kind of man you could throw through a window, and he’d get the problem solved.
There was a pinch in his face as he approached them, as if to say he wanted to be the one breaking the window but had somehow been forced to throw her through instead.
Or maybe he’d just glimpsed her captain.
If the commander was a solid brick, Captain Nathan Kade was a weathered stone that had seen a hard season of messy storms and needed a good pressure wash. He’d prepared as best he could for the potential client, but the fact was their recent jobs had pitted them against a crazed, world-ending superweapon and an invisible monster in search of love in all the wrong places. Those sorts of adventures took their toll on a person.
Aiko didn’t grow tired and rarely worried about risking life and limb. Sure, she had to avoid being shot or exploded (again), but even then the most she’d lose was her current body and a handful of unpreserved memories. In some ways, she rather regretted that she’d never look tired for her captain.
In his own rough leather jacket, with that coarse stubble, the old adventure scars, the huge pistol strapped to his muscular thigh, that tousled brown hair—Nathan made tired look good in a way that put her fully back in her meat brain.
He extended a strong hand to the approaching naval officer.
“Welcome to the Neptune Dragon. I’m Captain Nathaniel Kade, and this is my second-in-command, Aiko Pratti.”
The man greeted both of them with a handshake as solid as the rest of him.
“Commander William Hughes,” he declared in a gruff, clipped voice. “Special Operations Officer aboard NCSF Azure Eagle.”
“A pleasure, Commander. Aiko tells me you’ve got a job for us.”
“Yes, though I can’t discuss the details out here.” Hughes made a circular gesture, indicating the docking bay the Neptune Dragon sat in.
“Naturally.” Nathan gestured toward his ship. “If you’ll follow us, Commander.”
Aiko had looked up both Hughes and the ship he served on before this meeting. She hadn’t found much information about the man, but Azure Eagle was a truly gargantuan vessel—a cruiser capable of wiping the floor with anything short of a Saturnian or Jovian warship. Commander Hughes squeezed into the small side room and dropped into his seat like he was accustomed to having more space, which was probably true.
“There’s a piece of trouble the NCSF would like to see taken care off,” Hughes began once Nathan and Aiko were settled across from him. “Quietly and discreetly.”
“How discreetly are we talking?” Nathan asked.
“NCSF involvement must be kept a secret.”
“Well.” Nathan shrugged his arms. “That sort of discretion comes at a premium.”
“My superiors are aware of that.” Hughes produced a vlass tablet and slid it over. Nathan spun it around and read the bottom line. Suddenly he looked a lot less tired.
“That’s . . . what I would call ‘reasonable compensation’ for discretion.”
Nathan slid the vlass over to Aiko, who whistled without lips.
“Now the question becomes,” her captain went on, “why can’t the NCSF handle this themselves?”
“The problem involves a foreign warship.”
“Ah. Then you’re trying to get rid of the problem without provoking an interplanetary incident?”
“Precisely.” Hughes tapped a button on his tablet, and an image of Neptune appeared, its equator girdled by the green-blue ribbon of its orbital ring. He zoomed out, and icons for the hundreds of nearby habitats flooded the screen.
“There’s a situation on a habitat called the Broken Bottle.”
He zoomed in on one of the sorriest excuses for a habitat Aiko had ever seen. It looked like it had once been a windowed cylinder, but now resembled debris from a drunken bar brawl. Only one end remained—a disk eighty-five kilometers across and one kilometer thick, with metal teeth forming a jagged crown on one side along the rim, completing the illusion of the bottom of a shattered bottle.
“That’s some prime real-estate there,” Nathan grumbled.
“We believe the Broken Bottle was nearly destroyed four millennia ago during the Scourging of Heaven. It’s considered worthless, and for good reason. Not much habitable space, and no deifactories or other lost technology. It’s currently leased to the Saturn Union, which subleased it to the Tarsho Syndicate.”
“Should we assume they’ve been up to unsavory business in Neptune’s backyard?” Nathan asked.
“We have our suspicions, but can’t act upon them,” Hughes explained. “The problem is a legal one. Technically, because of the agreement between the Neptune Concord and Saturn Union, the Broken Bottle is Union territory for the duration of the lease.”
“Which means you don’t have the authority to move in,” Aiko said.
“Correct. Given the current political situation, the NCSF is only allowed to enter the Broken Bottle under extreme circumstances, such as violation of the terms of the lease or a disaster requiring our aid. Evidence of criminal activity would also satisfy that requirement and allow us to move in.”
“So, you’d like someone unassociated with the NCSF to go in and get the evidence.” Aiko sat back. “Someone like us.”
“Plausible deniability is key.”
“Do we know who’s in charge of this little enterprise?” Nathan asked. “You said it was leased to the Tarsho Syndicate.”
Hughes tabbed over to a pair of images on his vlass.
“The two key players are Captain Alfonso gen Arturikk, in command of the Saturn Union Navy destroyer Echoes of Flame, and Director Xavier vaan Tarsho. We understand the latter’s something of a rising star within his family’s syndicate.”
Aiko leaned in to better study the men. Both were baseline humans with cybernetic enhancements, but where Captain Arturikk’s were slick and subtle, Director Tarsho’s were conspicuous and boastful, perhaps even intended to draw attention to themselves.
“And by ‘rising star,’ you mean . . .” Aiko prompted.
“Rumor is the last subordinate to get in Tarsho’s way was found hung from a meat hook.” Hughes grimaced. “Alongside the rest of the man’s family.”
“And that makes him a rising star?”
“In his family, apparently so.”
“Lovely.”
“We believe these two men,” Hughes continued, “are conspiring to utilize the Broken Bottle as a staging area for illicit activity near Neptune. The nature of the activity is unknown, but Echoes makes regular circuits of both the leading and trailing Trojan habitats, picking up unknown cargo and transporting it to the Broken Bottle.”
“The Neptune Trojans?” Nathan frowned. “What’s out there that has them so interested?”
“We don’t know.”
“Any idea who or what they’re transporting?”
“They have declined to provide manifests, citing the”—Hughes sneered—“legally-correct fact they’re not setting foot on Neptunian soil.”
“And you’d rather not pick a fight with a SUN warship to search them,” Nathan surmised.
“Exactly.”
Nathan glanced once more to the vlass, then nodded slowly.
“The job seems straightforward enough. Go in, secure the evidence, get out.” He looked up. “Why us?”
“You’re the only freelancers in the solar system with a Jovian stealth corvette.” He indicated their surroundings. “You’ll be able to infiltrate the Broken Bottle undetected, even with that destroyer nearby.”
“True,” Aiko said, “but stealth is going to be a problem once we’re inside.”
“Which is one of two reasons we specifically requested you.” Hughes met Aiko’s cameras with a steady gaze. “We have a body you can use.”
“I have plenty of spares.”
“Not one with this kind of weaponry, I’d wager.”
Aiko tilted her head. “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”
“Firearms are the fastest way to your heart,” Nathan teased, then his expression turned serious. “What’s the second reason?”
“This.” Hughes tabbed over to another page on his vlass. “I believe you’re already acquainted with Prinn Pratti.”
The woman in the picture was blue-skinned and silver-eyed with a long white braid slung over a bare, slender shoulder. Despite Nathan’s joke, Aiko didn’t have a heart anymore, but she still felt an emotional jolt upon seeing her.
“Of course I do,” she replied after a long pause. “She’s one of my copy-clan sisters. She’s basically another version of me.”
“She’s Tarsho’s girlfriend.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Aiko crossed her arms once she and Nathan were alone. “All of the Pratti branches have some predisposition for deviancy. I mean, all you have to do is look at yours truly to see that! But we’re not criminals!”
“Seems Prinn is,” Nathan said.
The Jovian Everlife was composed of copy-clans: singular minds spread to multiple bodies and regularly re-integrated to maintain the intellectual coherence of one being. That was why Aiko couldn’t bring herself to believe Prinn would involve herself with a scumbag like Tarsho. She and Prinn were, in many ways, the same person.
“Maybe one of Prinn’s copies went bad,” Nathan suggested. “Or perhaps she made some bad choices and is in over her head.”
“Maybe . . .” Aiko sighed without exhaling. “Whatever’s going on, I need to go in there.”
“You know that’s what Hughes wants. Prinn’s the bait for us to accept this job.”
“Don’t care. She’s my sister. Hell, she’s practically me! I need to do this, Nate. I need to know why she’s hooked up with Tarsho.”
“All right.” He spoke those words with an undercurrent of sympathy borne from countless close calls together. “But can you do sneaky?”
Nathan looked her up and down. She would have been flattered if she hadn’t been in her bombastic commando body. (Oh, heck, she was still flattered.)
“Depends on the body they have in store for me,” she replied with a shrug.
“Oh, this’ll definitely work!”
The body put her in mind of a femme fatale, and there was a gun hidden in the forearm.
Specifically, the entire right forearm unfolded into a veritable cannon that, despite a barrel that looked designed to fire ballistic shells, discharged energy beams with a dull thwomp. It shot energy beams as silently as a dead body falling on a bed, with multiple settings from stun to “Where’d he go?” She’d never heard of an energy weapon this miniaturized, and when she asked Hughes about that, all he said was it involved lost technology and had taken an obscene amount of paperwork to requisition.
That was good enough for her.
There was plenty of femme in that fatale, too. The body was sleek and lithe, adapted for all manner of infiltration with curves that could exploit . . . a multitude of meat bodies’ weaknesses. She showed off those curves to her captain and even made him blush a little before returning to all business. The job was to be a dangerous one, and both of them needed to keep their heads in the game.
Several hours later, the Broken Bottle loomed ahead of the Neptune Dragon’s slow approach.
“We’ll drop you off near the disk’s center,” Nathan said. “You’ll need to make your way ‘down’ to the outer edge, where gravity is about one gee.”
“No problem,” Aiko replied. “Zero-g? One gee? Three? I fought in them all back in my commando days.”
“How about ‘sneaked’?”
“That, not so much.”
The Echoes of Flame lingered nearby, resembling a skyscraper plucked into space and slathered with guns and armor.
There were more weapons on the habitat—SUN missile batteries, courtesy of the Echoes of Flame. Aiko studied them through the Neptune Dragon’s telescope.
“Looks nasty. I bet those missiles could pop a cruiser.”
“Arturikk placed them there to protect the habitat when his ship isn’t nearby,” Nathan said.
“And they don’t violate the lease?”
“Not unless they do something dumb like shoot down unarmed merchants.”
“Still, I bet firing them would be an easy way to draw official attention.” Aiko wagged her eyebrows. She liked having eyebrows for a change.
“Resist temptation. You’re supposed to be stealthy.”
“I’m only kidding.”
The Echoes of Flame vanished from view as they slid beneath the disk’s dark side, heading toward the central dock. The outer door had been bent open by some ancient calamity. Aiko maneuvered them inside and then set them down within one of the many unoccupied docks.
The ship was in freefall this close to the disk’s rotating center. Aiko unbuckled frrm her seat, gave her captain a confident salute, and ventured out of the ship.
Toward the mission.
Toward her copy-clan sister.
She made her way out of the dock, through black, airless passages, traveling ever “downward” toward the rim of the rotating disk. In these shadows, she sensed why this habitat appealed to the Syndicate’s purposes, whatever they were. She’d navigated barely a mile from the dock when warped debris blocked her. She squirmed in through a gap in the wall and continued her descent through the guts of the habitat. She felt like a bug crawling through the intestines of a great, dead, mechanical beast.
Her journey continued downward for forty kilometers and took the better part of two days. She descended through twisted passages and pinched ducts, through holes and around great utility canyons, always downward, the gravity ever increasing.
She began to notice signs of power, passed through an airlock, and kept going with gravity as her guide.
She had to be getting close.
A short while later, she found what she sought.
The condition within the Broken Bottle made it inviable for large-scale settling—not when there were so many functional (or close enough to it) habitats left over from the Scourging—but its stark passages still carried the growing din of activity.
She heard hatches opening and closing. The clack of weapons. The rustle of clothing. The clomp of heavy boots and . . . clicking of high heels?
She approached those sounds carefully, cautiously, slinking her way forward and down until she came to a series of large chambers, open and interconnected around the habitat’s great structural members. The nearest chamber was quiet, so she found a loose wall panel, eased it open, and took a quick glimpse.
The Syndicate must have installed its own dock somewhere nearby along the disk’s circumference. The people here were far too fancily dressed to have traversed the Broken Bottle’s guts like she had. They milled about in a queue leading to a giant hatch built into the far wall. Guards uniformed in Tarsho Syndicate red-and-black stood on either side. They opened the way for the guests like fancy doormen, but their slung rifles left no doubt as to their capacity for violence. The guests passing into the second chamber regarded the guards with casual aloofness.
Aiko made her way through the walls to the chamber beyond the big hatch. She located a panel she could pry loose and began to work it free. This one was riskier; sound alone told her there were a lot of people nearby, but she couldn’t stay hidden in the walls forever and considered the risk worth it.
She cracked the panel open a hair, and light spilled into her hiding spot. Far more than from the first chamber.
She peered through to observe an explosion of luster and fashion. The mundanity of the previous chamber here shifted to a grand expanse of lavish flourishes. Red and black banners hung from the ceiling alongside diamond chandeliers that blazed like fiery rainbows. Artwork hung from the walls, and artifacts sat atop ornate plinths. Long, intricately-carved tables were laden with sumptuous feasts and great quantities of alcohol. Over a hundred people—all as elegant and ostentatious as their surroundings—milled about the tables or in more private, cushioned alcoves that all faced a central stage.
This was no mere fancy dress party. The location was too secret, the pompousness too . . . confined. She hadn’t stumbled into a display meant to flaunt wealth and power to the public. There was no public in attendance, just color-coded goons: red and black for the Syndicate, beige with white trim for the Union spacers.
Except for the serving staff.
Those were exclusively women, baseline humans or with very subtle divergences such as unusual hair color or pointed ears.
They weren’t wearing a lot of clothing, either.
Definitely not your average dinner party.
Aiko was too far away and there were too many overlapping conversations for her to ever hope to pick out anything useful. She needed to get closer.
She might even have to mingle.
But how to best pull that off?
The fancy guests all looked like people who would be recognized by the goons, so pretending to be one came with buckets of risk. The serving girls, though, were treated more like part of the decor than people, their faces forgotten as soon as they delivered their trays of appetizers or drinks, and all their routes passed through a small sliding door inset into an alcove behind the tables, perhaps leading to the kitchen.
A few of the serving girls deviated to a second doorway, this one labeled as the place where certain biological necessities tied to food and drink were relieved in privacy.
Aiko didn’t miss that part of being organic, but it made her next step easier. She replaced the panel, maneuvered through the guts of the walls until she reached the restroom, waited above one of the stalls until one of the serving girls entered it, then put her to sleep with a soft thwomp from her arm cannon.
She felt a little guilty about this as she dropped down into the stall. The young woman was surely hired to serve drinks and, potentially, to satisfy other needs. The chances she was a major player in a criminal conspiracy were slim to none.
But, Aiko reflected, she could probably use a good nap . . . even if it’d be a drafty one without her clothes.
The short black dress satisfied all those words: so black it seemed to soak in the light, so dress its lacy bits clung to her curves like the hands of a long-lost lover, and so short it limited no range of motion.
She hid the sleeping body and left the restroom.
It took exactly one poured drink for a slimy patron to slap her ass, then took every ounce of her self-control not to blast him in the face with her arm cannon. Instead she flashed a carefully cowed look and skittered off to refill another drink.
Stealth was hard.
She wondered what all of this was for as she moved about the chamber, and quickly she began to piece together an explanation. The guests spoke of bidding on exotic purchases. An auction, then? But an auction of what?
“From what I hear, Tarsho’s outdone himself this time,” said one guest. Aiko tried to linger to hear more, but he switched to bragging about a recent business deal, and she couldn’t stay longer without drawing suspicion.
Still, it soon became clear that Tarsho had organized this auction, and it wasn’t long before she spotted the man himself.
With Prinn Pratti on his arm.
Director Xavier vaan Tarsho reclined in one of the cushioned alcoves, arms spread across the back in the manner of one who owned the place and didn’t intend anyone in the room to forget it. Now that she saw him in full, she noted his cybernetics probably weren’t the result of necessity. If Commander Hughes had been a solid brick, Tarsho was a whole sturdy house, if perhaps renovated to accommodate a killer security system.
He was capable of a lot with that standard body, but the cybernetics must have made him capable of more. Prinn reclined beside him, head against his shoulder like someone who’d seen everything those cybernetics could do and found at least some of the less savory features worth exploring.
Aiko acknowledged there were some women—meat-based or otherwise—who would risk entanglement with powerful, dangerous men, and that went double for men with jawlines that strong, even if the jaw and teeth were metal.
She just couldn’t figure out what Prinn saw in him.
Her copy-sister still maintained the body Aiko most associated with her—an emulation of divergent human flesh with blue skin and silver eyes, clad in a dress on the skimpier end of the fancy spectrum, her hair done up in an ostentatious style.
Aiko began to inch closer when the stage lit up.
A spotlight illuminated a lectern to the side of the main stage, and a man in Syndicate formal wear strode to take his place behind it.
“Welcome once again, our illustrious and esteemed guests.”
Aiko associated most auctioneers with annoyance, but this man had a voice like velvet. The kind of voice that made people want to buy things. The kind of voice that could sell a piece of scrap from a trash bin at prices reserved for artifacts from before the Scourging.
“We’ve acquired an enticing variety of collectables for your perusal this month, including the treasures of which you were already informed—as well as several . . . tantalizing surprises.”
He smiled conspiratorially. The guests oohed as if he’d promised them an extra special cake this evening.
Aiko doubted it was cake.
“Now, to start the evening—”
“A-hem.”
A woman at the table next to Aiko lifted her empty glass with an imperious sneer, offended that the serving girl had the audacity to leave her glass empty. She refilled it with an extra-subservient face, and then—dammit, her bottle was empty. She needed to grab another from the kitchen.
She hurried in that direction, eyeing the stage as she cut through the crowd.
“For our canine aficionados, a Dobrian Shepherd from the finest stock of Neptune.”
Well, that was surprising. It looked like a normal black and fawn guard dog.
“With, shall we say, some aftermarket modifications.”
The attendant escorting the dog snapped a terse command, and the dog unfolded into a true cybernetic terror, eyes glowing, claws transforming into scythes, teeth buzzing like mirrored chainsaws.
Definitely aftermarket.
But not exactly illegal, at least on Saturn, where cybernetic enhancements were fairly common. Securing deifactured cybernetics compatible with the animal must have been quite the feat, but not unheard-of given how many unexplored corners of the solar system remained.
“We’ll start the bidding at—”
The bidding started at what Nathan and his crew had been paid for their last job.
By the time she’d exited the kitchen with a new bottle, the dog had gone for four times that amount.
Subsequent pieces were of more ambiguous legality: a selection of animals, both divergent and cybernetically modified, alongside deifactured artifacts and weapons.
But these seemed intended as teasers to whet their guests’ appetites, and soon, the audience was sufficiently primed for the main course.
The auctioneer leaned over the lectern with another of those winning grins.
“Now, for one of the most anticipated items up for bid—a piece I know several of you have been yearning to see.”
The attendant returned, this time conveying . . . a collared woman on a leash.
The woman was extraordinarily beautiful, with a shock of fiery orange hair, tall foxlike ears, and an orange tail capped in a tuft of furry white. Her skin was creamy, her eyes reddish with dark, vertical slits. The dress she wore wasn’t meant to stay on for very long.
The announcer sang the praises of both her physical attributes and her “behavioral conditioning” with an ease that skipped offensive and dove straight into revolting.
The bids began in earnest, and the amount soon eclipsed all previous auctions.
Aiko recognized the first numbered paddle, held in an arm encased in beige and white, attached to the other man she’d seen in their briefing: Captain Alfonso gen Arturikk.
Her eyes glanced to Prinn, who listened to the rising bids with indifference that would have twisted her guts had she still possessed any. Arturikk won, and the moment the “item” was escorted off the stage, the captain stood to leave.
So, too, did Tarsho and Prinn.
Aiko decided right then and there she’d end this entire sickening affair.
Somehow.
It was a stereotype, but damn, she loved a good vent.
Technically they weren’t vents so much as warped gaps in the walls left by the habitat’s destruction, but they served a similar purpose, which was to let her creep around the place unseen.
Tarsho and Arturikk conversed as they walked, mentioning something about business before pleasure. The six guards accompanying them said nothing.
Prinn clung to Tarsho’s arm until she assumed a look of boredom and purred that she would use the time to put on something more appropriate. Aiko wasn’t sure what was more appropriate than the skimpy number Prinn already wore, but she liked the opportunity this presented.
Arturikk and Tarsho split off toward a side room, accompanied by four guards. Prinn continued on with two of her own down the hall. They rounded a corner, which placed the two groups out of sight of each other. Given the acoustics in the area and the noise from the ongoing auction, they’d be out of earshot soon as well.
Good.
It was time to see what her new body could really do.
Prinn left the two guards outside.
Aiko positioned herself above the guards and loosened another panel. She had to work both quick and quiet. Too slow and the guards would shout off a warning, ruining the surprise visit she intended to pay her copy-sister. She could have killed the two goons, but figured stealth and discretion were still the order of the day.
Her arm blossomed like a strange, flesh-coated flower, and she fired twice.
The two bodies collapsed, and she dropped down to join them.
She’d thought she’d been quiet, but the door swung open, and Prinn stormed out, pistol rising.
“Freeze!” Aiko brought her arm up faster, and Prinn obeyed, pistol still aimed at the floor.
She eyed the cannon’s large, black port.
“Don’t try anything, sis,” Aiko said. “Mine’s bigger.”
“‘Sis’?” Prinn cocked her head. She displayed no fear despite the gun pointed at her head; Jovians took a rather relaxed view of life, death, and explosive decapitation. Having spare bodies helped with that.
Instead, her eyes flicked about, cool and analytical.
“What happened to busting baddies with the Platinum Corsairs?” Aiko asked pointedly.
Prinn flinched. “Aiko?”
“In the flesh. Figuratively speaking.”
Prinn glanced at her legs. “That’s a lot of figure from where I’m standing.”
“I could say the same about you. Strange of me to find you in such . . . colorful company. You and Tarsho, huh?”
“I can explain.”
“You’d better. Otherwise, you’re about to become acquainted with this gun’s more impressive features.”
“Same old Aiko.” Prinn seemed to relax a little. “You always were the blunt instrument of the family.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. I’ve already seen one woman who needs to be rescued from this hellhole.”
“There’s more than one. A lot more. I’m putting my gun away. You okay with that?”
“As long as I don’t see any sudden moves.”
Prinn holstered her gun. There were no sudden moves.
“Now, about that explanation,” Aiko pressed.
“Mind if I drag these guards inside first? We’re exposed out here.”
“Go ahead.”
Prinn grabbed one guard by the shirt, threw him in like he was a lumpy sack of potatoes, then chucked the second goon on top of the first. Aiko followed her in and closed the door.
“I have a feeling you’re here for the same reason I am,” Prinn explained. “The best way to get close to Tarsho is as one of his business partners. Or one of his girls. The latter seemed easier.”
“How easy were you?”
“Please don’t ask for details. Tarsho’s ‘lovemaking’”—Prinn provided air quotes—“has all the nuance and subtlety of a woodchipper. But he likes his girls exotic, and as a Jovian, I satisfy his kink. Long story short, I had some recent dealings with the Tarsho Syndicate, caught wind of what they’ve been doing out here, and decided to do something about it.”
“Which is?”
“You’ve seen enough by now. The worst of it is human trafficking.”
“Why hasn’t anyone reported this?”
“The victims are all from low-tech societies. Some of the poor sods are so backwards they think fire is the new, happening thing. Best they can do is send up a smoke signal. Not quite enough to get the NCSF involved.”
“You’d be surprised,” Aiko replied, and Prinn eyed her up and down.
“Oh, I see. I see. I was wondering about the arm cannon. Not exactly standard issue for a Jovian face. Anyway, I’ve spent the past several months trying to bring Tarsho down but haven’t landed on the right opportunity.”
“That dress hasn’t provided you with any opportunities?”
“Killing him won’t solve the problem. Sure, it’d be satisfying as hell, but the Syndicate will just replace him, maybe with someone worse. Plus, I’ll lose this body,” she added as an afterthought.
“Then it does sound like we’re here for the same reason,” Aiko said. “Who’s here with you?”
“Me, myself, and I.”
“How many bodies, then?”
“Just the one.”
“You’ve trying to take Tarsho down alone?”
Prinn shrugged.
“Well, you’re in luck,” Aiko declared, “because it turns out you do have backup. And, after seeing their setup from both outside and within, I have an idea.”
She knew it was literally an action her captain told her not to take, but . . . she did enjoy improvising.
And blowing things up.
Why not dabble in both at the same time?
“Would you happen to have the codes?” Aiko asked.
“The codes?”
“To the missile batteries.”
“Oh.” Prinn blinked. “Oh. No, those are controlled by spacers from Echoes of Flame, not the Syndicate. But . . . I imagine Captain Arturikk would have a copy. He has a safe in his suite. That’s the first place I’d check.”
“Were you easy with him, too?”
“Please stop.”
“Sorry. Where’s the captain’s suite?”
“Back the way we came.”
“What are he and Tarsho up to right now?”
“Business before pleasure. Maybe plotting their next run through the Trojans. Who knows and who cares? Tarsho will be back once I’ve had time to pretty myself up, and Arturikk . . .” She grimaced, and Aiko thought back to the captain’s purchase of the fox girl.
“Yeah.” Aiko opened and quickly collapsed her gun arm. She flexed her fingers. “I think it’s time for some coitus interruptus.”
Prinn had selected what Jovians referred to as a “face” to avoid rousing Tarsho’s suspicion, which meant that while she could perform any number of functions required to interact with meat sacks, she lacked Aiko’s raw combat potential.
But she could still sneak.
Once Tarsho left Arturikk’s room, the Pratti sisters moved into position. The Syndicate goons followed Tarsho while a pair of SUN spacers remained to guard the entrance to their captain’s suite, while he was alone inside with the slave he’d purchased.
Now the only thing separating Aiko and Prinn from the fox girl was a straight shot through a pair of color-coded bad guys. They could have dropped straight into Arturikk’s room, but Aiko figured it best to take the guards out first. They might sound an alarm or something.
Besides, it wasn’t often she had a body like this. May as well put it through its paces.
She dropped from the ceiling, arm cannon open. The pair began to swing their rifles up, but she fired first with a satisfying thwomp! The first Union spacer bashed against the wall with the loud thump of meat on metal, then slid down.
She hadn’t dialed the power level all the way up to “Where’d he go?” She’d wanted to, given present circumstances, but she wasn’t sure how much real estate behind the man a blast like that would vaporize, so she’d settled for “Thwomp with the promise of a headache.”
Prinn followed her down, and her pistol barked. The second spacer crumpled into a heap, blood soaking his shirt.
They took the guns from the guards then tried the hatch.
It wouldn’t open, so Aiko set her arm to “Locksmith Mode.” The blast took the door off its hinges, and they stormed in.
The fox girl’s dress was still on, to her fortune.
Arturikk’s pants were not, much to everyone’s misfortune—though it did provide Aiko with a convenient target. She dialed back to stun and fired. The thwomp threw Arturikk back, and while the force applied to his body had been nonlethal, most of it had impacted on a rather small region between his legs. He let out a shrill squeak, clutched his nether regions, then dropped to the ground.
Aiko hit him again, just to make sure he was out cold.
“Here’s the safe.” Prinn indicated a small, metallic square built into the back wall.
Aiko took one long look at the numbered pad, then scoffed and grabbed the handle. She ripped the front off and retrieved the vlass from the recessed interior. Its screen displayed step-by-step instructions for arming and then firing the anti-ship missile batteries. The sentences were short and didn’t include a lot of big words.
“Jackpot,” Prinn declared.
“You okay over there?” Aiko asked the fox girl, who was cowering behind the bed.
She peeked the top half of her head over the sheets, ears upright, slit pupils dilated.
“You want to get out of here?”
The woman paused, anxious and unsure, but then nodded emphatically.
“Great.” Aiko waved her over. “Come with us. We’ll find a place for you to hide until things calm down.”
The good thing about derelict habitats was they came with lots of hard-to-find cubbyholes. They found a safe nook for the woman to hide in, and then took a circuitous route to the missile batteries. SUN personnel had relocated the launchers from their destroyer to a massive, jagged shelf extending out from the Broken Bottle’s edge like a mountain range on its side. They’d connected the battery site to the rest of the occupied zones with a series of pressurized tunnels, but Aiko and Prinn took a different path.
One under a black, star-dappled sky.
They didn’t need air.
The missiles were each the size of grain silos, and the dozen or so launchers were even larger. They found an airlock near the base of the main installation and made their way inside. A Union spacer must have heard them coming and hurried over to check. He performed a double take upon glimpsing the two gorgeous, scantily-clad women.
Perhaps he thought he was dreaming.
One thwomp later, and he was.
They hurried past the unconscious spacer, incapacitated a few more, and located the master control console after several minutes of searching.
“We going to raise an alarm when we start?” Aiko asked.
“Probably.”
“Then you handle things here. I’ll watch your back.”
“Okay, but what’s our target?”
“What else but the Echoes of Flame?” Aiko grinned wolfishly. “There’s more mess here than the two of us can handle, but if we at least cripple that warship, the NCSF will be able to swoop right on in.”
“You sure about that?”
“They have a cruiser lurking in the area. The Azure Eagle. Trust me, they’re paying attention.” She raised her gun arm. “You deal with the missiles. I’ll handle the rest.”
Aiko hurried out of the control room, sealed the hatch behind her, and headed toward the pressurized tunnel. Any goons trying to reach Prinn would likely try that path first. She reached the entrance and enjoyed a few moments of silence before klaxons wailed and harsh lights strobed, bathing the area in red.
She heard the forces coming soon after, as unsubtle as the sirens, heavy boots clanking across solid ground. She cracked open her arm cannon and hunkered down behind the corner.
A hatch at the far end of the pressured tunnel opened, disgorging a . . . she wasn’t sure what the group noun for that many goons should be.
A gaggle of geese, she thought, a murder of crows. Ah! Got it!
She settled on an “expendable” of henchmen.
She knew she’d aimed for non-lethality so far, but Prinn wasn’t as well-equipped as her. The mass of soldiers storming her way were all in hard suits—combinations of body armor and environmental protection—and their weapons came in the dual flavors of “heavy” and “heavier.”
She needed to keep her sister safe. If that meant she had to take down a whole expendable of henchmen, then so be it.
She switched her cannon from stun to “fuck ’em” and blasted a patch to the side of the tunnel’s midpoint. The wall burst outward, and atmosphere vented to space. One goon tumbled out, but the rest hunkered down, magnetic boots and gauntleted fists clamping them in place. Their hard suits could handle the lack of air just fine, but they wouldn’t be receiving unarmored reinforcements anytime soon.
The suction died down, wheezing its last gasps into silence, and several goons opened fire. Bullets pattered off Aiko’s corner, and a lucky shot took a chunk out of her shoulder.
She swung out of cover, targeted the lead goon, and blasted him in the neck. He fell, his torso resembling a grotesque canyon as his head somersaulted back over the crowd. More armored goons poured into the tunnel until it resembled a seething mass of red and black.
Clearly, Tarsho didn’t like it when people messed with his toys.
Well, that was just too bad.
Bodies littered the corridor and blood boiled into the vacuum by the time she’d finished. About halfway through her gruesome work, some of the goons decided life was more important than their paychecks. They turned and fled, but the confusion sowed by their clumsy retreat only made them easier targets. A few got away, but they weren’t Aiko’s problem, because the next group coming her way shot the deserters!
She crouched behind her bullet-riddled corner and waited.
Director Xavier vaan Tarsho, resplendent in his black armor, rounded the bend, flanked by two elite guards in with thick riot shields. He scowled toward her, his face visible through the tinted faceplate. Clearly, he’d Had It with his subordinates today and had elected to take matters into his own hands.
To be fair, she’d been hoping for a shot at Tarsho, though he and his two buddies were better equipped than she’d expected. Still, she had a job to do. The trio closed ranks and advanced down the ruined tunnel. She took aim at one of Tarsho’s guards and fired.
The man staggered back, his riot shield dented in the center.
Huh, she thought, well, I’ve got a solution for that.
She cranked her cannon’s output all the way up to “Where’d he go?”
He went.
She fired another beam.
That guard went, too.
She steadied her aim on Tarsho and toggled the cannon a third time, but instead of a satisfying thwomp reverberating through her body, something clicked instead. She gave the weapon a quick, urgent look and tried again.
Click.
Tarsho unsheathed a long vibro-blade and sprinted past what remained of his guards.
Click, click.
Click-click-click.
It dawned on her, in the brief moments before Tarsho reached her, that perhaps she should have kept better tabs on her gun’s capacitors.
Tarsho swung, and his blade whisked smoothly through her unfolded forearm. Sparks flew, and the front half of the weapon dropped to the ground. Tarsho closed, knee extended, arms braced for a rising stroke that would cleave her in half if she didn’t move.
She moved.
Tarsho advanced.
Aiko had seen this movie, too. She knew the unspoken rules of engagement, but Tarsho wouldn’t pause to gloat or explain his plans or engage in comedic banter. He was out to kill her—this her, anyway—and then her sister. She flinched back, and the blade whispered past. Tarsho contracted his arms, angling for a thrust through her chest.
A thought snapped through her mind, and she rushed him.
He stabbed her through the heart.
Or where the heart belonged on a meat body. But on her, the narrow path through her torso failed to bisect any vitals. She grabbed his wrist and yanked his blade in all the way, pulling him close in the process. They stood almost eye to eye, him snarling at her from behind his tinted faceplate with that ridiculous metal jaw of his.
Aiko headbutted him, and the faceplate cracked. She smacked him again, and air whistled through a spiderweb of fissures.
Tarsho’s eyes bugged out. He tried to pull the sword loose, but she held it in place. He let go of the blade and scrambled to get away, but his back foot slipped in a pool of bodily fluids. He flew off his feet and landed heavily on his back.
Aiko pulled the sword out of her chest. She loomed over Tarsho, sword now upright in her remaining hand.
Tarsho gulped, his air leaking, sweat beading on his brow.
She favored him with a cruel, toothy grin.
Aiko sealed the airlock, then hurried back to the missile batteries. The ground shook on her way back, rhythmically and repeatedly as missiles launched into space, the light of their thrusters angling toward a distant gray glint.
She quickened her pace back, and when she reached the control room, she found her sister smiling ear to ear.
“We caught them with their pants down!” Prinn declared with a triumphant fist pump. “Every missile hit its mark!”
“Funny you should mention pants.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ll explain later.” Aiko surveyed the controls. There were a lot of numbers and blinky bits. “I wonder how long it’ll take the Eagle to notice.”
A new light started pulsing. Prinn leaned in, hunted around for a while, then tapped a key.
“—repeat, this is NCFS Azure Eagle to anyone on or near the Broken Bottle. We have observed several large explosions in your area and are moving immediately to assist. Please respond on this channel with any information you may have regarding the situation. We will prep our landing parties accordingly. Our ETA is fifty-seven minutes and counting.”
Aiko sniggered.
The two Prattis were long gone, climbing up through the Broken Bottle’s guts when the NCSF arrived in force. The scene those spacers found shocked them—shocked them to their very cores. Who could have imagined the Tarsho Syndicate was using the Broken Bottle for such nefarious ends? Good thing the Syndicate’s SUN accomplices were so bafflingly incompetent, they somehow managed to shoot their own destroyer!
A few weeks later, Commander Hughes visited the Neptune Dragon back on Neptune’s orbital ring. Prinn was still with them, now in practical clothing that nonetheless flattered her blue shapeliness.
Aiko had stitched up the bullet holes in her server dress, though she now wore it with her leather jacket. Squicky origins aside, it was a good dress, and she liked the awkward way Captain Kade tried not to look at her when she wore it.
“The damage to Echoes of Flame came as something of a surprise.” Hughes sighed. “Do you have any idea how much paperwork I now need to fill out?”
“For the record,” Nathan said, “you didn’t tell us not to blow it up.”
“I’ll be sure to provide more explicit instructions for the future.” The commander shrugged. “Huge explosions aside, everything seems to have worked out. The Broken Bottle lease has been terminated, Tarsho and Arturikk are in custody, their ship is an air-bleeding sieve, and Azure Eagle is even now returning most of the victims to their points of origin.”
“‘Most’?” Aiko asked.
“A few have expressed interest in naturalizing as Neptunian citizens. Additionally, the Saturn Union is so embarrassed by the whole affair, all they’re asking for is the return of their crew and what’s left of Echoes.”
“You going to let them go?”
“Only if we can’t pin them with specific crimes. Some of Arturikk’s crew were likely in the dark about what their captain and senior staff were up to. Once we’ve sifted through the evidence—and squeezed suitable compensation out of the Union—we’ll send those individuals back to Saturn. As for Tarsho, Arturikk, and their co-conspirators, they won’t be seeing the light of day for a very, very long time.”
“How is old Tarsho doing, anyway?” Aiko asked brightly.
“It’ll be a while before he’s back on solid food.” Hughes narrowed his gaze. “Did you really have to leave him with all those captives?”
“It was the closest place I could find to stuff him.” It hadn’t been, but she wasn’t about to admit that. “I did ask them not to kill him. Even said, ‘pretty please.’”
“How considerate of you,” Hughes replied dryly, but then he cracked a knowing grin.
“What about the rest of the Syndicate?” Prinn asked.
“They’re in a panic, and rightfully so. I’m not sure what the Union will do to the organization, but I expect it won’t be gentle.”
“How about the buyers at the auction?”
“That’s a slightly more delicate matter. Attending the auction isn’t a crime in and of itself. Sure, many of the goods for sale were illegal, but the guests will simply claim ignorance.”
Aiko snorted. “Yeah right.”
“I might agree with you, but the burden of proof lies on us. Luckily, we have you as a witness.” He indicated Prinn. “Along with the victims and any Syndicate or Union survivors who might be willing to spill their guts for leniency.”
“What about me?” Aiko asked. “Can’t I testify?”
“You weren’t there.”
“Ah. Right, right.” She winked at the commander. “Plausible deniability. Got it.”
“And on the topic of things that weren’t there, I’ll need you to return that body.”
“Aww,” she pouted. “Can’t I keep it? Maybe as a bonus for exceeding expectations?”
“Ms. Pratti, that’s a level of paperwork even I refuse to face.”
“You sure?”
“Come on, Aiko,” Nathan said. “Just hand it back. It wasn’t ours to begin with.”
“But it’s a really nice body!” She ran a hand up her side, prompting a brief, buoyant jiggle. “Don’t you agree?”
“I, um, well.” Nathan cleared his throat while avoiding eye contact. “That’s beside the point.”
“Nate, you’ve got to admit, there’s some top-notch physics going on here. It’s both bouncy and badass. Here, check this out.” She rose and propped her leg up on the chair.
“Would you just return the damn thing already? Please?”