A Girl and Her K’t’ank
Jody Lynn Nye
Someone must have known they were coming, because Detective Sergeant Dena Malone saw absolutely no one amid the towering stacks of containers on the Tri-City dock. The waterfront normally bustled with thousands of workers. No one steered copters or flying loaders overhead in the wide blue sky. Not even a drone hummed overhead to spot the small brown-haired woman riding in a very fancy, bronze-hued floatchair or the tall man walking alongside her. A single pigeon’s coo echoed for blocks in the concrete-and-steel landscape.
“There aren’t even any AIs moving cargo,” said her partner, Detective Sergeant Ramos, a good-looking man with tawny skin and thick black hair. His voice was muffled in the depths of the clear helmet he wore over a white hazmat suit so bright they probably could have seen it from Moonbase. The police transport van had been left behind at the edge of the docks.
“They’re all union, too,” Dena said. Her white protective suit crackled whenever she moved. She sat back in the lush padding of her chair, a perquisite of being a host for an intelligent alien species known as Salosians. Dr. K’t’ank occupied her peritoneum, which approximated the salinity and temperature of the seas on his homeworld. It was designed to protect her—or rather K’t’ank—anytime they went out in public. It was like a light all-terrain vehicle with antigravs. Its comforts came in handy considering that she was also several months pregnant. Hosting a Salosian came with a number of benefits as well as responsibilities, including an allowance that supplemented her never-generous city salary and ongoing maintenance of the floatchair. The complex update that it had undergone that morning had taken a couple of hours, under the supervision of Alien Relations’ Deputy Ambassador Sardwell Marin himself, to assist on the callout she and Ramos had been assigned.
Despite Marin’s fussy briefing about the new features, her throne-like conveyance seemed pretty much unchanged. The ambassador had showed her a bunch of new controls on her skinnypad and assured her it would be “adequate for the parameters of the mission,” whatever that meant. She didn’t trust the bureaucrat as far as she could throw him, and he knew it, so she had laserproof, slugproof armor on underneath her hazmat suit to protect her and her two occupants.
“If the humans get called off, so do they. The Equal Employment Act of 2085, you know.”
“Forgot that,” Ramos said, snapping his fingers. With the glove on, the movement sounded like two balloons rubbing.
The skinnypad on Dena’s lap buzzed. She glanced down at the screen. Their two red dots on the electronic map were within two rows of the purple star—purple for chemical or biological hazard that Patrol had reported. She couldn’t get any readings inside the building itself, meaning it was heavily shielded against scans.
Around her, she spotted the dozen or so dots representing the other officers on the operation looking distressingly far away. Hundreds of tiny black spots indicated other life-forms nearby, almost certainly rats or roaches that had no interest in the comings and goings of humans. She and Ramos were on their own.
“We’re coming to the location,” she said. “Better circle around.” She steered the chair to the left, cutting between two towers of shining containers that looked newer than the others.
“You getting this, Control?” Ramos asked his audio pickup.
“Captain Potopos here,” the voice crackled over it. “The other units are covering you. Be careful. Those smugglers are ruthless. Those two bodies Patrol picked up this morning are deteriorating already. The medical examiner thinks they swelled up like that while they were still alive. And those purple blisters! They had to hurt like hell until it killed them. Make sure you don’t come in contact with any of that stuff, all right?”
“Duh,” Ramos said. “I mean, 10-4, Captain. Sheesh, you’d think this was our first rookie assignment.”
I should not be here, Dena thought, for the millionth time since they left the station house. Ningustan toxin exposure could kill me or the baby. I’m just a few weeks from maternity leave. I could have refused...
Then, a kick against her ribs from the inside broke her concentration.
“Are we there yet?” Dr. K’t’ank’s voice came from the heavy platinum bangle on her wrist.
“Stop asking that!” Dena exclaimed.
Ramos laughed hollowly inside his hood. “You’re gonna hear that sentence a lot more in the future, Mama.”
“The increase of excitement is becoming overwhelming! I must know. If you issued more frequent updates, I would not have to ask.”
“Here.” Dena tapped on her skinnypad. “I’m giving you access to the map. Besides, you can see out of my eyes. You already know where we are.”
The fact that he asked added to Dena’s nervousness. As if having an alien Salosian occupying her peritoneum with his eye-filaments drilled into her spinal column so he could tap directly into her optic nerves wasn’t enough, he was the one who was the most in danger from the toxin. Ningustan was a native parasite on the ocean world of Salos. Customs had received information that a quantity—no one knew how much—had been brought to Earth. Infiltrating and capturing the people involved ought to have been their job, not that of a couple of cops from the Tri-City area. They’d managed to convince Alien Relations that Dena, as a Salosian host, should be involved in taking down the operation. As big a pain in the butt as K’t’ank could be, she could handle his endless observations on human nature—and on hers, in particular. The part she hated was being the poster child for Earth-Salos interaction. It wasn’t the first time she’d been trotted out to represent the program, but it was by far the most dangerous. Purple blisters!
“So many windowless buildings,” K’t’ank said, as Dena scanned the landscape for his benefit. “Does no one live here?”
“These are all cargo containers. There’s stuff inside them waiting for ground transport across the continent. But people sometimes live here, just off the grid. Maybe not even with electricity or running water.”
“That is inconvenient,” K’t’ank said. “I prefer the comforts that are afforded in your domicile.”
“Me, too,” Dena said. “Anyhow, shut up. They’ll already be able to detect our footsteps. I don’t want them hearing your voice.”
“But . . . !”
“No more buts! I’ll drop the bangle here and go on without it if I have to.”
“Don’t make me turn this chair around!” Ramos added, in a mocking tone. Dena glared at him. “I told you, Mama. It’s good training.”
“Stop calling me Mama. I’m getting so sick of it, I’m going to teach the baby to call me Detective.” Dena drew her sidearm, a slugthrower with eleven explosive rounds in the magazine. She knew the floatchair had other protective gear hidden in its framework if she—or rather K’t’ank—needed it. Guns and a mesh shield had popped out of the pillars when the chair detected danger in other cases. In a pinch, she could pull Ramos into her lap and book the hell out of there if it got too bad. He’d tease her until the end of time about it, but that was better than attending his funeral.
“I will comply,” K’t’ank said, with what passed for contrition for him. He fell silent, leaving Dena to worry if he was sulking or going into observation mode. She was pretty sure he had written several articles about life inside her that she doubted she would find complimentary.
“Moving in,” the audio pickup crackled. On the scope, the other dots approached the purple star.
“We don’t have enough information,” Ramos said in a low voice. “How many people are in there? What kind of hardware are they packing?”
Dena shook her head. She glided closer and closer to the corner. She sent a hand-sized drone out and watched through her skinnypad as it surveyed the container stack in question. She sent the video to Ramos. No guards. The criminals must be relying on their shielding and probably some lethal tricks when they tried to break in. Fortunately, Ramos had a laser drill that could also be operated remotely and silently, apart from the obvious red line that would appear on the other side as the door was being cut away.
Closer and closer they crept, hearing the chatter from the remote teams. Dena was nervous enough to chew nails. Ramos’s usually ebullient personality had retreated, leaving him all instinct and watchful dark eyes. He held his laser rifle upright but ready in both hands. Closer. Closer. Twenty meters. Ten. Five . . .
“Aaaaaand we’re here live from the top secret sting operation currently under way on the Tri-City dock front!” a cheerful female voice burst out. Suddenly, a slim figure in a bright red skirt suit dropped down right in front of them, landing on a pair of sky-high patent-leather heels. Lauren Sigdaller, the bubbly bright blond reporter for What’s-Up Evening News, shrugged expertly out of her harness and her drone chopper flew away. Four hovering cameras positioned themselves in the air, one pointing at her. The others moved in on the police officers. Dena swatted at the one practically in her face. “Detective Sergeant Dena Malone, you’re about to move in on the hideout occupied by the alleged ningustan smugglers. Please give the What’s-Up viewers your feelings about penetrating into a den possibly reeking of fatal fumes?” She smiled brightly into her eyeline camera, and stuck an oversized microphone toward Dena.
“Wha . . . ? What are you doing here? How did you know where we were?” Dena demanded, gathering her scattered wits with both hands.
“A trusted informant,” Lauren said, with that smooth, confident smile that millions of viewers had come to know and, in the police’s opinion, loathe. “Just like our brave people in the police force use. The public has a right to know, Detective Malone! Dr. K’t’ank, how are you coping with this situation? This is a threat that issues from your own star system! Do you feel any sense of responsibility for putting human beings in danger from the arrival of ningustan toxin?”
“What responsibility could I have for criminals?” K’t’ank asked, outraged.
Ramos reached into one of the pouches on his ops belt and took out a palm-sized device. He aimed it at one camera after another. The little drones dropped to the ground, trilling and moaning like wounded birds.
“Get out of here!” he growled at the reporter. “You’ve alerted them to our presence. Our mission is totally blown!”
“Oh, they knew you were coming already,” Lauren said, brightly. “How do you think I knew where to be when?”
“They have a mole in the station?” Dena asked, aghast.
“Nobody has to be in any physical location anymore,” Lauren said, with a pitying look. “We get information from all kinds of places. Hints ’R’ Us, Amazeballs.com, the Old Busybodies Network, you name it!”
“Who told you about this mission?” Dena asked, trying to keep her voice down.
Lauren tossed her long blond locks smugly. “That’s confidential. So, when are we going in?”
“One,” Ramos said, with superb self-control, “you are not going in. Two, you’re not dressed for it anyway. Three, we’re not insured if something happens to you.”
“I am absolutely going with you,” Lauren said. “Two, I am always dressed for every occasion.” She pulled a tab concealed in the collar of her pristine jacket. From every seam, bright red fabric billowed, until she was covered in a hazmat suit that matched her attire. “Three, I have no intention of dying. And one, they promised me safe conduct! I’ll bring you in with me. That way, I get an exclusive.” She glanced at the chronometer on the wrist of her puffy suit. “We’ve got about six minutes before Bob Colchik from Satellite News Network gets here. I have the solo scoop if I beat him inside. Can we get going, please?” Plunking a clear helmet over her head, she spun on her heels and marched toward the entrance to the container. Her drones rose humming from the ground and followed.
“Why do I think we’re in the wrong business?” Ramos asked. He scrambled to catch up with the reporter.
“Her profession is information, not enforcement,” K’t’ank replied. “Malone, you did not answer, so I did.”
Dena shook her head. She punched the forward control on the floatchair.
Lauren stood on the threshold of the target container, microphone at the ready. The two officers stayed three meters back.
“Password 84-36-22-1796-Cronkite!” she chirped. The door retracted downward. The reporter shot Dena a triumphant look, and stepped inside. “Come on!”
Surrounded by floating drones, Dena urged her throne inside. As soon as Ramos entered, the door swooped up and clanged into place, leaving them in utter darkness.
The floatchair’s systems reacted faster than Dena could. Six floodlights erupted on the pillars like brightly glowing pimples, two facing forward, two to the side, one upward and one to the rear. The top light’s beam seemed to disappear into the gloom. Dena caught glimpses of pierced metalwork and incised art in the walls around her.
“Holy Butlerian Jihad!” Ramos exclaimed. “This place is gigantic!”
“How did they build something like this in the middle of a working dock?” Dena asked.
“Oh, there’s dozens of places like this here,” Lauren said, with a dismissive wave. “Some of these containers have been here centuries, and none of the freight companies notice they never get moved, so they hollow them out and furnish them. The dockworkers know all of them. One is their clubhouse. Very fancy inside. You’d never get an invitation, but I’ve been there. You’d be welcome, Dr. K’t’ank,” Lauren added, winking flirtatiously at Dena’s bracelet. “They’ve got some of your treatises in the data library. Is anybody out there?” she called.
A sliver of yellow light in the distance appeared and widened into a rectangle. Lauren immediately minced toward it. The two detectives trailed her.
“My sensors are not getting any traces of ningustan here,” Dena whispered, showing Ramos her skinnypad. “I also lost the traces of the units outside. The shielding here is too thick to penetrate. No wonder we couldn’t sense anyone in here.”
Her partner grunted. “I don’t like it. This is getting fishier by the moment.”
“There are no fish, but there is sea life,” K’t’ank said. “I am picking up communication box signals used by my kind. There are Salosians here!”
“Can you talk to them?” Dena asked. She kept her eyes on the open door ahead, but couldn’t see anything inside.
“I am getting nothing but HOLD music and out-of-office replies,” K’t’ank said. “I am concerned for their well-being. None of my people can resist contact with our own kind. It has been days since I communicated with Ambassador Haihatsu’s occupant.”
“Do you think they’re free to move around?” asked Ramos. “I mean, inside people.”
“That is all the information I can glean. I will try to cross-reference the communication codes to discover their names.”
“Oh!” Lauren exclaimed as she reached the doorway. “Well, I never expected to see you here!”
“Who?” Dena asked. Her sight was blocked by the mass of the reporter’s puffy red suit. “Who’s here?”
Lauren turned to answer, but mechanical arms swooped out of the opening and scooped her up like a doll. She kicked and shrieked with fury, trying to wriggle out of their grasp.
“Help me!” she cried, and disappeared.
Dena and Ramos plunged forward, but the door slammed in their faces. Dena pounded on it with the butt of her service weapon. Like the surrounding walls, it was solid metal. No amount of pounding or rattling the door handle made it move even a millimeter.
Dena backed up a couple of meters, unlimbered her laser cutter, and set it to work on the door frame.
“Can we trace her?” she asked. “Do we have a comm code for her?”
Ramos worked furiously on his skinnypad. “Got one, but I can’t raise her. All I’ve got is her moving away from us really fast. This place is huge! It must take up hundreds of shipping containers laid out for blocks.”
“Customs ought to know about these,” Dena said. Her temper rose with every minute that it was taking her to cut her way inside. She wasn’t that fond of the reporter, who tended to harp on even innocent mistakes made by officers in the field. Still, she had the motto of the police force engraved on her heart, “To serve and protect, and not make bad headlines for the department.” “When we get out, I’m going to send a full report to Potopos. He needs to inform the commissioner that these things should be dismantled! How’s it going to look that we’ve got a neighborhood of archvillain lairs right on the waterfront?”
“Is it not convenient to where goods arrive in the city?” K’t’ank asked. “For such entrepreneurs to prosper, they require direct access to free-market trade.”
“That’s not the point!” Dena exclaimed. “They’re taking over private property for illicit purposes.”
“But no one else is making use of them. Is there not a commercial property shortage in this city?”
“I think it’s kind of cool,” Ramos said, his fingers flying. “What it’s costing me for my apartment, when I could link a dozen or twenty of these together for the cost of welding? Admit it, you and Neal could use a bigger place pretty soon.”
“Yeah, we could,” Dena said, a dreamy vision of extra rooms coming into her mind unbidden. Her husband’s home office took up half of their living room with his computers and monitors. The second bedroom had already been transformed into a nursery, and with the robot valet that she had acquired by accident, the place was a tight fit.
“Never mind! Come on, we have to save Lauren and find the cache of ningustan.”
As soon as she said it, the laser cutter switched off and flew back to her lap. Ramos walked up to the wall with a red glow still outlining it, and pushed with one finger. The door fell backward with a deafening clang.
Ramos brought his rifle around and undid the safety.
“Let’s go.”
The light that had drawn them forward was gone, but the spotlights on Dena’s floatchair provided plenty of illumination. She guessed by the style of the complex reliefs on the wall that this particular habitation had been in use for centuries. The ningustan smugglers were only the latest tenants. The smooth floor was deep with dust that showed trails of footprints as well as machine tracks like that of an earthmover.
“Can I use the laser cutter?” Ramos asked. “I want to carve some graffiti on one of these walls.”
“I don’t have time to arrest you for vandalism,” Dena said. “Maybe later.”
Her lights hit a wall that stretched for dozens of meters in both directions. Five doors were cut into it at regular intervals.
“Pick your labyrinth,” Ramos said. “I bet there’s a warren of rooms behind every one.”
“I detect heat emanating from the fourth door,” said K’t’ank. “And I have just received a different message from one of the Salosians!”
“Saying what?”
“It translates as ‘please stop calling,’” K’t’ank said.
“Maybe the recorder ran out of room,” Ramos suggested.
“Salosian message systems never run out of room.” K’t’ank sounded offended. “We have much to say that is of value. Our systems record every phrase.”
Dena frowned. “I bet it’s trying to tell you that it heard your messages but it’s afraid to respond. I think we’re dealing with prisoners.”
“Let’s hit doorway number four,” Ramos said. “You want to cut through it?”
“Try the handle,” Dena said, nodding toward the metal tongue. “I think these mysterious smugglers want us to come to them.”
Warily, the tall detective pulled up on the latch. Just as she suspected, it wasn’t locked. It creaked like a lost soul, but the big door swung inward. Like the other chambers, it was black inside. Dena started to glide toward it.
“Wait a minute,” Ramos said, stepping between her and the looming portal. “You’re acting like it’s safe to go in.”
“If they wanted to kill us, they would have tried before,” Dena said. “I’ve been thinking about it since we got here. This is all too easy. They want something, but they’re not asking directly. So, my guess is it has to do with K’t’ank. And Sardwell Marin would never have sent me in here if he thought there was any chance it would hurt K’t’ank.”
“That man really hates you,” Ramos reminded her.
“The feeling is mutual. But he’ll ensure I’m protected as long as it keeps K’t’ank safe.” She took a deep breath. The knot in her stomach tightened. “I just hope I’m right.”
Setting the spotlights on a wide sweep, she pushed ahead. No sense in delaying the inevitable. Who knew what was happening to Lauren? If she could set the reporter free before the evening broadcast, it would look good for the department.
“Swishing noises are ahead,” K’t’ank said, sounding happy. “They are reminiscent of the seas of my youth. Such pleasant memories, squirming intertwined with hundreds of my friends.”
“Eyagh,” Ramos said. “Sounds like an orgy I was at in college.”
“That’s where they’re holding the prisoners,” Dena said. “Look at that door. It ought to have ‘Big Boss Battle Ahead’ printed on it in neon letters.”
“I didn’t get to level sixty of Interstellar Bug Conquest for nothing,” Ramos said. “Cover me.”
He flung open the portal and sprang through it to the left. Dena followed, angling to the right. No one fired at them. Nothing jumped out and attacked them.
The chamber beyond was so brightly lit it hurt Dena’s eyes for a moment. The main feature was a huge glass tank that occupied more than half of the room. A dozen or so skinny pink Salosians swam to the glass and stared at her with their big black eyes. They reminded her of K’t’ank’s desperation when he had been pulled from the corpse of his previous host.
They weren’t alone in the water. Two smaller glass chambers nestled side by side behind them. In one, a cloud of bright blue glittering particles circulated. In the other, Lauren Sigdaller hammered on the glass with both fists. A big, very good-looking man with a sweep of chestnut brown hair going elegantly white at the temples sat on the bottom with his chin on his fist, looking dejected. They both recognized him at once.
“Bob Colchik,” Ramos said. “He must have gotten here first.”
“Get us out of here!” Lauren yelled, her voice muffled.
“Okay!” Dena moved to the center of the room and shouted to the Art Deco ceiling. “We’re here to talk to the Arch-Supervillain! Come on out! What do you want?”
A resonant female voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once emitted a throaty laugh.
“You’re everything that I thought you were,” she said. “You are brave and intelligent. You’ll suit my purposes exactly.”
“Do you always talk like a twenty-first-century movie villain?”
“What does she mean?” the voice asked.
“She’s comparing you to a trope from early Earth entertainment,” a very deep male voice said. “It’s a derisive term.”
“Am I talking to a Salosian?” Dena asked.
“It would seem so,” K’t’ank said, alarmed. “She is not one of these in the tank. Only two of them have communication implants. The others must have been captured on my home planet. They are hostages, like the two entertainers.”
“We made a mistake in coming here,” Ramos said. “It’s not K’t’ank they’re after. It’s you.”
With growing horror, Dena realized he was right. She spun the floatchair around on its axis and headed toward the door. It emitted a loud clanking before she laid a hand on it.
“Locked,” Ramos said.
“Your partner is correct,” the female voice said. “I am not letting you leave. I have been observing other Salosian hosts that are in the Alien Relations files, but they rely entirely on their technology to preserve their symbiote’s life. You are resourceful and clever. I have business to do with many humans, and you will assist me in that enterprise. My physician will remove Dr. K’t’ank and replace him with me. He will remain here to ensure your cooperation.”
“No way!” Dena said, both arms across her belly. “I’m tired of you people treating me like I’m a taxi! I’ve had enough to put up with carting K’t’ank around! Besides, there are dozens of law enforcement officers outside about to break in. They’ll take you and your host into custody.”
“If they do, I’ll shatter the tank containing the ningustan parasites,” the female said, sounding bored. “Your humans and the other Salosians will die horribly. There will also be residual toxin in the air. It will likely kill you, too. That is a shame.”
“I’ve seen this movie,” Ramos said, his mouth in a wry twist. “It sucked. It was only interesting when the hero ends up tied to an operating table . . . ”
“Not you, too!” Dena said. She turned back to the door and turned on the laser cutter. “Well, it’s been fun, but we’re leaving.” The floating device began to draw its red line around the heavy portal.
“Wait, what about us?” Lauren shrieked. “You can’t leave us here!”
Dena glanced back. Both the reporters were on their feet, their eyes desperate.
“Sure I can,” she said, sounding as nonchalant as her pounding heart would let her. “You came in here of your own free will. You interfered with a police investigation. You are concealing a leak in the department that could cost lives one day. But I bet you’re smart enough to get yourself out of this. Maybe they could use you as a host.”
“I’ll give you names! I’ll cooperate!”
“Sorry,” Dena said. “My responsibility is to Dr. K’t’ank. I have to get him out of here. Alien Relations will do a number on me if I let him get into danger.”
“I’ll get you!” Lauren said. “I’ll haunt you until the end of your days!”
“Too unstable,” the female voice said. “Guards, stop Detective Malone! Take her to the operating room!”
“Told you so,” Ramos said.
A slug pinged off the door. The floatchair backed away from the point of impact, an egg-sized crater. A heavy, fine-mesh metal curtain lowered into place around Dena, and she heard the cocking of weapons from the pillars. The floatchair was going into action, spinning in the direction the bullet had come from. Just in time, too, as eight burly men in green hazard gear rushed into the room. One of them rode a cargo lifter with waving octopus-like arms. That had to have been what snagged Lauren. It was coming straight toward Dena.
“Finally,” Ramos said, bracing his rifle. “I was getting bored. I assume you have a play.”
“I think I do,” Dena said, uneasily. “Whatever you do, don’t take off your helmet.”
“Got it. Hey, you guys! Surrender now, and nothing bad will happen to you!” Ramos called.
The whole gang turned to shoot at him. Ramos was already running. He made a dive behind the corner of the huge glass tank. A cluster of bullets ricocheted off the surface and went off in all directions. The Salosians inside fled to the far end of the tank. Some of the slugs hit Dena’s protective shield. They bounced off, but left dents in the mesh. All solid projectiles, she noted. No lasers meant that the tank’s glass could be melted. She filed that fact for her Master Plan.
Her skinnypad’s screen changed to the floatchair’s weapons control panel. The intense training in its use that Alien Relations had put her through kicked in immediately. With a swipe, Dena turned automatic tracking on the slugthrowers. They started spitting out bullets, making the thugs on foot duck out of her way. If they had to dodge her guns, they wouldn’t be concentrating on Ramos or the cutter.
The one she had to worry about was the cargo lifter. If it got its claws on her, it could disable or crush the floatchair. She made the chair dodge from side to side, keeping her gaze fixed on the operator’s eyes. It would take about eight minutes before the cutter had finished removing the door. She needed to keep him distracted for that amount of time. How long before he got so impatient that he made a stupid mistake?
“The Salosian wishes to steal you?” K’t’ank asked, worried. “But I am used to you!”
“Not now, K’t’ank! I want to get us all out alive.”
Dena feinted to the left, then slid right so that her back was against the tank. The cargo lifter operator must have been ordered not to break the glass. He trundled toward her, jointed arms reaching for the frame of her chair. She dodged from side to side, then scooted out from her position. Her trajectory knocked two of the green-suited thugs away from Ramos. He managed to get to his feet, but two more were heading for him.
“Behind you!” he shouted.
Dena turned the chair, just as the first pair leaped onto the chassis. They started tearing at the mesh over her head. They’d never get through it, but it hampered her vision. She activated the switch that sent electrical current charging through the mesh. It ought to have fried their hands, but the green gloves must be insulated. Dena shook the chair from side to side, hoping to dislodge them. Three more of the thugs grabbed at the floatchair frame. She found herself bouncing against one after another, until she was trapped in place. Ramos went down, using the butt of his rifle to defend himself. The cargo operator, with a look of glee, homed in on her. One claw froze onto the pillar of the chair. The other started to tear at the mesh, dislodging the other ruffians. The floatchair let out a moan as it was slammed from one side to the other.
“We shall be torn apart!” K’t’ank wailed.
“No. They want me,” Dena said. She held onto the skinnypad, reaching for the laser controls. As long as she aimed away from the tank, she could use them.
“Surrender!” the Salosian archvillainess, as Dena thought of her, demanded. “Your partner is now in my grasp. I will have my humans throw him into the ningustan tank if you do not stop resisting right now!”
“He knew the job was dangerous when he took it!” Dena said. “So did I!” She flicked the controls. The slugthrower barrels withdrew, replaced by shorter and narrower tubes.
The Salosian’s minions knew what those meant. They scrambled off the body of the chair. Hot red light streaked after them, leaving charred black lines across the backs of their suits.
But the cargo loader didn’t retreat. He continued to shake her back and forth. Dena was afraid that K’t’ank was right. The floatchair might come to pieces. Her only hope of saving all of them would be lost.
She had no choice.
Mentally crossing her fingers, she activated the new screen that had been installed on it only that morning. Really, she hadn’t been paying close attention to what the annoying bureaucrat had been blathering at her. She had heard “protective shell,” “heavy-duty motivators,” and “superior weather resistance,” but that was about it. Since Alien Relations always did things with triple and sextuple redundancy, she had to believe that what she was going to do would work.
All right, Deputy Ambassador Marin, I’m trusting you!
“Hang on, K’t’ank,” she said, flicking controls as fast as she could. “It’s going to be rough.”
“What do you mean by rough? Why are you heading for that glass wall? It must not be breached! The lives of my fellow Salosians are at stake!”
His tail pounded her insides as Dena took aim at the direct center of the tank. She hoped her suit contained enough air to last the next few minutes.
She pressed the control that activated the new motivators. The floatchair settled to the ground and rumbled forward. Without her having to take any action, clear panels flipped up from underneath the seat itself and surrounded her. The loader lost its grip as the smooth sheets of maxiplex plastic knocked the claws away. It battered at her in vain. Dena ignored its pounding. Now for phase two.
No control existed for the “weather resistance,” so either that was automatic, or she was going to be treading water pretty quickly.
“Hang on,” she said, and aimed all the lasers at the glass. The pane began to glow. All the Salosians retreated to the sides away from the hot beams.
“Don’t! Don’t ruin my tank! You will kill my subjects!”
The bubble of glass started to quiver. Dena stuffed the skinnypad down beside her where it couldn’t get washed away, and held tight to her armrests. She wished, too late, that she had a safety harness. The glass shimmied, then opened up like a bursting balloon.
Water washed over her in a wave that would make any surfer crow with glee. The green-suited minions went tumbling away like seaweed. Dena braced herself, worried the floatchair would go tumbling, but the new treads seemed to hold the ground as if they were cemented there. She lowered the protective shell to her waist. Water flooded in and with it came one of the Salosians. She grabbed it and shoved it into the well around her feet. She urged the vehicle forward, searching for all of the pink-skinned aliens.
“There!” K’t’ank said, as her eyes swept to the left. “Underneath the filter housing!”
Three of the aliens had knotted themselves together, trying to resist the outgoing tide. Dena swooped down on them and gathered them up in both gloved hands. They struggled, fearing the air, but she plunked them down into the pool. The others already there gathered them into a protective mass.
“Is that all of them?” Dena asked, scanning the ruins of the tank.
“It seems so,” K’t’ank said.
“You will die for this!” the archvillainess screamed. “I will break open the ningustan tank!”
“Oh, don’t bother,” Dena said, with a grin. “Let me do that for you.”
She turned her makeshift war machine toward the smaller tank, closing the protective shield over herself and her passengers as she rolled. The human minions saw what she was doing and fled. The cargo operator practically ran them over trying to get away.
“No! No! Humans, return to the tank room! Stop her!”
“I don’t think they want to be here when I do this,” Dena said. She turned her lasers on the square enclosure. She held her breath, just in case some of the ningustan escaped. It wouldn’t help, but it made her feel better.
“Stop, stop!” the Salosian pleaded over the speaker. “Everyone is leaving!”
“No! You’re going to kill us!” Lauren bellowed, pounding on the tank.
“Wait, look!” For the first time, Bob Colchik stood up. He aimed his personal skinnypad at Dena and the ningustan enclosure. Under fire from the lasers, the tank began to glow, but from the inside. By the time the beam breached the wall of the container, all of the blue particles had turned black and floated up to the surface of the water. It gushed out harmlessly onto the big tank’s floor. “That was awesome! I’ve got the best exclusive for this evening’s broadcast!”
“Bob, you have to share with me,” Lauren pleaded, reaching for the skinnypad.
“Are you kidding?” he asked, raising a perfect eyebrow at her. He held the device up to avoid her grabs. “You tried to get my informant to delay me so you would get in here first! Suck on it.”
Dena wished she had been able to record their argument. It would be great trade goods to prevent either newscaster from giving them bad publicity, at least for a while.
“Stay there until the emergency crews arrive,” she told them. “We have to make sure the air is clear before we let you out.”
“We owe you our lives, Sergeant,” Bob said, still stiff-arming his fellow broadcaster. “I’ll make sure that gets into my report.”
“Our report!” Lauren insisted.
Chuckling, Dena turned her back on them, and went to look for Ramos.
She found him head down against the wall in the corner near the minions’ escape route. She breathed a sigh of relief to see that his helmet was intact, with no trace of water inside.
“Are you okay?” she asked, as he pulled himself to his feet.
“What is all that?” He stared at the new configuration, and let out a whistle. “Did Marin do all that?”
“I guess so,” she said. “It worked. My chair now really is a tank. Can you get up? If I open this bubble, I’ll expose all these Salosians to what’s left of the ningustan.”
Ramos looked around. “Don’t we have to get after the guys in green? And the man with the Salosian symbiote?”
Dena grinned. “I will bet you next month’s pay that Potopos already has them in custody. If you knew the air was about to be full of fatal toxins, you’d get out of there as fast as you could.”
“Next month’s pay?” K’t’ank piped up. “Next month you will be on leave. It will be a reduced sum.”
“She ought to get hazard pay,” Ramos said, smacking the maxiplex bubble as if he was slapping her on the back. “Me, too.”
“Well, let’s get out there,” Dena said, with a massive sigh. “I’ve got the most hazardous task still ahead of me.”
Ramos looked confused. “What? We rousted the bad people, we saved the hostages, and we avoided getting exposed to the outer space toxin. What’s left?”
Dena turned her floatchair reluctantly toward the door. “I’ve got to go say ‘thank you’ to Sardwell Marin. He’s going to gloat, and that’ll hurt more than ningustan poisoning.”