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Hm. Left, I think.
Dey started left. Marin followed after her, and she had to admit, he wasn't half bad at moving quietly. She made a mental note to ask him where he had picked up that trick while exploring exoplanets for fun and profit. But as they came to another intersection, she saw two sleek looking drones starting down the corridor to the right. She grabbed Marin and jerked him back behind one of the wall partitions. The drones scuttled past, either not looking for them or so brick stupid that they couldn't hear two humans breathing and panting just around the corner. Dey peeked out and looked them over.
Huntress drones were similar to human drones -- sleek, aerodynamic. Their locomotion was primarily spider-legs, but Dey thought she saw some secondary ducted fans. Then they were around another corner.
"I've seen those for sale in a Yahaag trade stop," Marin whispered. "They're fixers -- not combat drones."
"Good to know." Dey frowned and started down the way the drones had come from.
"I hate this job."
The voice seemed to come from nowhere -- the echoing construction of the corridors making tracking sounds hard. Loki did some analysis and gave a tentative ping as to the direction, and Dey spotted a doorway that remained open. She stepped over and peeked around the corner. A human wearing the uniform of the corporate security -- Northbridge Service Group -- was leaning against a table that was built flush to the wall, whose surface was covered with a few odds and ends. Dey immediately identified a Beretta 9mm and a SPAS-12. Oldies, but quite effective, even if they hadn't been upgraded to have fluxmags. She also saw what she swore was a curved, old style Japanese sword.
Katana.
[Gesundheit.]
The weapons weren't a problem. Even without augments, even before she had left Ceres, Dey would have bet on herself naked in a fight with some corporate goon.
The problem was that the human was speaking to a Shockpod.
"Yes. There is a distinct lack of severing vertebrae and snapping necks," the Shockpod growled, his hands pressed together. His eyes were oddly placed for a nominal predator -- being placed more to the side than to the front of his elongated head. But the Yahaag hadn't been constrained by evolution when they had taken the unnamed, aquatic species that the Shockpods had started as and molded them into the galaxy's most terrifying mercenary. The field of view of a horse, with the ability to focus and track like those of a raptor, a body that could survive the pressures at the bottom of the Challenger Deeps -- and thus, accelerations up to fifty gravities.
Dey personally felt that adding the nanocomposite bone, the multiple redundant organs, twin brain stems, and the hormonal urge to kill people for fun and profit was just cheating at that point.
"Cause I am here to speak. And if you ignored me, I would rip out your spine and show it to you for the insult."
"Yes," the Shockpod said, staring at him unblinkingly. "I am seeking to understand your culture better. The Shockpods have no historical culture of ingrained violence. I find yours most admirable."
The corporate goon blinked a few times.
"I'm going to check on the prisoner," he said.
He turned around, walked out the door, and Dey got her arm around his throat and yanked him out of the way. It didn't take much time for the pressure to cut off blood to his brain. He went limp. Dey loosened her grip -- and then ducked before the Shockpod drove the knife through the wall paneling into her brain as he emerged from the doorway. He hadn't turned his head or his body -- he had merely stepped through the door and almost impaled Dey's head. She rolled forward and came up to her feet, her fists lifted.
"Hm. Good dodge," he said.
"Thanks," Dey said.
Isolating weaknesses and checking his biology, Loki said. It'll take a while to really find anything weak, though.
Dey didn't have time to respond -- the Shockpod attacked. His arms were surprisingly short and stubby, as they had started off as flippers a mere fifteen generations ago. That didn't make them not dangerous as hell. His joints were able to bend in ways that humans just couldn't. So, Dey didn't even bother to stay close. She backed away, blocking a knife blow with her arm, twisting and turning. By the time he was done with his flurry, her forearms were covered with nicks, cuts, and she was pretty sure one of her bones had been bruised.
"You fight well," the Shockpod rumbled. "I am glad I turned off the security cameras."
"You did what?" Dey asked, so shocked that -- if he had attacked -- the Shockpod could have pinned her to the wall with that knife.
The Shockpod -- Kuz, Dey reminded herself, his name was Kuz -- cocked his broad, flat head.
"But of course. I would not stand here, and let one of the famous Devil Troops rot in a cell without at least giving them a chance to face me in honorable combat," he said.
Dey opened her mouth. Closed it.
Aliens, Loki muttered.
Ch-chick.
Marin was a civilian. That was why he pumped the SPAS-12 without needing to, sending a perfectly useful green shell to the ground unfired. But the pumping noise did draw Kuz's eyes. Marin fired. The gun kicked him hard enough to send him staggering backwards -- but the shell it sent into Kuz's chest transferred enough kinetic energy to put Kuz back on his left foot. Marin started to chamber a new round. Kuz flung the knife at him. It buried itself up to the hilt in Marin's chest. He staggered against the wall, his eyes very wide.
Dey sprang forward and wrapped her arm around Kuz's neck. The Shockpod surged backwards as Loki highlighted what he thought might be a major blood vessel. For leverage, Dey jammed her fingers into the blowhole some asshole genetic engineer had left in the top of Kuz's head. She found that the muscle there was tight enough to squeeze her fingers almost off, but it still produced a deep bellow of rage. Kuz charged forward, arching his shoulders. The Shockpod was tall enough that he could scrape her off on the doorframe. Dey shifted her grip, slipped back, looped her legs around his belly, and Kuz charged into the room and smashed into the table. She let herself fall to the ground as the weapons and components that Marin hadn't grabbed for hit the floor.
Kuz shook his head from side to side.
Dey grabbed onto the 9mm. She rolled backwards and put fifteen rounds into Kuz before he had finished righting himself. Bright red blood dripped once, twice, then clotted.
Kuz clenched his hands, unclenched them.
"Well," Dey whispered.
Kuz picked up the katara.
Katana.
[I'm going to die, aren't I?] Dey whispered.
Kuz smiled as his chest wounds turned into hardened black patches. Dey wondered, for a moment, how the hell his creators had made that clotting happen fast enough without causing multiple heart attacks. Though, part of her was comforted to see that he wasn't actually regenerating. That was something for Mumblers.
[Don't suppose you recharged the backup batteries from kinetic energy?]
Sorry-
Kuz hefted the sword.
Dey's ears filled with the sound of thunder.
The Shockpod staggered backwards, blood exploding from his shoulder. He dropped the sword and Dey risked a glance backwards. Marin -- knife still protruding from his chest, was leaning against the wall, SPAS-12 clutched in his hands, his eyes unfocused. He used the weight of the gun to cock it one handed. Overbalanced. Fell to the side. Kuz roared and charged forward. Laying on his side, at this range, Marin didn't need to aim. Much. The shell punched through Kuz's other shoulder and sent the Shockpod staggering backwards. This time, the alien lay on his back and didn't get up.
"And stay down," Marin rasped.
Then slumped over, his breath rattling out.
Dey looked aside.
[Fuck.]
Loki squeezed her shoulders, gently.
###
When corporate goon woke up, Dey had dressed herself in his clothes and was sitting on a stool she had found in the sides of the chamber. The man's wrists were tied behind his back. He blinked a few times as he looked at Dey, who was holding the 9mm by its barrel between her thighs.
"So," she said. "I've had a day. In fact, I'm going to be honest, and go so far as to say it has been a bad day. And if you want to not end up like this fucker..." Her new boot shoved the massive mound of gray muscle and clotted blood that was Kuz the Shockpod. "I suggest you tell me where my fucking K9s are."
The corporate goon blinked as he looked at the genetically engineerd supersoldier.
"So, uh, the password is 98219-Alpha-Baker-" he started.
The locker in question was clearly human -- sunk into the wall in a room two doors down from the armory. The problem was it had two guards. Fortunately, those guards were drones, the same kind of combat drones that half the human race's armed forces used when they needed to bolster a thin roster. They were spheres suspended in the middle of the room with several small arms built into them. Nothing heavy, and not smart enough to do more than what they were ordered.
In the United States, they tended to be slaved to AIs who washed out of the Devil Program.
Dey checked her SPAS-12, then stepped around the corner and blew one of the drones away with a solid shell. She popped back around as the other started to hose down the door with bullets. Alarms started to howl through the ship -- the Shockpod hadn't shut these alarms down. Dey leaned around and fired again. A crease burned along her arm, but the drone hit the ground in so many pieces. She surged forward, and her fingers punched in the password -- Loki whispering it in her ear. When it swung open, she found herself looking at her sidearm and her two K9s.
They had trained on putting K9s on one handed.
Dey hadn't aced it.
But she managed it, slapping one K9's magnetic edge against a wall, then backing into it. The K9s clicked and she grinned.
"Asshole didn't even dump it's charge," she said as she slung her SPAS-12 over her shoulder. She checked her M2-E12 and saw that it was still how she had left it -- at about fifty percent charge. She closed her eyes, trying to center herself. But rather than feeling focus, she felt only a simmering rage. She hadn't known Marin, not really. But he had died like a fucking hero. And if there was anything in the universe she hated, it was people who killed heroes.
She heard clattering.
Drones.
Good.
Dey stepped around the corner and shot one of the combat drones in the center of its mass. She imparted a slight flick to her wrist, cutting through delicate components with the laser on her M2. The other drone opened fire. Her shields redirected. Loki snatched the drone to her palm with a telekinetic field and she blew it apart. As chunks hit the ground around her, Dey started forward. She head a sudden hiss -- the wall behind her had slammed shut. The wall before her started to shut -- but she flung herself forward, teleporting past the doorway before it shut. More doors were starting to shut, hissing along the corridor.
Dey was faster.
She skidded to a halt in another intersection. The loud rattling hiss that filled her ear made her smirk.
They're trying to vent you into fucking space, Loki said. Also, batteries are down to thirty percent.
"Got it," Dey said. When she looked down the right corridor, she saw the Huntress. She was standing at the end of the hallway, her armor glowing with a pale blue-white light. Dey gulped. [Tell me that's not Cherenkov radiation.]
No, just blueshifted infrared. But I think she could make it hard gamam, if she wanted.
"This is why," the Huntress said, her faceplate showing a :\ face. "I told them to never hire a Shockpod too. Hire another Huntress. Hell, hire a Xeth, but don't hire a damn shockpod." She shook her head. "But part of me is glad. I've never fought a human that stands a chance before."
"What is with aliens and wanting to fight us?" Dey asked, shaking her head slowly. "Did humanity have a big fucking fight me sticker on our back?"
"You're the only civilization that had a demonstrative nuclear war," the Huntress said, her faceplate switching to a :).
"We did not!" Dey snapped, her thumb slowly undoing the latch of her pistol.
"From the period of 1945 to 1992, your nation-state detonated a thousand nuclear weapons on their own soil just to prove they could to their ideological enemies. Is that not a demonstrative nuclear war?" The Huntress asked.
Dey opened her mouth, then closed it.
She's got a point, Loki said.
[True.] Dey's thumb touched the edge of the M2's power pack. There were advantages to military weapons. Most power cells were hard-coded to dump their internal components into dark matter when they catastrophically failed. It made it hard for every grudge with a killer attached to turn household appliances into bombs. Military weapons had a hardened quantum-bit built into them. When set to a fuzzy approximation of zero, catastrophic failure sent the components into dark matter.
Dey's finger touched the contact point and set the bit to a fuzzy approximation of one. With Loki's help.
"Now," the Huntress said. "Let us-"
The power cell slammed into the wall behind her head, flashed there by a twitch of Dey's wrist and a focused warp bubble.
"Missed," Dey hissed.
Dey blew out a sigh. It was exasperated as hell.
Huntresses kept their pressure high and either breaching hull integrity cut the AG field, or whoever was managing the power systems was a massive asshole. Dey went tumbling out of the ship. She kept her eyes open -- and thanked God that situations like this weren't entirely unexpected for Devil Troops. During the implantation surgery, the good doctors had laid a film of protective coating over her eyes. Her skin was less lucky, but her skin was tough enough that the doctors hadn't worried about it in this situation. Fortunately, nearly a century of sci-fi that knew better had taught even the most dense lay person that people's heads didn't explode in a vacuum.
Loki deadened the pain of the bruises and started scanning local space.
The Huntress ship came apart along the spine -- metal flying away faster than Dey could see, leaving a jagged hole. The engines dimmed and the ship started to drift. Almost invisibly, the corporate fighter that was flanking it vanished.
A blip appeared at the edge of her vision. Dey turned her head to look at it -- her lungs already burning.
An IFF circle appeared in her field of vision as Loki detected what the signature was.
It was the USAF Biden.
Because life wasn't a vid, it was almost fifty thousand kilometers away and approaching at sublight speeds.
Dey lifted up a hand and flipped the spaceship off..
I love-
Dey passed out.
###
Dey was becoming uncomfortably familiar with the sensation of waking up in a sickbay. She slowly opened her eyes and saw that the ceiling was a gunmetal gray, though the rivets and paneling that made up the ceiling looked warped and twisted. Dey's brow furrowed and tried to piece together why the ship wasn't currently falling into pieces. She could hear a voice speaking -- faint and distant. Then she realized that the reason why her vision and hearing felt weird as hell was because she was floating in a big tank of liquid. When she moved her arm, she felt the liquid was viscous and thick -- not just water. It was warm, at least. She closed her eyes.
[Okay. That's new.]
Just be glad that your point to point communication systems are still working. Also, next time do NOT throw EXPLOSIVES around the fucking place in a SPACE SHIP! You STUPID! STUPID! PRIMATE!
[Sorry,] Dey said, weakly -- feeling extremely kittenish at the moment. She flailed her arms above her head weakly.
A doctor's face filled the view plate above her. She looked young and fit and judgmental as hell. She tapped a few buttons and the liquid gurgled out of the vents at the sides of the room. The liquid slipped past Dey's ears and she felt a sudden, intense urge to vomit. She turned her head to the side and felt the same liquid she had been breathing for the past however long come up and out of her throat. She coughed, spluttered, and was almost cogent when the container opened and the doctor grabbed her face. She started to shine a light in her eyes.
"So, Lt. Gallagher," she said, her voice clipped. "Where were you when your DI trained you on combat in a pressurized vessel?"
Dey coughed, wincing. "I take it Loki has been prepping you," she said, her voice feeling thick -- her tongue felt thick, her lips numb.
"Yes, actually," the doctor said.
"Hey, Doc!"
Dey's eyes widened.
She grabbed onto the edge of the container she had been in and sat up, her breasts bouncing slightly as she looked around the inside of the sickbay. There were a few other full enclosure platforms like the one she was in -- and the one across from her had a smiling Marin in it. A doctor was patting down his chest, a complex medical tool stuck into his torso. Marin waved his right arm -- and the doctor glared at him until he stopped.
"You're alive?" Dey spluttered.
"Nah," Marin said.
"He was dead," the doctor said, putting her hand on Dey's shoulder. "Though, you were dead -- though you were dead for slightly less time. Twenty six seconds. He was dead for three minutes."
Marin grinned.
"How?" Dey asked. "He got a knife in his heart."
"And you didn't remove it," the doctor said. "It stopped the blood from pumping out. He passed out -- then expired. Then, when the Huntress ship detected no humans in the armory, it reverted to Huntress environmental controls."
Dey chuckled. She slowly lay back in the tube, her eyes closing. Her shoulders shook as she started to go into a full on laugh. "Fucking Huntresses -- fucking Huntresses."
"You're just lucky we're stocked with plenty of anti-freeze -- and no, it's not actually anti-freeze, I'm not being paid by the syllable." The doctor who was poking at Dey started to take a blood sample with a contact patch. She was efficient, but gentleness seemed to be the last thing on her mind. "Counteracted the ice expansion in his cell walls."
"Is this covered by single payer?" Marin's voice sounded faintly muffled from Dey's position in the tube.
###
Captain Two shook Dey's hand and smiled at her. "DeShane Gallagher."
"Captain," Dey said, grinning back at him. She had seen Captain Moon Two smile before. Once or twice. But she had never seen a smile this big, and this impressive. They were standing in the small office that the Colonel captaining the Biden had given to him. The wall poster was set to a view of the hanger bay -- sparks flying as engineers and flight crew worked on a set of Starfuries who had taken minor damage in some recent battle.
Moon Two stepped back, then grabbed a tube of black plastic off the desk, holding it into the air.
"If this hadn't been fished from that fighter you shot down, this would have been a big pile of wasted time," Moon Two said.
