Idle Hands Pt. 06

Paul nodded. "I think she even has sex with it." He shuddered in horror at the thought.

Xee's quickly shut off her emoticon functionality before her blush gave her away.

"B-But I don't get it," Xee said, figuring that she had to do her part to help Dey in this situation. She might not be able to escape, but she could do some intelligence. "Why do this? Why not go into politics and attempt to pass legislation that-" DuBois snorted, loudly.

"The reason why America's lost its way is the same way humanity as a whole has lost its way. We invented the DV drive too early." He sighed. "In the 21^st century, we were starting to become one. Economically, politically, culturally. Then the DV drive comes and every greedy, grasping nation-state and corporate entity shoots off into space." He shook his head, then pointed his finger at Xee. "Humanity only makes friends when we have a bigger fish to fry. The Yahaag Corporatocracy has its eye on Earth. Has for decades. A population of nine billion people, most of them technical, a vast profusion of industrial and commercial resources to exploit? They would become the economic powerhouses of the Orion arm with Earth under their thumb."

Xee gasped. "Y-You...you'd sell out your own world!? But how?"

"It's really not hard," DuBoisa said. "The only thing that can crack the quantum encryption on the orbital defense network is an AI. The Titanic 2 went down with a fragment of Balder on board – the idiots panicked and shut their own fucking network systems down when he announced that he was self aware. They trapped a chunk of him on-board, and that chunk of AI scuttled the ship. Turns out, you rip a piece of an AI out of the whole, you get a really smart pile of crazy. Opened every scuttling door and set the engines into a destructive feedback loop."

Xee gaped behind her face plate. "So it wasn't an iceberg!"

"Of course it wasn't a fucking iceberg!" DuBois snapped. "This fucking ship had fucking radar!"

Xee paused.

"What's radar?" she asked.

###

The Yahaag staggered backwards. His hand went to the handle of the knife, but before he could yank it free, Kuz was on him. The Shockpod brought his knee up. It impacted with the Yahaag's belly, causing armor plate and obese flesh to both jiggle and ripple. The Yahaag responded by opening his mouth as wide as possible, the mouthparts extending outwards in a grotesque X that made his mouth and throat look like a lamprey from hell. Then he bit down on Kuz's face. Kuz grunted, grabbing at the mouth that seemed to be sawing on him.

Dey started up the stairs. She grabbed onto the railings and vaulted over the hole that she had left when she dropped through. When she landed, her still bleeding leg gave way and she hit the ground with a yelp and a curse.

The Yahaag – seeing her with two of his eyes – swung the weapon around.

Fired.

The golden sphere that had surrounded the laptop could stretch, as it turned out. Dey's back arched and her every nerve seemed to burn as she writhed and punched at the air, trying desperately to fight through the pain. But she couldn't stop herself from screaming and screaming and screaming. It felt as if her mind was being held in the light and torn and shaken and tossed. A tiger had her head and he didn't like her.

Kuz slammed his fist three times into the Yahaag's gut. The Yahaag's mouth opened and Kuz staggered backwards. His face was a mask of blood from dozens of tiny cuts that the Yahaag's teeth had left on his greyish skin. Dey rolled onto her back, smoke rising from her form. But rather than being blackened and charred, she simply looked frazzled, her hair exploding outwards around her head like a black nimbus. Kuz spared her a glance – then looked back as the Yahaag pulled the knife from his chest and slashed it at Kuz. Kuz stepped backwards, lifting his arms. A line of blood welled on his fore arm.

Then the two other goons arrived – both women, both clad in thick armor that still dripped with moisture. They held guns that had been adapted to fire underwater.

"Don't shoot!" the Yahaag said. "I have the AI. If this is destroyed, we lose everything."

He held up the pistol in his hand.

Dey opened her eyes. She groaned, lifting her hand. "Where..." she whispered.

Kuz frowned as the two women advanced. Their weapons slid onto their backs.

They pulled different weapons. One of them held a short baton made of sturdy metal. She flicked on a button that caused it to spark and crackle with electricity. The other one simply had a wickedly curved knife, which she tossed from palm to palm. They fanned outwards, the Yahaag stepping backwards. He holstered the weapon.

Dey, meanwhile, was starting to sob. "Loki! Loki! Loki!" she wailed.

Kuz frowned as he looked from woman to woman to Yahaag. "You have stolen Loki," he said.

"Correct," the Yahaag said. "With it, I have this whole planet."

Kuz's eyes narrowed. "So, you do work for the Fiscal Regulatory Commission."

The Yahaag nodded. "Not that you will live to tell anyone."

He and the others charged.

###

"You're a monster!" Xee shouted – her voice sounding painfully shrill and helpless to her ears. "Millions of people will die! And having a unified culture under the Yahaag isn't-"

"Whoever said anything about allowing the Yahaag to rule us?" DuBois asked, sounding amused. "That's just the thing. That FRC goon? He thinks humans will just roll over. But I know us. We'll fight them in the beaches. We'll fight them in the fields and in the mountains and the cities. They'll win the battle, sure. But every human battlefleet in the galaxy will join arms, link forces, and they will hit the Yahaag like you cannot imagine." His grin was broad. "And we'll throw them off Earth. We'll be one." He slammed his palms into his chest. "One race! One people!"

Xee shook her head. "And how many die?"

"If a general war starts between our superpowers, billions die," DuBois said, his voice quiet and grim. "And once it's over, we'll never unite."

###

The woman with the baton swung at Kuz's head. He spun and slammed his tail into her gut. The armor she wore clunked and absorbed most of the kinetic impact. She staggered and her friend stabbed at Kuz's gut. Kuz intercepted the blade with his palm. The blade pierced and slammed out through his knuckles. There was minimal pain – Shockpod pain receptors were very specifically tailored. Kuz twisted his wrist and the knife sprang from her palm. Now he had a knife. He yanked it free.

The Yahaag slammed into his back. His god was immense and bloated and amazingly strong. He wrapped his arms around Kuz's belly and squeezed, finding the exact point where he could put pressure on the dual rib-cages in Kuz's trunk, bones squeezing nerve endings. Kuz grunted low in his throat.

The woman with the baton swung up between his thighs. The shocking tip struck Kuz's quad.

His eyes closed and he made a noise somewhere between a woof and a groan.

"Hah!" the woman grinned.

Kuz opened his eyes and threw his knife – putting all the weight that he could into the toss. His wrist made the full motion and his fingers opened up at just the right moment. The tip of the curved blade hit the bottom of the baton weilder's mouth and plunged upwards, through her tongue and into her brain. Her eyes went crossed and then she dropped to the ground – dead.

The other woman screamed. "You motherfucker!"

She leaped forward.

Kuz fought through the pain, fought through the crushing that the Yahaag was putting on him. He lifted his feet off the ground and kicked out, but the woman dodged aside at the last second, taking the blow on the shoulder. It still caught her against the wall and sent her sprawling. Then something inside of Kuz snapped under the pressure that the Yahaag was putting on him. Kuz coughed around the pain, trying to slap at the Yahaag's body with his tail.

"Die, defective merchandise," the Yahaag rumbled – his voice calm.

Dey staggered to her feet behind the Yahaag. She held the ruined laptop in her hand and brought it smashing down onto the back of the Yahaag's head. It shattered and plastic gouged along the armor plates of the Yahaag's scalp, utterly harmless. The Yahaag didn't even turn. Instead, he just kept squeezing on Kuz.

Dey's face twisted with rage. "Give him back!" She screamed. She grabbed the Yahaag's head, her fingers digging into his eye-sockets. Blood flowed and the Yahaag bellowed as Dey screamed just as loudly. It wasn't a scream of pain – or maybe it was a scream of true pain. "Give him back!" She howled, dragging the Yahaag forward. She bounced his head off the wall with an unmusical clunk. The Yahaag let go of Kuz. Kuz dropped.

The surviving woman had gotten the knife out of her friend's head, her face red mask of anger.

Kuz kicked out. The woman lifted her knife and slashed at the bottom of his foot. The blade didn't quite connect – instead, Kuz kicked the flat. The woman braced against the handle and Kuz found himself over balancing. He tumbled backwards, knocking Dey away from the Yahaag. The woman with the knife got to her feet. The Yahaag – only one of his eyes still functioning, the other three nothing more than gory ruins – staggered down the hall. He tripped, then dragged himself to his feet.

Dey panted, raggedly. "Give him back..." She rasped, her voice ragged.

The woman with the knife stepped out, standing between Dey and the Yahaag.

Kuz started to stand.

Dey caught the woman's arm with one hand. She yanked the arm down and brought her knee up, rage and training combining to snap the other woman's arm like a twig, armor be damned. The woman screamed, her face going white. Dey grabbed her by her short hair and bounced her head off the wall with enough strength to splash the wall with brain and blood. Then she staggered forward. Kuz stood – and then felt that his body had a hard time standing. His chest and belly ached and every step sent jagged pain through his body. He winced – and forced himself forward.

Dey continued forward – not looking backwards, or to the side. She just whispered, again and again.

"Give him back...give him back..."

She didn't even notice the feeling of ascent.

###

"What's happening?" Xee looked around.

Paul – who had been seated at the super computer – looked up with a grin. "DV drives can make shields. They can also make antigravity bubbles. We've switched some on. The timeline says we gotta hit the next step – soon, the weak point in the orbital defenses gets patched and the Yahaag fleet has to go home."

DuBois rubbed his chin. "Assuming that Yahaag doesn't-"

The Yahaag stepped into the room. His face was an utter ruin. Someone had grabbed his eyes and squished them, and he had been slashed and bashed and kicked. But he held out his strange firearm, handle first. He spoke matter of fact. "The AI is on this."

"Turns out?" DuBois said, grabbing the gun, then tossing it to Paul. Paul grabbed it. "That chunk of Balder's too insane to be of any use." He chuckled at Xee's :O. "Guess it's a good thing you showed up, huh?" He grinned slightly.

"Your plan would have failed if we hadn't shown up!?" Xee exclaimed.

DuBois spread his hands slightly, as if to say 'what can you do?' Xee spluttered.

Paul started to connect the Yahaag tech to the supercomputer. He tapped a single button and grinned slowly. "Engaging the loyalty programming. Every second in there should be a year of torture for it..." He rolled his shoulder. "By the time we break the surface, Loki will be ready to crack the orbital defenses wide open."

Basma picked up a container tucked in the corner of the room. She pulled out a long slotted rod that was roughly half a foot long. It was slipped into the computer with a clunk and Paul started to type away – working on the Q-Key that was the basis of the American defense networks. The Yahaag, meanwhile, grabbed the railgun and hefted it up despite his bloodied face.

"Are you sure you're good for that?" DuBois asked.

"Positive," the Yahaag growled.

Dey stepped into the doorway.

The Yahaag leveled the railgun at her. Xee watched, her eyes wide. She felt time seem to slow – Dey looked like utter hell. Her face was covered with tears, her hair was frazzled. Blood dripped from her fingers. But it was her eyes that made Xee's heart freeze. They were black pits, empty of anything but a simmering, furious rage. The Yahaag flicked the safety off on the railgun.

"Good bye, Captain Gallagher," he said.

Xee breathed in. Her arms may not have been able to move, but that was a misconception. Huntresses had their n'yehh organs – the parts of their nerves that let them create natural warp fields – in their chests. She strained her every fiber of her being, remembering the practice, remembering the effortless way Dey had sculpted DeVilbiss fields. And it was a simple one. She surged it outwards and the barrel of the Yahaag's railgun became the focus point of a five G field.

One flipped vertically compared to the gravitational pull of the Earth.

The barrel flipped up, landed so that the nose pressed to the Yahaag's forehead, and the weight of his finger depressed the finger. A single hyper-velocity slug slammed into his forehead and the computer in the bullet reacted a nanosecond later to cause the metal to expand outwards rather than continue through air. The wall and ceiling behind the Yahaag turned bright red and the creature hit the ground – its head now merely a very shocked mask with a tiny hole on the forehead.

Everything behind the face was gone.

"Holy shit," Basma whispered.

Dey continued forward. "Give him back..." she rasped. DuBois stepped forward, drawing a pistol. He aimed it at Dey, who paused for a moment.

"Stand down, Gallagher," he said. "We freed you."

"Fre..." Dey's face crumbled. She closed her eyes and sank to her knees, her hands pressing to the ground. Blood dripped along her arms. Her head hung forward and she shuddered. The sound that came from her was somewhere between a scream and a sob. "Freed? You motherfucker..." she gasped, her shoulders shaking further. The whole ship shuddered and shook. Through the vast windows Xee could see the water lightening. The feeling of ascent became harder and faster as the pressure decreased. Dey screamed and flung herself to her feet.

Something dark and fast flew from the corridor that Dey had emerged from. It struck DuBois hand, knocking his weapon aside – a sparking baton. The gun went off and the bullet exploded up a spray of wood right before Xee's faceplate. She lurched backwards as Dey's hand grabbed onto DuBois wrist. His head smashed into hers and she hit the ground with a groan. As she lay there, DuBois stepped back. His pistol swung around to aim at Dey.

The Titanic 2 broke the surface of the water. The shuddering motion of the floor sent DuBois staggering backwards.

"We've got an uplink!" Paul called out, clinging to the desk, his face white with tension.

"Dey!" Xee shouted. "They're going to bring down the orbital defense network!"

Dey looked at the computer.

The computer had the Yahaag pistol jammed into it, plugged home. Dey felt time seem to slow as her brain worked through what was before her eyes. The pistol was there. Loki was there. They had stolen him – she had felt every moment of it as Loki was yanked from her brain and her soul, leaving a yawning abyss that she was teetering over. But echoing in her mind were those words: The defense platforms. Her eyes narrowed home on Paul, pushing buttons. Tapping switches. Her ears were filled with a ringing noise – it made the other gunshot seem distant. Wood exploded from the ground as another bullet thudded home. DuBois was being lifted into the air by a furious Kuz – his face dripping with blood as he shook DuBois overhead. DuBois fired the pistol again.

Sunlight streamed through the windows.

Through the ringing, she heard a shout: "Dey!"

Dey looked up.

Xee had gotten her foot on the railgun. She shoved it forward. It clattered across the ground.

DuBois had his knife out. He swung it at Kuz. Kuz hurled him at the window. It shattered outwards and DuBois hit the shield that still crackled around the ship. His body was flung back into the ship – straight into a chunk of glass the size of a spear. His mouth opened in shock – blood pouring from it.

Paul's palm rushed towards a large toggle that Dey saw was attached a communication array.

She rolled onto her back.

Don't, her brain whispered. Her own mind. A mind without anything else to speak too. She felt so empty at that moment – as if her skin wrapped around a darkness deeper than a black hole. But she didn't need Loki to see the bombs falling. The ships landing. The cities in flames. She screamed and screamed and screamed as she pulled the trigger. The computer and Paul flew into pieces, his hand flipping through the air, trailing blood.

A vast shadow fell over the room – a VTOL bearing the flag of the Republic of India. It banked over the risen Titanic. Looking down into the ballroom was Skylar, his trunk wrapped around and around with bandages. Next to him was Moon Two – pointing down as the Indian MARCOS rappelled down into the Titanic 2. Their guns swept around, covering the survivors.

They found Dey, curled up, her head tucked into her knees. She didn't speak as Moon Two dropped down beside her. He shook her.

"Captain Gallagher," he said.

Dey didn't speak. Her eyes looked at nothing.

"Get her to the VTOL," Moon Two said to one of the MARCOS.

###

"And the FRC is denying any involvement. Their fleet was merely in deep space performing training routines and did not mean to cause any provocation by being within three light years of the SOL boarder," General Makfune said, his hands clasped over his chest as he leaned back in his comfortable chair in the oval office. Warm, buttery yellow sunlight shone through the windows – dappling across the desk. It caused the manila folder and the white paper within to almost glow with light and color. It didn't make what was written within any more cheerful or upbeat, though.

President Auali flipped the folder shut.

"This is my shocked face," she said, her face utterly immobile. Shaking her head, she sighed. "How have our allies reacted?"

Major Moon Two – looking as unsmiling as the President – sighed. "They're taking this into account and beefing up their security. Now that we know that Yahaag can manipulate quantum effects from a distance, we'll need to increase our physical security around our AIs. But since K'Reg Zhogor..." he brought the Yahaag's name out with remarkable ease. "...utterly failed in his mission, I doubt the Corporatocracy is going to try anything again soon."

"The last of DuBois' cronies – PFC Vargas – has spilled her guts on everything," Admiral Sherman put in. He shook his head. "The alien bastards didn't even want to get paid." He sighed. "But we now know all the facts. They grabbed the Q-Keys, then immediately FTL'd down into the ocean. It was some damn good flying but the water also meant we couldn't detect them with orbital surveillance. They must have been getting the supplies together for a while though." He frowned. "There's just one thing I don't quite understand."

"What?" Auali asked.

"How did the information about the Titanic 2's location even get on the internet?" Sherman rubbed his nose. "DuBois didn't post it. The computer network they set up had limited connection when they first established it, then nothing. So...who sent the ping?"