Chapter 24
Threadbare
// SPATIAL CHECK //
> DATE: 17.03.7088
> TIME: 19:51:23 UST (UNIVERSAL STANDARD TIME)
// LOCATION TRIANGULATION //
> SYSTEM: INTERSTELLAR SPACE
>> BODY: nil
>>> SETTLEMENT: WAYSTATION #0085
>>>> LOCAL: THE LOTUS ROOT – NIGHTSHADE SUITE
Az leaned against the wall, blocking the view of the room from the three station guards taking census. He almost had them convinced to come back later. He wanted to deal with the mess that was Melissa Cabot, privately. He had already miscalculated who she was back on Kelara, her Slate hacked to display a fake name, and the description on that bounty was completely off. And now, an entire faction was after her. He had questions and he was going to get them answered. How had he misread her so badly? Both times?
The sound of running footsteps could be heard from behind the guards. They all looked over their shoulders, seeing a rather frantic, pink-haired cyborg rushing down the hall followed closely by Boron, mono-wheel whirring loudly.
Az frowned at them both, opening the door a bit wider as they approached. The guards looked offended, the leader opening his mouth to tell them off, but was cut off when Boron interjected.
“Sirs, please excuse my masters. I have been tasked in accommodating yourselves to a free meal in our establishment.” Boron bowed to the guards, stiff and polite. “If you will please await our representative to make himself available once urgent business has concluded?”
The two supporting guards perked up, but the leader sighed sorrowfully getting ready to decline when Carla pushed Az backwards into the room and slammed the door shut.
“What’s the rush?” Az said slowly, carefully.
“Why aren’t you answering your Slate?!” She shot back, out of breath.
“My Slate?” he murmured, frowning. He palmed his pocket. He palmed the other pocket with a bit more urgency. He then slapped down both sides of his pants, trying to feel for the elusive device. He took a deep, slow breath. He must have left it in the bedroom with his jacket.
The sound of the shower had started up again, which meant Melissa was back in the shower. Probably finding the hot water soothing on her surgery site. Her numerous scars showing a repeated exposure to such operations, which would explain her aversion to the hospital.
He spared Carla a scoff, showing confidence he didn’t quite feel. “The guards distracted me,” he lied smoothly. “What seems to be the problem?”
Carla looked at him suspiciously, confused but answering his question anyway. “Mills said not to leave you alone with Melissa Cabot, where is she?”
“In the shower,” he gestured towards the bedroom.
“Did you fuck her?” Carla prompted, unashamedly, staring at the bedroom door as if she could see through it.
“No,” the response came dry and unimpressed, as if used to Carla’s brashness.
“Ok, I can report that to Mills,” she pulled out her device from her pocket, tapping on the transparent screen with her thumbs. “Still, dude, where’s your Slate? It’s usually either glued to your hand or deep in your pocket.”
Az’s smirk faltered for a second before re-fixing itself, “Just with my jacket.”
Carla glanced at him, dubious. “Are you ok?”
“Fine,” he said, his eyes avoiding her inquisitive stare. He looked over her shoulder, his head twitching—a sharp, mechanical jerk as if flicking away an invisible fly.
“Uh-huh,” Carla twisted her lips in disbelief. “I’m going to go check on her. If she’s naked on the bed, I’m reporting you.”
“She’s not, but go right ahead.” He retreated to the dining table, half-sitting on the edge with his arms crossed. He tried to project his usual aloofness, but his heavy eyes betrayed him.
Carla sent another discreet message to Miller, watching her squadmate carefully out of the corner of her eye. She knocked on the master bedroom door and waited a few seconds.
“Hi, Miss Cabot? It’s Carla of Blackthorn One, I’m coming in,” Carla called out before pushing the door open.
Az watched as the cyborg disappeared into the room, rubbing his face with one hand. He hadn’t had a proper rest in three days, and he was finally feeling the effects.
He sat staring at his fingers, nicked, scarred and marred from decades of fighting. For a terrifying heartbeat, he coolly watched it flex before the skin and muscles peeled back to reveal an onyx skeleton wrapped in thin golden wires. In the next heartbeat, the assembly hissed back into a scarred, human shape.
“Hey, Az?” Carla called out from the bedroom.
He shoved both hands into his pockets, snapping back into attention. He shook his head vigorously before walking into the side room.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
The bedroom was empty with a pile of rags on the floor, the closet still half open, armchair devoid of jacket. Screwdriver missing from the bed. A couple of alerts blared in his inner audio sensor. But he fully stopped dead when he saw what Carla was staring at. The small ensuite was full of steam, the shower still going, a message written into the condensation on the mirror.
‘All life-debts are considered settled. Slate for a Slate. Send the cyborg.’
And the open ceiling vent, screws placed neatly on the counter top.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Boron towered over the three human guards, his mismatched lower half giving him the height he needed to make them uncomfortable. He balanced on the mono-wheel, the violent seam of messy welds partially hidden by his plaid shirt and apron. He tried to make himself as non-threatening as possible, but he regularly dealt with mercenaries. Civilians and station guards were his brother, Eoron’s speciality. Not that the fellow Three-Zero model cared much for humans anymore.
“Look, I really have to decline,” the station guard leader said wearily, putting his hand up. “I understand your masters have given you instructions, but I have my own instructions. I have to finish this census for the Station Authority so we know how many people we’ll have to support-”
A set of heavy, running footsteps sped down the hall towards the small group, grabbing the humans' attention.
Boron looked over their heads, his broken mask only flashing yellow in surprise for a second before cycling the expected RGB again.
Asron, or Az as he insists the humans call him, had a dark scowl on his face, something that Boron hadn’t seen in a long time. He shoved himself past them, his inhuman strength sending one soldier sprawling and the leader falling heavily against the wall. He thundered down the stairs, calling back over his shoulder in a language none of their auto-translators could decipher.
But for Boron, it was his root language, the systems he ran on had been coded using this dialect.
“Request. Activate the Three-Ones, send Melissa’s likeness for retrieval.”
Boron responded in kind, unable to stop the teasing tone and grateful the humans couldn’t understand them. “Query. I win the wager?”
Az took a moment at the bottom of the stairs to flip the bartender the finger before disappearing around the corner.
“Hey,
Mills,” Carla meekly said into the Slate, her
voice echoing slightly in the hollow metal tube.
“They
had sex, didn’t they,”
Miller’s voice was a dark, low-frequency mutter. It was the tone of
a man who had already filled out the disciplinary paperwork in his
head.
“Um,
no. Actually,” Carla responded. She grunted as she hauled herself
around a jagged seam in the ducting. The vent would
have been
a graveyard of industrial dust and congealed lubricant, but the
path had already been mostly cleared for her. The little detritus
that did get on her, she
didn't seem to mind. It was just a shortcut without
a view. “She’s gone.”
“What
do you mean she’s gone? Carla,
the woman just had a transplant.”
“I
mean the ceiling vent in the bathroom was open and there’s a nice,
clean trail to
follow,”
Carla grunted, trying to use her legs as much as her own, organic
arm. Her
metal arm holding the device to her ear.
“Az is
acting... weird.
Told me to follow in the vent and he’s going to try and head her
off. He
looked like he was...about to blow a fuse.”
“Oh
for the love of void’s-”
Miller groaned deeply, the sound of a man rubbing his eyes until they
bled.“Did
he tell you why he wasn’t answering his Slate?”
“Um,”
Carla hesitated, wanting to have her squadmate’s back, but at the
same time not wanting to get on Miller’s bad side, again. “Well,
it’s a bit… complicated.”
“Carla.
Out
with it.”
“...can
you promise that Az isn’t going to get in trouble?”
“WHAT
DID HE DO?”
“She
nicked
his Slate.”
The
silence that followed wasn't just quiet; it was pressurised. It felt
like the air was being sucked out of the comms line,
a heavy, airless vacuum that made Carla’s ears
pop. She stopped mid-crawl, bracing for a scream that never came.
Instead, she got something much, much worse.
“Carla,
it’s Shimada,”
a clipped female voice sounded, unimpressed and all business. “Start
from the beginning, Miller’s… taking a second.”
Carla
swallowed nervously, mustering up the small shred of professionalism
Miller and
Jake have tried to lecture her about.
“Ok,
well. After
the Kelara job,
Azrael hooked
up
with this really, really sexy brunette,” Carla started babbling,
feeling
quite confident in her ability.
“Honestly, if he hadn’t moved in so quick, I would have had a
piece of-”
“
Shimada
stifled
a groan, but Carla could hear that strangled
sound through
the line. “I
don’t want your
thoughts.
I want to know what Az did, how he reacted, and what he said. I need
you to tell me what this woman did in response. Facts
only, Carla.”
“Oh,
well,” Carla smiled, ready to spill the beans on Az’s
performance. If he wasn’t going to get in trouble over the Slate
thing, then surely nothing else was as bad.
“Then,
she comes into the bar, all dirty and looking like she huffed a kilo
of ussa! Turns out she
also got hit with this
‘Liberation’ shit
I got spiked
with,
she
lost her stomach! Oh, and
Az’s face! Looked like he saw a ghost, and he was
embarrassed, wouldn’t let her see his face for a good half of the
time and then when he did, she didn’t even recognise him!” Carla
chattered, giving
her own version of a rundown.
She had slowed down in her crawling, but the woman was injured.
Surely she must have stopped to
rest at
some point?
“Ok,
so what’s this
Supernova’s
name?” Shimada
prompted, being very careful on how she worded her questions.
“Well,
she told Az it was Melinda Abbot,” Carla started, peering through
another vent, seeing the corridor below devoid of human life. “But
then Tim called her Melissa Cabot. So I don’t which name is the
real one.”
“
Carla
stayed silent as her leader conferred with her second, humming to
herself as she rounded another corner.
“
Shimada came
back on the line, speaking
slowly, as
if a revelation just occurred to her.
“How
have you not caught up with this woman?”
“Yeah,
I thought that was weird too,” Carla looked backwards then
forwards. The clean trail still going around another
corner. “The trail is still going. It’s turning a corner up
ahead, but I haven’t seen her. There’s a residual thermal sig,
but it’s like
she’s always ten to fifteen minutes ahead of me.”
“How
many vents have
you passed?”
“Uh,
maybe like six? All of them were closed though.” Carla grunted as
she pulled herself one handed to crest sharp turn. “What did Miller
say?”
“If
it’s Melinda, we’re fine. If it’s Melissa, it’s not. But if
she’s someone who’s using aliases of existing Core citizens, we
blacklist and move on.”
“Why
wouldn’t we be fine if it is
this Melissa chick?” Carla perked up, the trail ending near a
closed vent.
“Miller’s
trying to make some calls, and he won’t say until he’s sure.”
“Eesh,”
the pink haired woman winced, knowing how bad something had to be for
Miller to ‘make some calls’. “I found her exit. I’m going to
follow through-”
Carla
stopped, peering through the open
grate
at the sub-access
corridor
below. A group of soldiers in white and gold armour were marching
by,
following
a rotund station worker
and a smaller, wimpier kid wearing the same uniform. One
of the soldiers,
without a helmet and holding a datapad stopped in his tracks, making
his escorts stop in turn. He turned to look up. To stare
right at her. Peacekeepers.
“Carla?
Report.”
Carla
carefully slotted the SlimSlate without hanging it up into her
cybernetic shoulder, a comms-dock
built in specifically for this. The lighthearted smile she had so far
dissolved into a cold impassiveness. She lifted her behind, planting
both feet, rather than her knees, down onto the vent’s floor.
Several
hands shoved themselves through the grate opening, grasping at empty
air. Carla had already launched herself forward, straight through the
dust and grime of the untouched shaft. A small spherical wheel
appeared in her palm, giving her a unique advantage in moving
quickly through the small space.
“Shi-shi,
JSPs on me, already tried grabby hands,” Carla tone
was quiet and low.
“Those
trigger-happy, rapey, criminal
fu-”
Miller’s
faint
furious
voice
trickled through the line, almost making Carla miss what Shimada was
saying.
“Forget
tracking the Supernova, call-signs only, Stinger.
Keep your distance, get back to Dark Lotus grounds if you can.”
“Will
do Jōshō,” Carla
slammed into the next corner’s side, hearing the running boots
following her alongside the vents. “Who’s my backup? Hammer?”
“I’ll
tap him and get another team to takeover the Pruning. Can you make
your way back?”
A
violent scream of metal being punctured made the cyborg wince, making
her double time as she swerved into a offshoot leading away from the
hall.
“That’s
a neg, Jōshō, something’s got them riled up and they want a piece
of pie.”
“Received,
don’t hang up. We’re your backup. Chief, tap station security
after Hammer. They’ve got bullies on board. Stinger, evade only. No
retaliation.”
“Yes,
mum.”
Carla’s forehead began dripping with sweat, her breathing
controlled and measured as she concentrated on not contributing to an
interstellar incident. Again.
And is turning into a full arc.
Hmmm......
I have essentially cut down about three chapters because honestly, even I was getting bored.
