Aries Revealed (13 page)

She wondered at that as she hunkered behind the remains of the crate. It was the kind of movement that indicated an old injury, scar tissue tightening up and making a joint click. Her grandpa, a veteran of one of the many system wars, had had the same problem. Perhaps it was a gesture his creator had picked up and coded into his behavioral sub-routines…

She didn’t get time to ponder it any further. The sound of heavy boots on the walkway outside filtered through the thick door. Her breath caught, her heart hammering in her chest. Barely keeping down panic, she looked around to check their preparations.

With nothing else to work with, they—well, Johnny—had ripped apart the electronics crate. Half of it was wedged against the back wall of the hold, padded with the shroud packing into a makeshift shelter for her. The expensive contents had been scattered across the floor, each array and relay stripped of their outer casing so the small, marble-like spheres lay twinkling in the overhead light to create a rocking and rolling assault course for anyone trying to navigate the floor.

She tightened her grip on the makeshift club fashioned from the broken up crate. One wrong step and whoever was idiot enough to try would be hitting the deck, which was her cue to get primal on their ass while they were down. The way she felt at the moment, they’d be better off with the pissed off bot at the door because she was feeling her inner bitch.

The locking mechanism on the door rolled, metallic clunks reverberating through the small room as each of the locks released. There was a second’s silence, then, with a click, the door started to swing inward. Standing behind it, Johnny grinned and shot her a wink, as he mouthed two words.

Showtime.

Everything happened at once. Johnny grabbed the muzzle of the rifle that was poked through the door and yanked. At the same time, he shoved his shoulder into the door, slamming it closed on the trooper caught between it and the frame. The scream was cut off with a sickening crunch, becoming a rattling groan of pain. Johnny slammed the door twice more in quick succession. Shouts and shots echoed from the other side of the door and it burst inward, troopers spilling through the gap.

Screaming, she ducked behind the impromptu shelter as the air filled with energy bolts. Fear and adrenaline slammed through her body with every rapid beat of her heart. Peeking out she saw Johnny in the middle of a group of men. Her jaw hit the deck. She’d seen fleet troopers in action on the news streams and they were shit hot, but Johnny…he was something else.

A whirling dervish of fists and feet, he twisted and spun like a dancer in the middle of the troopers. Grunts and cries of pain greeted each strike, but there were just too many of them for him to make headway. As soon as he knocked one guy out of the fight, one of the others took his place. Her eyes widened. Behind Johnny, a trooper who had just stepped through the door lifted his rifle.

“Johnny, watch out!”

She screamed as she burst out from the shelter, pushing it over onto the relays and giving it a hard shove toward the men on the right of the door as she ran toward the fray. Time slowed and stretched out. Johnny turned toward the threat. Not quick enough. Her blood pounded in her ears, drowning everything else out as the trooper fired.

The shot hit Johnny in the middle of the chest. She screamed again, falling and sliding on the relays. He jerked to a stop, his jaw dropping as the bolt zapped him, wrapping his torso in a blue web of high yield energy. He dropped to his knees. Swayed.

“Nononono,” she sobbed, tears pouring down her cheeks as the light faded from his eyes. Scrambling forward, she tried to reach him, but a hard hand on the back of her neck stopped her and hauled her upright.

“Oh no, you little bitch. You’re going nowhere.”

His breath leaving his lungs, Johnny toppled to the deck with a thump. Crying and twisting in her captors hold, Milly kept looking at his fallen form as she was dragged out the door. A trooper stepped in the way, pulling his pistol from his holster.

“This is for Hudson, you bastard piece of shit,” he spat and shot the fallen man in the head.

Chapter Thirteen

“Fucking bitch. Get in there.”

The hard voice of the trooper half dragging, half carrying her ordered as the door to the lift opened in front of them. It had taken two of them to get her across the walkway. All she wanted to do was get back to Johnny, the image of his fallen body etched forever in her mind.

Stumbling forward, she collided with the back wall of the lift and used it to hold her up. Her legs were weak, hopelessness and misery invading every cell of her body. They’d shot him in the head, the two retorts of the pistol still ringing in her ears. Her stomach rolled. She didn’t even want to think of the damage that had done.

She’d seen broken androids before. The
Starflame
had transported a bulk load of military spec damages last year. It had been so eerie to see them lined up in their racks, faces blank and impassive, if they had them, despite massive damage to their physical forms. Then Simons, the assistant quartermaster, had gotten a little too curious and activated one to see what sector they’d been fighting in. None of the crew, her included, had realized that military androids were remote linked. The first bot had activated the rest and they’d ended up with a hold of androids all screaming in pain.

Hands grabbed her from behind and she was turned around. A troopers face leered above her as he pressed back against the lift wall, his hands cruel as he groped her waist, her breasts before shoving one between her legs to cup her mound. She whimpered, trying to push him off, but he was too strong.

“That’s it, little slut. You feel that? Feel that cock?” His breath washed over her neck in hot pants as he ground his crotch against her, his cock already hard. “That’s what you’re getting. I’m gonna split you in two…”

“Jenkins, get the fuck off her. You don’t get her until the boss says, and we got the unload to do first.” A voice behind warned and Jenkins released her with a frustrated growl. His pale eyes glittered malevolently as she slid away from him and down the wall to huddle in a crouched bundle. His eyes were familiar, but she couldn’t quite place them. Her eyes widened as recognition hit. The pilot Johnny had killed. It was his eyes looking back out of Jenkins face. He grinned, but the expression had nothing to do with humor.

“That’s right…remember me, bitch. I want payback for my brother. Vos. You remember him? You and your bastard bot killed him.”

Feeling the blood drain from her face she scooted away from him, bumping into the legs of one of the other troopers. He looked down at her, his expression cold before he looked back at the entrance to the lift. Misery rolled through Milly again as she wrapped her arms around her legs and prayed the lift ride took forever.

It didn’t.

Less than two minutes later she was hauled out onto the bridge. The checker plate on the floor snatched and tore her pants, cutting into her skin as Jenkins and one of the others dragged her across it on her knees to throw her in front of the helm chair.

Jason sat there like a king in front of his court, his square jaw propped on the elegant fingers of one hand. Unlike the men around him, who were in combat uniform, her ex-husband was in full dress uniform, as though he were about to head out to one of the official functions she’d hated.

“Ahh, there you are.” He looked her over coldly, barely a flicker of his eyes at the bruises and torn clothing. He sighed, irritation crossing his features as his gaze flicked to the blood dripping on the deck from her cut knees. “I see you’ve been causing some trouble. As usual. Well, not anymore.”

“Why are you doing this Jason?” Milly shook her head, not bothering to move from her kneeling position. Jenkins cruel fingers in her shoulder promised painful retribution if she so much as thought about it. “There’s not enough cargo aboard to make a good profit and you’re gonna face a shitload of questions if you turn up with the
Starflame
without me.”

He smiled, covering his mouth with his fingers the way he always had when he was inordinately amused. Once, she’d found it cute. Now all Milly wanted to go was slap his silly grin to the other side of his face.

“Well, you see. There were some questions about our divorce. Because you wouldn’t play nice and admit you’re a lying slut, people started to ask questions…my reputation suffered. I can’t have that.” He leaned forward, the hatred and malevolence in his eyes so deep it took her breath away.

“But if you and the ship go missing…suspected pirate attack. Well, I’ll be a widower, grieving for his lost love who turned away from him and got herself killed.” He grinned in satisfaction and leaned back in the chair. “Thus neatly solving all problems and leaving me with a bit in my pocket. You have no
idea
how much the organ farmers will pay for a healthy woman of breeding age. And the best part about it? They don’t care what condition you’re in. You just have to be breathing.”

He looked up at Jenkins and nodded. “All yours, just keep her screams down. I never could stand her bloody noise.”

Jenkins chuckled, an evil sound that froze her to the bone, and yanked on her arm. Milly yanked back and glared at Jason. “One day you’ll get what’s coming to you, Jason Templeton. Even if I have to haunt you to do it.”

Systems reboot…administering adrenaline shot… Powering wetware re-initialization… Shocking…shocking…shocking… Heartbeat reestablished.

Johnny gasped as lightning arced through the center of his chest and dragged him back from the comfort of blackness into a place of pain and fire. Gasping, he dragged a breath into his oxygen starved lungs and then groaned. He felt like he’d been done over with an iron bar.

Critical systems check…primary systems online…secondary systems online… Damage report…biological damage to left leg, articulatio genus damage may impair movement… Ninth and eleventh rib on left anterior fractured… Twelfth rib left posterior suspected hairline fracture…

Memories filtered back as his onboard listed a damage report. He could feel pain, but it was a whole body experience rather than localized. A defense mechanism imposed by his implants, it spread the pain load over his whole body rather than just one area where it could become crippling.

He opened his eyes, looking up at the metal ceiling of the hold. The heads-up display streamed information over his field of vision. Something was wrong. He couldn’t see out of his right eye. The visual input was a dark reddish color. Groaning, he lifted his hand.

Query right eye,
he ordered his onboard as his fingers touched his cheek. They came away slick and red. He winced, feeling the pull as he explored further and discovered a ragged flap of skin.

Right ocular implant operating at ninety percent. Damage from direct ballistic hit. Bio-organic damage and residue obscuring implant.

Fuck. His eye was trashed. Sitting bolt upright like a cadaver rising from the mortuary table in one of the old-school horror vids always showing on the movie streams, Johnny explored the damage to his face.

“Fucking
wanker
,”
he spat as he dug his fingers in and scooped out the pulped remains of his right eyeball. It splattered on the floor by his thigh as he rolled to his feet to inspect the damage in the reflective strip around the hold door. The gaping hole where his eye had been looked back him, the green-blue lenses of the ocular implant beneath clearly visible as it focused mechanically.

At least it was his right eye, the cybernetic one, rather than his left, bio-organic one. The
duerineium
alloy of his skull had ensured that the frontal blast didn’t penetrate. Concentrating for a second, he watched as his alphanumeric code materialized on his skin under the undamaged eye. With the implant showing there was no point in pretending anymore.

Wincing, he leaned in and checked the damage to the flesh as dispassionately as though he were looking at a damaged bot. The socket was torn, but intact. He sighed in relief, all it would need was a couple of staples to start the healing and Cyn could slot a falsie in when he got back to the base. If he got back to the base…

Surging to his feet, he ignored the damage to his face in favor of searching the scattered bodies of the troopers he’d killed. His lips curled in disgust that they’d just been left here. That was humans all over for you. What term did they use? Yeah, collateral damage. Troopers and little girls, it was all the same to bastards like Templeton.

Less than five minutes later, he was kitted out with enough weaponry and ammunition to wage a one man-war on a Saltorian outpost on the frozen tundras of Bezan Seven. A quick stop for a medkit in the corridor and he’d stapled the loose flap of skin around his eye in place. He didn’t bother with a patch. The sight of the empty socket and the implant within, surrounded by bloody flesh, said far more about what he was than the line of letters and numbers on his cheek.

He didn’t intend to pretty himself up and play nice with Templeton’s men. He tightened his hand on the grip of his carbine, a second slung over his shoulder and a pistol holstered under his arm and set off for the bridge. He didn’t intend to win hearts and minds, he intended to terrify the fuck out of them.

Then kill them. Kill them all.

There was such a thing as stealth in combat. There was also such a thing as a battle plan. But unless “kill them all” could be considered a viable battle plan, Johnny had neither as he stormed over the walkway, carbine in hand and murder in his eyes. These men had taken Milly and done god knows what to her. They were going to pay in blood and agony.

“What the…?”

The first trooper didn’t get to finish his sentence as Johnny emerged from the darkness of the corridor, the
Starflame’s
computer still not registering him as a life form. Lifting his weapon, he fired twice. The muzzle spat out a double tap, the energy bolts sizzling through the air to strike the trooper, shaking him as though he were cargo on a vibro-plate. Two smoking holes formed, one in the center of his forehead and the other through his throat.

Cut off the head of the snake, Johnny thought without emotion as he watched the rifle slip from the man’s nerveless fingers to clatter on the deck a second before his body fell across it. Combat 101, sever the spinal column and remove your enemies ability to fire back at you. Of course, blowing their heads off also worked.

He turned to the second trooper, who took one look at him and paled. His gaze flicked between the glowing implant in Johnny’s bloody and stapled eye socket and the numbers on the opposite cheek.

“Y-you-you…you s-should be d-d-dead,” he stammered as he backed up, Johnny following him every step of the way.

“You know what they say. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. Gotta pay the piper now…” Johnny flicked a glance down at the man’s chest and the name tag across the top pocket. “Charlton. We all do sooner or later.”

“Bu…but, you were supposed to be an android!”

Charlton’s rifle was loose in his hands until his ass hit the metal wall behind him and he recalled its existence. His hands shaking, he started to lift it, only for it to be yanked from his hand. It skittered across the corridor floor behind them.

Johnny grinned evilly as he closed his hand around the guy’s throat and lifted him off the floor. He leaned in, his voice soft by the guy’s ear.

“I lied.”

Charlton screamed, the sound strangled by the hard hand around his throat. As close as he was, Johnny felt the movement and twisted as Charlton tried to stab him. The blade skittered across his ribs instead of sliding through, the hot burning pain just another to add the to list his onboard was compiling.

“Wrong move, bud.” Johnny snarled, and with a twist, snapped the trooper’s neck.

He dropped the body and considered the lift. It was a no-go. Even if they hadn’t heard the gunfire from the bridge above, it was still too obvious an entry point. If he was Templeton, then he’d have both the lift entrance and the access hatch by the main view screen covered, or at the least the latter rigged to blow. He wrinkled his nose. With shaped charges and the range of adaptive charge-detonators available these days, any idiot could be an explosives expert.

Turning, he relieved both bodies of their weaponry, slinging the extras over his shoulder. He didn’t have time to strip them of their power packs, and if he was storming the bridge on his own without backup to provide covering fire, if he stopped to change a pack, then he’d be a dead man. When he’d stripped anything useful from the trooper’s corpses, he left them to litter the corridor and disappeared back into the darkness.

Halfway along the same corridor, he stopped, opening up the access hatch to the maintenance shafts. He poked his head through and grinned. Just as he thought, a straight route up to the bridge. Climbing through, he ignored the grating in his rib cage, trusting to his onboard to dull the pain running through his body and keep him operational. It came with a price. Once the action was over, he’d feel every second of this and worse, but for now he could keep going, the roar of adrenaline galvanizing every muscle and sinew as he climbed upward at a rapid rate.

At the top of the shaft the space opened out with a hexagonal junction. Six directions to chose. Four led into diagonals, crawlspaces for the power and data cables that riddled the ship. Only two, opposite each other, were full walkways. One led to the aft section above deck one, and the other led over the bridge.