Rocketship Patrol (16 page)

“Yeah,” Feh said, his voice faltering. “Lucky.”

THIRTEEN

“...So, wasn’t much I could do except shoot him in the kneecap,” Cortez said as the steward filled her glass with an after-dinner Sherry. “Of course I was pretty drunk, so I missed the kneecap just the tiniest bit.”

“Always wondered why they call Fenrio ‘the Eunuch’.” Klakraw sat on his high-chair at the other end of the long dinner table in the
Battlerock
’s luxuriously appointed ward room. The table was littered with the remains of a particularly decent nine-course meal.

Cortez took a sip of Sherry, swished it around her mouth, and nodded her approval at the steward. “Now you know.”

Loy, stiff and uncomfortable the entire meal, crossed her arms over her chest as a different steward cleared away her plate and the untouched double-roasted twin-headed Lyat hen main course. In its place the steward left a slice of triple-decker chocolate and grape jelly cake. She ignored the cake and glared at Cortez. “Don’t you think it’s time we were moving on?” she asked through gritted teeth. “Got appointments to keep...
people to call
...”

“Nobody’s going anywhere!”

Cortez looked up over her Sherry and rolled her eyes.

A gaping hole in his utility robot chest, Igon-2 stood in the wardroom’s doorway, pointing a finger at Cortez. “
J’accuse
!”

“Excuse me?” Klakraw twisted around, his tiny red eyes boring out of the liquid in his head-tank at Igon-2. Flanking either side of the doorway, his Xenobat marine honor guard minions raised their autorifles, readying for action. “Who are you?”

“Who am I?” Igon-2 asked. “You should be asking who is
she
. She’s a cop!”

“We know that.” Klakraw gave Loy a nod and a friendly flutter of his head-tank liquid before turning back towards Igon-2. “Who are the hell are you?”

“Oh, he’s just a copy,” Igon said, sitting back in his chair and lighting an electronic cigar. “Feel free to ignore him.”

“Not her,” Igon-2 said, yanking the autorifle out of the arms of the nearest Xenobat and jumping up on the table with it. His servos clanking, he marched across the table right up to Cortez, pointing the rifle between her eyes. “Her!”

Cortez smirked over the lip of her Sherry glass as she took a sip. “Didn’t I shoot you?”

“Twice,” Igon-2 said, thumbing the autorifle’s power slider to full charge. “Once with a painful needler. And then with an even more painful arrow of love unrequited. But that rocket’s flown, baby. You blew your chance, and now it’s payback time, copper.”

“Nonsense,” Klakraw said. “My niece isn’t a cop.”

“Your what?” Loy asked. She glared at Cortez. “Your
niece
?”

Cortez shrugged. “My mother remarried.”

Igon looked down the table at Cortez. “Sweetums, you never mentioned we were gonna be in-laws with the warlord. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have been rude and sent back the turbot. I’m so embarrassed. Look at me, I’m blushing.” He swiveled his head around towards Klakraw. “We’re not registered anywhere yet, so if you just wanted to give us cash... or a battleship... or, I dunno... you know what, it’s up to you. No pressure–”

Igon-2 spun around on his heel and marched back up the table. As he passed Igon, he fired the autorifle, blowing the other robot’s head clean off. Igon’s headless body slumped off his chair and fell to the floor with a thud. Without pausing, Igon-2 stepped up to Klakraw. “She is a cop, Mr. Warlord, sir. A special agent cop. And she’s setting you up. It’s a sting. I heard it all while they thought I was dead.”

Klakraw shifted his weight to peer around Igon-2. “Is this true, Charlene?”

Cortez shrugged dismissively, her hands dipping below the table top out of sight. “Of course it isn’t. The robot’s nuts. Gun-happy. Malfunctioning. I just told them all I was a cop to get their cooperation and keep them co-operative.”

Loy pushed her seat back and got to her feet, reaching for her holstered service raygun. “You lying b–”

Cortez’s eyes darted emphatically from Loy’s face to under the table, where her hand hovered over the underside of her robomechanical forearm. Cortez angled her palm around so Loy could read the holoflat.

INITIATE PROGRAM
CALL THE CALVARY ALREADY
: [Y]ES / [N]O?

Cortez tapped
Y
.

PROGRAM INITIATING. ACQUIRING TRANSMISSION SIGNAL LOCK. PLEASE WAIT.

Loy sat back down, hiding her smile by grabbing a napkin and dabbing at her lips. “Excuse my outburst. I have irritable bowel syndrome.”

“No apologies needed, my dear,” Klakraw told Loy. He trained his glowing eyes on Cortez. “But I must say… You contact me out of the blue with a deal I can’t refuse, then come here with a cop, and now this... interruption of dessert. I’m beginning to feel the smallest amount of suspicion here, niece.”

Cortez glanced down into her lap.

SIGNAL LOCK ACQUIRED. ESTABLISHING ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL. PLEASE WAIT.

“Come on...” she said, then smiled up at Klakraw. “You know you can trust me. This is me, little Charlene, you used to bounce me on your hairy knee...”

“While you were pickpocketing me.” Shoving Igon-2 aside, Klakraw sprung from his high-chair and trundled across the table on all fours, his gorilla knuckles knocking trays and candelabras out of his path. “One thing I could always trust with you, Charlene. You can’t be trusted.”

Cortez bit her lower lip as Klakraw stretched to his full height in front of her and drew a jewel-encrusted knife from the scabbard on his belt.

EXPERIENCING SIGNAL INTERFERENCE. SECURITY HANDSHAKING INTERRUPTED. TRYING AGAIN. PLEASE WAIT.

“That hurts,” Cortez said. “Go ahead. Check the data.”

“Already have,” Klakraw growled, then called back over his shoulder. “–Well, Dr. Barranco? Is my niece lying to me?”

Dr. Barranco stood in the ward room’s open doorway, clipboard in his long-fingered hands. “I wouldn’t know about that, but the data does appear to be valid.”

SECURITY HANDSHAKING COMPLETE. ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL ENGAGED. TRANSMIT CAVALRY CALL? [Y]ES / [N]O?

“See, I can explain about that...” Cortez’s face went blank and her finger stopped dead over
Y
. “What was that?”

Dr. Barranco came forward, stepping delicately over Igon’s headless body, smoke drifting out of his neck-hole. “We found the override code for the police ship you bought from P’lau, sir, and the ship responded. It allowed us to board, turned over its crew without complaint, and is now completely under our control.”

Cortez swallowed. “That’s... impossible.”

“What police ship?” Loy asked as she began to stand. A Xenobat stepped up behind her to hold her down in her seat by the shoulders, his claws digging into her flesh through her uniform jacket’s shoulder pads. Before she could reach for it, a steward swept in to pluck her service raygun right out of its holster.

“Why is that impossible, niece?” Klakraw asked, his red eyes floating downward, noticing her palm holoflat display beyond the edge of the table. “What is this?” Klakraw’s arm flicked out, his impossibly strong hand wrapping around Cortez’s robomechanical forearm. He twisted it to bring the holoflat in front of his head-tank’s faceplate. “Transmit what? To who?”

Cortez tried to pull her arm away and back up. A pair of Xenobat marines was suddenly standing there behind her, blocking her. Her free hand dipped to her thigh holster. One of the Xenobats shot out a tongue to wrap around her wrist, immobilizing her hand in its wet, iron-like grip. “Nobody, nobody’s on the other end.”

“She’s lying!” Igon-2 blurted, walking up behind Klakraw. “There’s a police fleet on the other end of that.”

“There is?” Klakraw asked.

Igon-2 nodded. “Waiting to capture you – once she sends the word that you’re here.”

“Is that your plan, niece?” Klakraw asked. “Lure me out in the open and then what, arrest me?”

“Arrest?” Cortez shook her head.  “Nah. Birthday party. Surprise...?”

“Well. Surprise is on you, isn’t it?” Klakraw said, and with a single strong twist and yank, ripped her robomechanical forearm off. He tossed her arm to Dr. Barranco and tilted his head-tank up towards the ceiling. “Bridge!”

“Yes, warlord?” came the reply over the intercom a moment later.

“Prepare to leave the system at once. And send word through the network that we have the Galactic Authority Police information database. We’ll be selling off parts to the highest bidders.” Klakraw jumped down off the dinner table in front of Cortez. His scarred, flat fish face pressed against the head-tank’s faceplate, fin-tendrils jittering. “Not all the parts, of course. Some we’re going to give away, for free – a loss leader to promote some really epic carnage against the police. And it will all be on your head, my traitorous niece.”

Cortez’s head bowed.

Klakraw spun around and pointed at Dr. Barranco. “You! Find me the identities and locations of every undercover agent the Authority has. And then we’re going to post that list to the entire network – along with generous bounties on their heads.”

“They’ll be killed…” Loy said.

“If they’re lucky,” Klakraw said, his head-tank liquid fluttering with his glee.

“Sir warlord,” Dr. Barranco said, “if I may suggest a more immediate revenge? The police fleet that is waiting to apprehend you… We have their ship command override codes. If we call them, the moment they appear we can take control of them and turn them against each other. They would destroy themselves and they could do nothing to stop it. It would decimate the Galactic Authority Police and cripple any attempt to stop us from exploiting the database.”

“Oooh...” Klakraw said, clapping his gorilla palms together. “I like that. Let’s do that, too! To the bridge!”

A procession marched up the
Battlerock
’s wide A-Deck corridor, the Warlord Klakraw at its head, merrily skipping on feet and knuckles. Dr. Barranco, Cortez’s robomechanical forearm in hand, and Igon-2, holed chest held high and proud, walked behind him. Loy and Cortez brought up the rear, surrounded by a phalanx of Xenobat marines.

Loy leaned in close to Cortez, and whispered out of the corner of her mouth: “How did they manage to take over a police ship using the codes from the database? You said it wasn’t supposed to be the real data.”

“Somebody must have screwed up.” Cortez stared straight ahead, a resigned look on her face. “Either they didn’t replace it in time before I stole it or... doesn’t matter. Next time, I’ll do it myself, make sure it gets done right.”

Loy jogged her head at the skipping and giggling Klakraw. “He calls in the fleet, there isn’t gonna be a next time. The Galactic Authority... the DUPES... every police agency out there is gonna get its ass kicked by the underworld. It’ll be chaos.”

“Yup.”

“Just ‘yup’?”

“Just ‘yup’, yup.”

“That’s a pretty cavalier attitude, considering,” Loy said. “Hope that means you have a plan to stop it.”

“Yup,” Cortez said, finally turning to look at Loy. She gave the Junior Officer a wry grin. “But it’s sort of the last-ditch, game over kind.”

“What other choice do we have?” Loy asked. “You going to let me in on it?”

“I detonate the nuke I’ve got in my thigh.”

Loy’s voice went up a pitch. “A what?”

“A nuclear bomb,” Cortez whispered. “Every GAP special agent carries one. The teeny-tiniest one–but it’ll get the job done. Blow up this whole asteroid real good.”

Loy frowned. “Yes… and us along with it.”

Cortez went back to staring straight ahead as the procession passed under ornate arches onto the
Battlerock
’s bridge. “I did mention ‘game over’, right?”

Loy blew air out of her cheeks. “You know this isn’t at all how I saw my first day on the job going.”

The bridge was a hive of activity that stopped immediately as Klakraw bounded in. Around the bridge at their various system stations, crew snapped to attention, in near-perfect unison turning sharply to salute Klakraw with a balled fist raised to their chins as he hopped up onto his raised, bejeweled throne in the center of the domed room. Klakraw returned his crew’s salute with a curt grunt and settled back into the cushions of his throne while their Xenobat escorts guided Loy and Cortez off to one side of the bridge.