Chapter 10

The suburb where their contact was nabbed had so far avoided the urban sprawl of Gia. It was decidedly a suburb. It didn’t boast sizeable farmland or anything like that where a ship could be easily hidden. Their meeting was supposed to be at an industrial park that abutted a residential neighborhood. It was quiet. But since it was an industrial park, a certain level of noise was to be expected. The plan had been, therefore, for the noise to remain at an acceptable level for a standard shipment to a warehouse.

The police station was not far from the industrial park, and just outside of the residential area. That made storing the tender close to the station easy. But it wasn’t exactly hidden. Thankfully, as Sophie reported, the station was a relic. Sol had little doubt that this wasn’t part of a larger sting. Otherwise, an agency with a little more heft would have been involved, and Sol would have been shit out of luck.

Sophie was able to kill the cameras at the station without moving a finger. Whoever had created her must have been a hacker himself (Sol thought of Sophie’s creator as a man because he apparently knew exactly what men looked for in a woman). Their “plan,” however, was stupid. Without having the time necessary to come up with something more substantive – a heist on the road to central lockup, perhaps – they were left with walking into the police station with their weapons hot, and having Sophie turn the lights out on the place.

Sol believed in being prepared. His armory, therefore, contained a couple of night vision goggles, and enough impulse weapons to arm a small riot squad. Over Fortuna’s murmers, Sol asked that the impulse weapons be modulated in order to stun their victims. Of course, Sol also brought some projectile weapons just in case.

“No killing, unless we have to,” was Sol’s mantra. And since he was presently the commanding officer of the galaxy’s smallest army, Fortuna agreed not to treat this like a hot battle. But all plans, particularly bad ones, survive until the first shot is fired. After the battle begins, the plan goes right out the window.

In this case, the battle began when Sol, Sophie and Fortuna walked into the police station with night vision goggles, and the lights went out. Sophie could “see” by heat signatures, and therefore didn’t need goggles. The lobby to the station was not meant to withstand combat of this kind. It was staffed by two officers, each of whom was armed, but each of whom had settled in for desk duty long before the sortie began. Neither of them fired a shot. Sophie had them unconscious before Sol or Fortuna were even aware that the battle had begun.

“There’s a desk sergeant in the back, and someone assigned to the lockup,” she said. “Other than that, there might be some patrolmen out and about. I’m jamming radio signals, but so far, nobody’s radioed.” She pointed to the door at the back of the foyer and said “this leads to the rest of the station. Its locked electronically. Give me a minute and we’ll be through. This whole place is run off of servers. I’d say that’s criminally stupid, but this part of town isn’t used to dealing with criminals other than garden variety.”

“Leave me something to do, will you?” Sol said, sarcastically.

“Make me a sandwich,” Sophie said, as the door to the back of the station opened.

An officer on the other side of the door shouted “put down your weapons!” Sophie discharged her impulse pistol at the cop, but didn’t connect. The officer shot back. It was a projectile weapon. A pistol with honest-to-god bullets. One got Sophie in the arm. “Fucker,” she said, and fired her impulse pistol back at the cop, taking him down.

“That was a patrolman,” Sophie said. “And his partner is right ... there,” she said, firing her impulse pistol once again at a figure that Sol couldn’t immediately see. A muffled noise was all the group heard, and then there was quiet again.

“You ok?” Sol asked her.

“I’ll be fine. But the sooner we get off of this planet, the happier I’ll be,” she said. “I’m guessing there are more cops here, so be careful.” Sophie led Sol and Fortuna into the back area of the station. It wasn’t a large building by any stretch of the imagination. And it truly was not made with close combat in mind. Sol and his fences chose their meeting sites specifically to be out of the main thoroughfare. Some suburbs were well-to-do, and they tended to have fortress-like police stations to make the locals happy. Other suburbs, like this one, were largely working class – a half of a step above the poor unfortunate souls who lived in the cities themselves. And while they benefited from living in lower crime areas, they had their surroundings, and decidedly not the police, to credit for that happy circumstance. This station was a case in point.

What money was collected in taxes was put into places other than the police. The people felt mostly secure. And those who wondered whether the cops could protect them just went out and bought their own weapons.

At least, that’s how things had been before the war. Now, the feds were just getting around to modernizing the federalized police force. But their edict prohibiting gun ownership on the part of the citizens had been implemented as a counter-revolutionary tactic at the time that they took over. It was decidedly not meant to address crime. Crime was on the rise here for the first time in decades, and perhaps that was partially responsible for the second pair of patrolmen that happened upon the station as Sol and Fortuna were getting to the lockup.

“Sol, someone outside of the building is trying to radio for help. The signal is moving away from us. They’re going to be out of my range in about a minute,” Sophie said.

The station had three prisoners. “I’m here to make a delivery,” Sol said.

“Holy shit,” one of the prisoners said. When Sol got close to her, he saw that she looked like a young girl – which is exactly how his contact had been described. If the other two prisoners were older, it was only by a handful of years.

“What are you guys in for?” Sol asked.

“That one’s in for armed robbery, and that one’s in for solicitation of a prostitute,” she said.

“What the fuck?” Sol asked. “With armed robbers out there, you’d think the government wouldn’t put resources into catching people who just want to get off, and are willing to pay. Sophie, open all three cells.”

“Why all three, Sol?” she said.

“Do it,” he responded. A second later, all three cells opened. The “armed robber” took off, knocking Sol over on the way out, and charged into the lobby. Several voices could be heard at the same time, followed by gunfire. One of the voices shouted “Got ‘em!”

“That’s why,” Sol said. He turned to his contact. “Stay close to me,” he said. To the other prisoner, he said “if you want to come with me, feel free. If you want to stay here, be my guest.”

“I’m coming with you,” he said. “This place is bullshit.”

“Then stay close,” Sol said.

As he said it, the room lit up. Two cops ran into the lockup area from a corridor to the foyer. They had brought flashlights.

“Sol, we need to beat it now. This place is going to be a war zone in a minute,” Sophie said.

“Cover me,” Fortuna said. Sol took out his gun and shot it several times above the heads of the cops. He saw them retreat back into the corridor. With the goggles, he could see Fortuna lunge across the opening to the corridor, firing the impulse pistol as she did it. Sophie chased after her. She turned into the corridor. The sound of gunshots could be heard again.

By the time Sol got to the corridor, both of the cops were down. One apparently from Fortuna’s impulse pistol, the other was under Sophie. Sol saw her lift her arm up in the air and bring her fist down on the man’s head. His body slackened, and Sophie got up off the ground.

“Now we’re getting the fuck out of here,” Sol said. Sophie scooped up Fortuna and helped her stand.

They ran out of the room as fast as they could, with Fortuna and Sophie dragging behind. In the future, they’d have to get a larger tender so that getaways like this could be streamlined, Sol thought. For now, the four-seater was just fine – particularly given that Sophie could operate it from wherever she was. It came flying out of the night sky and landed in front of them as they exited the building. By the time they were all in – three crushed together in the back – they could hear the sirens coming from all over.

“They must have pulled up while we were in there. I’m betting that one of the cops who came into the lockup was a patrolman, and he must’ve sent his partner out of your range to call out. Fuck!” Sol said. He gunned the motors of the tender and asked Sophie to send a message to Erinys: “Arrival shortly. It will be good to see you. Next stop, somewhere else.” He stayed close to the ground for a few miles, and, not seeing any police, he shot into the sky.

When they cleared the atmosphere, Sol saw Reis heading for them. “Nice!” he shouted. It came to a stop a few hundred yards off and spun about. Sol took the tender into the open bay doors. The doors closed. The motors rumbled for a few moments before the FTL drives could come to life.

–

When Sol was certain that they’d beat it out of Naxos before the feds were able to lock onto their position, he changed their direction to Piso. It was the closest thing this far out to a non-federalized position, and it was his rendezvous point with Aurora.

Erinys and Sophie had exchanged a few messages while Sol was flying the tender, it turned out. All were oblique, but Erinys had understood each one. There was an emergency. She tracked the tender, and opened the hatch. When the tender was secure, she knew that they had a need for speed, and took off towards nowhere in particular. Sol couldn’t have been happier with how she’d handled the situation.

Sol called Sophie to his room and instructed Erinys to take the helm.

“How are you?” he asked her.

“I’ve been better,” she said. Then she took her shirt off. One of the bullets had hit her in the chest, just below her right breast. The hole wasn’t large, and it looked like the bullet had ricocheted off of her. But the fact that she wasn’t human was now very evident. Where the bullet had taken her skin off, there was now blood and metal.

“The bigger issue is my arm. The skin will heal up here. The bullet didn’t penetrate.” she said. Sol suddenly noticed that she was holding one arm to her side and was not moving it.

“What’s the deal?” Sol asked.

“The bullet damaged my arm. I can fix it. But I’ll have to open it up. We’ll get to see how far this bio part of biorobotics has come. With luck, I’ll be beautiful again within a month or so. But this could leave a scar for all I know,” she said.

“How long until you’ll be operational again?” Sol asked.

“I can do the mending right now” she said. “Your help would be appreciated.”

“You have it,” he told her. “How long will it take?”

“Not long. A few hours.” she said.

“Then let’s do it,” Sol told her. “Anything else we need to talk about?”

“No,” she said.

The door to the room opened and an excited Erinys entered.

“Sorry!” she said, “I didn’t realize you were here, Sol. I heard Sophie was shot. Are you ok”?

“I’m fine. Sometimes a lesson in mortality is really important. I wasn’t made for combat,” she reflected.

“You’re better at it than most of us,” Sol told her.

“I’m better at everything than most of you,” she smirked, but her tone was sardonic. Then she turned to Erinys. “Erin, can you get the ship’s first aid kit and a small blowtorch from the engine room?”

“I don’t think we keep a blowtorch,” Sol said.

“You have since the first time we docked on Corfu, Sol. I bought it. It was only a matter of time before I’d need it” she said. “You should have one anyhow. But I figured that a blowtorch in my room would look a little suspicious if we were ever boarded.”

Sol shrugged. She was taking over his ship. Fine with me, he thought.

Erin came back with a large first aid kit and a small blowtorch. Sophie broke the kit open and removed a scalpel, some medical tongs, and a towel.

Without warning, she began to make an incision just above her abdomen. Blood slowly dripped out. “Sorry about the blood,” she said. “‘Biomechanics still haven’t figured out how to keep skin and other biological tissue alive without it. I’ve stopped the blood flow to most systems for the moment, but there’s going to be a small mess regardless.”

“You’ll be ok?” Sol asked.

“Oh, yeah. Its no problem. I regenerate blood. And it doesn’t have anything to do with central systems. My brain isn’t biological. I know they’re working on biomechanical brains. Once they perfect the art, I’ll sadly be obsolete. But I’ll still be hotter than any of the newer models.” Sol suppressed a desire to ask her how she knew that.

“Why are you cutting open your abdomen?” Sol asked her. “You weren’t hit there.”

She smiled and reached into the incision with her fingers. She withdrew a spool of metal. “I keep this in there in case I get injured and need a quick battle-field suture,” she said.

The spool in hand, she made a cut along her injured arm, and then another cut perpendicular to it above the injury. The skin peeled back, revealing what looked like a series of metal rods, some of which looked bent or broken. Sophie held her hand in the air, her fingers motionless.

“Sol, I need your help now. Grab the blowtorch.” Sol took it from Erinys’ hand. “Now light it up.” Sol flicked the switch and a fire burst from the torch. Sophie bent some of the threads from the metal spool and put them up to the fire using the tongs, causing them to soften. She pulled the pieces apart as soon as she was able to.

“Now I’m going to put these pieces in my arm. I need you to torch them. Can you do that?” she asked. Sol nodded uncomfortably. Sophie grabbed the tongs again and picked up a piece of the detached metal spool – Sol had seen plumbers use similar metal spools to close up pipes and the like. “Now,” she said, when the piece was in place. Sol put the torch closer to her arm. The piece of metal softened and then stuck to a metal rod inside Sophie’s arm. Sophie found the piece that it had been attached to on the other side, and they soldered it together. The rest of the job took the better part of an hour. Once it was done, Sophie returned the spool to where she’d gotten it from, and sewed herself back up.

“That’ll hold?” Sol asked her.

“For now. A first aid kit is just that. When we get to the station, I’ll get all of the parts necessary to do more complete repairs. But unless you’re going to send me back into combat, I should be fine,” she said, and grinned. “That was pretty cool,” she added.

“What? Our fucking rescue? Because that’s definitely in my job description,” Sol said sarcastically.

“Yeah, our rescue. And your job description just changed. You were a space trucker for a tyrannical government. Then you became a pirate. Now you’re a revolutionary,” she said.

“And you’re a combat droid,” Sol said. “Blow!”

“Well, I can be used for almost anything. I’m pretty awesome. But I wasn’t actually designed for anything. A combat AI wouldn’t be as pretty as me. And it would have fewer flimsy appendages,” she offered.

“Have you thought of the possibility that our shape impacts our psychology?” Sol asked. “And if that’s the case, then you’re the perfect shape for combat. You think more like a human than you would if you were a hunk of metal on treads.

“That’s a good thing?” she asked.

“I think so,” Sol said.

“You might be a better ship’s captain than philosopher,” she told him, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Want me to sew you a Jolly Roger?”

“A what?” Sol asked.

“Nevermind. We have some newbies aboard. You should probably see to them,” Sophie said.

“Speaking of which...” Sol said, marching out of the room and into the mess. “Erin, rally the troops. I want to meet everyone and figure out what we’re dealing with here.”

It was only after the adrenaline had subsided that he focused on their current situation: the police would be after them, and their deal in Gia remained unconsummated.

Erinys entered the mess at the same time as the two new passengers. Sophie stayed behind with a first aid kit and did some quick mending before putting on a long-sleeved shirt and heading to the mess.

“What’s your name, son?” Sol asked the man. He looked to be in his early twenties. He was about as tall as Sol, had black hair, a chiseled face, and defined muscles.

“Stefano,” the man said.

“What do you do?” Sol asked.

“I’m a security guard,” he answered.

“Holy shit,” Sol said. “That solicitation rap would have been a big problem for you.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said. Security guards were regulated. They had to have licenses to practice, otherwise they risked being arrested and fined, or worse, for unlicensed practice of a regulated trade. But with a prostitution conviction, it wasn’t likely that Stefano would have been able to keep the license. Sometimes, government was stupid. Other times it was just evil. And stupid.

“Everything I do on this ship is unlicensed. I could use a security guard. Want in?” Sol asked.

He looked around, as if unsure. Then he laughed and said “I had a girlfriend back on Naxos who I’ve wanted to break up with for a few months. Other than that ... I could be convinced to join.” He spoke in a staccato, enunciating every syllable. It was a common feature of the Gian accent that Sol had never really liked.

Sol turned to the woman, though it was hard to think of her as that. She was petite, almost childlike. She came to Erinys’ shoulder, and was built like an adolescent – all skin and bones, with barely any breasts. Her skin was nearly olive colored, and her eyes, which were small like slivers, were so dark that that the irises almost blended with her pupils. “I’m guessing your name isn’t Magdalene,” Sol said.

“No,” she said quietly. “My name is Laura.”

“When you aren’t fencing illegal food, what do you do?” she asked.

“I’ve worked for a woman named Nicola for most of my life doing odd jobs.” She said.

“You work?” Sol asked.

“My mom died when I was pretty young. I dropped out of school because Nicola needed me to focus on work,” she said.

“When did you drop out of school?” she asked.

“A couple of years ago,” she said. “I’m older than I look, captain. I’m not a child.”

Sol internally shrugged at being called ‘captain.’ Commander. Captain. Whatever.

Sol shrugged. “What does Nicola do?”

“She runs a food collective. Lately, things have been getting so expensive that its hard to stay in business. Nobody has any money. So she contacted an illegal distributor who got us in touch with someone who said that you’d be flying in with some food last night,” she explained. “We just wanted to make margins.”

“That was the plan, anyhow,” Sol said.

“The cops were there ready for us,” Laura said.

“Did you and Nicola tell anyone what you were doing?” Sol asked.

“Only generally. We didn’t tell anyone about the deal last night. Only Nicola and Olympia knew.”

“Olympia is your contact? The one who got you in touch with our people?” Sol asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Well, either you weren’t careful with your communications, or your contact is a mole,” Sol said.

“We’re always careful with communications,” Laura said.

“Then after we’re done with Piso, we’ll head back there and make a proper trade off with Nicola. Then I’ll visit this Olympia personally,” Sol said, menacingly. Erinys took a step back. “We done?” he asked. Everybody nodded.

–

Fortuna and Aurora inevitably had quite a bit to say about the goings on after they arrived on Piso. Respecting the “chain of command,” they’d created, they all convened on Sinaan Reis when the time came to discuss more substantively. Fortuna, Aurora, and Sol sat in the mess together. Everyone else was set loose upon Piso.

Aurora sat demurely while Fortuna and Sol discussed personnel issues. At times, Fortuna glanced at Aurora, as if for assurance. The two seemed to respect one another, despite their contrived hierarchy. Fortuna was an amazingly competent soldier. But she knew enough to know that getting a second opinion could be very valuable as well. He respected her for it. She might not be entirely bull-headed.

Aurora’s only suggestion was that the security patrol be put on their boat so that the sexes could be evened out a little bit. She giggled as she said it, earning a smirk from Fortuna. After Sophie finished her repairs, she’d be a fine security officer. Sol wasn’t half-bad himself, though he couldn’t compete with the two amazons who were now in charge of the Revenge. The decision to send Stefano there, instead of keeping him on Reis, was simple enough: Reis, a newer ship, could be piloted by one person. As a more combat-ready vessel, and an older ship, the Revenge could benefit from a couple of able hands on the helm. Piloting was not a complex skill. But a human only had two hands.

That left what to do with Laura, Nicola, and Olympia. Before they got there, however, Fortuna asked Sol to explain what Erinys meant about Sol having killed a federal mole.

“I think she’s figured it out, though I didn’t tell her a thing. Dolgas of Milos. I killed him,” Sol said.

“And bragged about it on the undernet,” Fortuna added.

“Yes. Fear is a major factor in these moles’ decisions to talk to the feds. They fear the government. I want to give them something to fear more,” Sol said.

Fortuna widened her eyes. “Erinys was right. You seem to have no problem painting targets.”

“I do what I have to do to,” Sol said. “Like you. Like now. If Laura is telling the truth...”

“ ... which you have no reason to believe,” Fortuna said.

“Or doubt, for that matter,” Aurora offered, shocking Sol.

“Right,” Sol continued, “if she’s telling the truth, then that little police station we infiltrated either conducted a clandestine investigation into a commerce ring, or there’s a mole.”

“But if there’s a mole,” Fortuna began, “wouldn’t the feds have taken a greater interest in the arrest? It seemed to me that part of why we sprang to action was to head them off.”

“Ehh,” Sol said. “Local police stations only have so many resources. The feds might have fed them information, and then sat on it. Remember, even at heightened priority, this shit is still not the most important thing in a cop’s day – especially a cop who was planetary a couple of years ago, and is only technically a fed today.”

“So that begs the question,” Fortuna said. “Do we give the police cause to make it a higher priority by, say, picking off their mole. Or do we lay low for awhile, given the amount of damage we’ve already done by making a wild rescue?”

“I think the damage is done,” Sol said. “If this wasn’t a priority for the feds before, it will be one now. And the focus won’t just be on Gia. All of Naxos, Milos ... I could go on. Our work just became more dangerous.”