Twenty-Seven

“Shhh… Quiet, Vera. We are already clear of Motherland, but not if the guards hear you,” said Phaser.

Vera felt pressure on her stomach. Her eyes burned. She opened them to see the world in total gray-scale, void of color just like her memories being inside the centrifuge. She also noted the lack of cursors in her field of vision, feeding her constant info on her position and vital signs.

The landscape of the immense cavern that held Motherland receded from her field of black and white vision. She found herself hanging over Phasers back as he carried her. She looked down at his midsection to find dark tentacles squeezing her tightly in place as she bounced along tandem.

“I hope you don’t mind this course of action, but I figured you wouldn’t considering your devolving condition in captivity.” Phaser’s body smelled like alkaline.

“Why are you doing this? We are getting farther away from my ship. We will be just as fucked if we got to the surface and escape. It’s a wasteland up there. The last ship I rode in on said there were often violent sandstorms.” She remembered seeing that warning on the screen of Azec’s ship right before he flicked it off saying they weren’t really that bad and rarely had he even seen one on his radar.

“Your ship is not back there. There is a hanger for refurbished vehicles in the direction I am headed. It is also our only exit short of flying to the cavern ceiling and locating a secret entrance.

“Put me down!” Vera shouted. “I can walk on my own.”

Phaser dropped her.

She jumped up and shoved out both arms as if to brace herself on imaginary walls. She stared at the gray-scale world she now lived in. It discomforted her in a way she hadn’t expected. “I’m completely… colorblind.” She tried to access her neural network to no avail.

“Be happy you have eyes at all,” Phaser said. “The only reason they even bothered to give you those is because Wu-jinn couldn’t sell you without eyes, nor would you be much of a servant to him blind.”

Vera stood up and brushed herself off. “It’s fine. Anything is better than being reprinted and forgetting all this and how I got here again. Let’s keep moving.”

“The hanger will be heavily guarded. The entrance is close now, at the edge of the cavern.” Phaser headed on.

They arrived at the cavern’s edge where Vera saw a narrow crevice in the darkness. It seemed no more than a crack until they were right upon it.

Phaser whispered, “There are two guards waiting on the inside. The hanger is free of crystals, so they will be in full mental capacity.”

“So we can distract them? Get one of them to step inside here?” Vera pointed to the crevice.

“There’s not much space in there.” Phaser held out his tentacles indicating a short distance. “Very brief.”

“It might be enough, and it won’t alert more in the hanger unless they are equipped with an A.I. network. Do they have net-linked helmets?”

Phaser shrugged. “I don’t think they have helmets at all. Wu-jinn is too cheap to furnish his people with fancy gear.”

“Then let’s get on with this,” Vera said. “I’ll go in and lure them into the passage from the hanger. Can you give them a surprise once I get one inside?”

Phaser nodded.

“Good. I’m off then.” Vera stepped into the opening and darkness enveloped her completely. Out of habit, she kept trying to switch on her night-vision, though still, nothing happened. Even most humans had this enhancement. She pondered for a second about what it must’ve been like for human ancestors before enhancements. It was unimaginable. A sudden lifting sensation rose in her chest. Was this exhilaration? She craved this feeling, had dreamed of it. It had led her here, to these decisions she made right now.

She reached out to feel the craggy walls of the inside of the crevice to guide her through to the hanger. When her fingertips touched the rock, she noticed a minute vibration. She stopped and pressed her hands firmly flat against the rock and a dull tickle crawled up the bones in her arms into her shoulders. The sound came then. A low-frequency rumble at first. It jolted her when it suddenly exploded into the thunder of impacted earth. She knew this wasn’t an earthquake and the cannon fire and screams beneath the rumbling confirmed it. Motherland was under attack from above.

Pebbles bounced off her cheeks. She needed to get out of the crevice now.

“Vera!” Phaser shouted. “The cavern is collapsing! Stay where you are!”

“What?” She turned around. She tasted the dust thickening in the air. Surely, she had heard him wrong.

“Don’t move! I’m coming in!” Phaser said. “Trust me!”

She couldn’t think of a worse place to be in the middle of a bombing than in a crevice underground directly below the tearing earth. She had just taken a step to run when something wrapped around her ankle. That something coiled up to her hips and compressed over her torso until a hot pulsing cocoon had immersed her entirely.

“Be still.” It was Phaser’s voice, muffled. “We may be here for hours, but you will not be crushed by rock.”

She struggled, trying to breathe even though she knew she could be revived easily if her body lacked oxygen. A probe slunk down her throat and euphoric cold oxygen swelled in her bio-printed lungs. She felt light-headed and a sudden thrush of calmness. She could only relax.

Twenty-Eight

Highgun Galt stood, hands clasping a wrist behind his back and peered out the window from the bridge of Enforcer One, the commanding warship of the Krakko-9 marshal battalion.  Below lay the smoking ruins of what was a few minutes earlier, an underground pirate refuge that operated quite profitably under the tolerant consent of Krakko-9 other Black Eye System security forces.

Galt knew of this particular group, the Scarred Folk, and had allowed them to exist, but had no prior knowledge of this little sanctuary.  Though filthy and revolting to be in proximity to, Pirates served economic merits to the Krakko-9 security forces and they gave great intel in certain instances.  The had to follow certain undocumented guidelines set in place, of course, but they mostly behaved.

“Who ordered this bombing?”  Galt asked all listeners through the radio channel of the fleet.  “I said there was to be a thorough scan of the settlement before bombing.  The print could be shielded.”

“Twelve scans confirmed, Highgun,” said the Lieutenant Commander Warren over the comm.  “No indication or markers of the bio-print Vera 72736 were found.”

Galt shifted his stance slightly and narrowed his eyes at the scene of smoking rubble below them.  “Land.  I want to personally investigate this settlement.  I want to know what Wu-jinn was hiding from us.”

“Yes, Highgun,” said the Captain sitting behind him on the bridge.  “Commence landing,” he relayed to the navigation computer.

Galt winced when he noticed a fingerprint smudge on the inside of the bridge window.  “One more thing, Captain.”

“Yes, Highgun?”

“Get someone up here to clean this disgusting glass screen.  It’s absolutely filthy.  This is unacceptable.”

“Right away, Highgun!”

“Also, I want you to clean all the crevices in the control panels.  There is a bit of dust in there I’m sure.  Dust causes glitches in the network.  Glitches cause disadvantages in law enforcement.  We cannot have it!”

The captain bowed, understanding and anxiety on his face.

Galt did his best to hide the delight it gave him.

Twenty-Nine

A couple hours later, Krakko-9 troops had scoured the underground outpost of Motherland.  Other than an immense stockpiling of illegal psychedelic mind-chips and unregulated deep frequency V.R. terminals, they found nothing outside of the classified agreement Galt had made with Wu-jinn.  Only that the psychopathic leader had hidden this outpost from him.  Galt found it strange that they had chosen to hide the place beneath a canopy structure of crystals.  Perhaps they had properties that helped to hide them from scans, which turned out to be not so great a bet.  It raised speculation, nonetheless.

“Highgun!” called out a young patrolman assigned to the debris search.  He hurried up to Galt.  Huffing and puffing to catch his breath he managed, “No survivors yet, but we found a hanger.  Most of the ships within it are crushed, but one survived the bombing with very little damage.  It carries Prime insignias on its fuselage.”

Galt raised a brow and waited seconds before he said, “Search it.  Confiscate everything aboard and bring it to me for inspection.”

The young patrolman saluted, nodded and turned away.