Asylum, p.4
Asylum, page 4
Kenji spotted an open hatch and climbed up a drift toward it. A gust of wind kicked up snow—the shuttle was hovering right over the wreck now. He eyed it warily, hoping it didn’t have weapons that he’d missed on first glance.
In case the pilot was looking down at him via a display, Kenji smiled up and waved. “Might as well be friendly with the competition, right?”
“Was that question for me?” Kay asked, reminding Kenji that their comm link was open.
“No, but I trust you agree.”
As he scrambled up to the hatch, the gray shuttle landed not far from Kenji’s rented craft. It was about the same size, its sides dented and its paint faded with age. The name of a competing rental company stamped the side above a picture of a shuttle flying toward a sun with a comet streaming from its backside.
Kenji had reached the hatch and thought about flinging himself inside, but the twisted mess of a corridor promised that he wouldn’t be able to advance into the interior quickly. Fresh snow prints dotted the tilted deck—from the woman? He was surprised drifts of snow hadn’t made their way in. Maybe the hatch had only recently been opened.
“The limited scanners of this vessel are not allowing me to determine how many people are aboard that shuttle,” Kay said.
“So it could be an entire mercenary company, or it could be an old man with a divining rod?”
“That is correct.”
The new shuttle powered down, and its hatch opened. Kenji shifted his rifle so it wouldn’t be visible and waited to see who or what would come out.
Two people in civilian parkas with the hoods pulled up stood on the threshold. If they carried weapons, they weren’t as obvious as a rifle. Steps unfolded from the craft and lowered to the ground. The pair descended in tandem, stopped, and peered straight at him.
“Hello.” Kenji offered his best friendly wave again. “Are you here to explore this fine mountainous park?”
They looked at each other without speaking. He trusted they were communicating chip-to-chip. Even if he’d avoided the technology all of his life, he was familiar with it. His glasses replicated it, for the most part, though he had to speak queries or laboriously enter them via the eye movement reader. He couldn’t simply think commands into a chip attached to his brain.
“What are you doing here?” one of the figures finally spoke, looking at him again. It was a woman. She sounded young.
He supposed women could lead scavenging careers too. He’d certainly come across female thieves.
“Exploring,” he said.
“You seek to steal from the Celestial Dart?” the other one asked, another woman with a young voice.
Kenji could make out a wisp of blonde hair escaping from her hood.
“The Celestial Dart?” He pointed at the wreck. “I don’t know if that was its name, but I think it’s just a hunk of metal now.”
“It belongs to our people.” One of the women pushed back her hood, revealing fingernails that looked like chips of metal, cold mechanical eyes, and a strange implant at her temple that ran halfway down the side of her face.
Astroshaman.
A chill ran through Kenji as the other woman also pushed back her hood, both of them oblivious to the cold, and gazed at him with the same inhuman eyes. The astroshamans had been responsible for the second invasion fleet that had bombed Odin.
Kenji swallowed. He would rather have dealt with soldiers or the police.
One woman drew a small metal box from a pocket. Kenji started to swing his rifle toward them, but astroshamans or not, he couldn’t shoot women his age. Instead, he sprang through the hatchway so he wouldn’t be in their line of sight.
But whatever that box was sent a blue beam of energy arching around the hull of the ship and through the hatchway. It slammed into his chest like a lightning bolt.
Pain ricocheted through his body as he lost control of his limbs and almost his bladder. His heart throbbed, threatening to explode in his chest. Terror clenched him, but he couldn’t run away. He couldn’t do anything at all except drop to the deck and flop around like a dying fish.
The beam winked out, but his body kept twitching, his heart beating hard and erratically against his ribs. The pain faded slowly, but many long seconds passed before his spastic tremors subsided. He gasped in air, only realizing then that his lungs hadn’t been working, and he hadn’t been breathing. A headache pulsed behind his eyes.
“I take it back,” he groaned, rolling onto his side and hunting for his rifle. “I can shoot women.”
As he wrapped his hand around the barrel, a shadow fell across him. One of the women had climbed up and stood in the hatchway. With that little metal box in her hand, her thumb on the button. Hell.
Kenji had little doubt that it could kill him.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he said.
“You are not a lowlife opportunist attempting to capitalize on our people’s misfortune by scavenging what your kind may deem valuable technology from our ship?”
“No, noooo. Of course not. Is that what you thought?” Kenji clutched a hand to his chest, in part to feign innocence, and in part to massage his heart back into a normal rhythm. He didn’t have the medical background to know if that would work, but soothing rubbing seemed like a good idea. “This is a misunderstanding.”
“What is your purpose here?” She eyed his rifle.
Kenji crossed hiker and tourist off his list of possible answers. They would never fall for it.
“I’m a bounty hunter.” That would explain his rifle, anyway. “I’m up here after a fugitive. He’s a lowlife opportunist scavenger. Very bad man. You should appreciate that I’m trying to capture him and turn him over to the law.”
She squinted suspiciously at him. “What is his name?”
Uh, good question.
“Tenebris Rache.” Kenji used the name of the first criminal who wasn’t his father that popped into his mind. “I trust you’ve heard of him? He used to be a pirate captain loathed by the Kingdom, but now he’s lost his ship and his crew. He supposedly died in the very battle that crashed these ships, but rumors suggest that he may have survived. Lots of people are willing to pay for his head.” All that was true, at least according to the news and all the press coverage there had been after the battle. Kenji had no idea what had happened of late to the infamous pirate, but he wagered the astroshamans didn’t know either. “I believe that he’s out here and has resorted to scavenging. Opportunistically. Like the lowlife that he is.”
She kept squinting at him. Was she buying any of this?
Maybe he should have chosen someone who wasn’t known and detested in all of the Twelve Systems. Someone that a young guy like him could reasonably capture. Given that she’d taken him down with a button, she probably doubted his ability as a bounty hunter.
The silence stretched. Her metallic irises appeared glazed and unfocused, but she was likely communicating with her twin out there. Why astroshamans didn’t get implants and prosthetics that looked like normal human bits and bobs, he didn’t know, but it was like they wanted to appear freaky.
“You seek out and capture people?” she finally asked. “For a living?”
“Absolutely. I’m not a veteran, admittedly.” As in, he’d never collected a single bounty. His father had trained him well enough that he probably could become a bounty hunter—so long as he could avoid people with metal boxes of death—but it wasn’t a career he’d ever longed to pursue. “I’m out to make a name for myself by getting Rache.”
He kept an eye on her as he sat up.
A clink-clunk came from somewhere in the depths of the wreck. Kenji hoped that was an icicle falling or the ship settling and not another scavenger to deal with. There weren’t any more ships or air bikes parked out there, so it shouldn’t be, but well-off people sometimes had slydar hulls that camouflaged their craft, so he couldn’t assume that they were alone. And where was Kay? He hadn’t spoken for some time, despite their comm line being open. Was he waving a wrench at the other woman, or had she pressed a button and zapped him?
“It is unlikely you will find Tenebris Rache,” the woman said. “If you do find him, he will kill you. The Kingdom and countless bounty hunters have attempted to capture or slay him for many years. However, should you succeed, our people would reward you. He has vexed us.”
“He’s vexed a lot of people.”
“Yes, but we believe he is dead. There is no need for you to seek him. But we are seeking someone. How much do you charge to find a person? This person must be captured alive.”
“Er, what?”
“One of our kind has escaped with knowledge that is important to us. It is, however, difficult for us to go among your people. In other systems, humanity lets astroshamans pass with only wary glances and snide comments. Here, in the xenophobic Star Kingdom, it is a different matter, and we find it difficult to enter your population centers without costumes. If you are a bounty hunter, you must have ways to track people down and find them.”
“Yes, of course.” Kenji pushed himself to his feet, slowly picking up his rifle so she wouldn’t find the movement threatening. He was careful not to aim it in her direction. “But I’m already on a mission.”
“A suicidal mission that you will fail.”
“But if I succeed, I’ll make a lot of money and, even more important, make a name for myself.”
“You will not succeed.”
Kenji opened his mouth to argue further, but what was the point of defending his fictitious story to death?
“Despite the recent thwarting of our plans, we are not financially insolvent or without means,” the woman said. “What payment do you require for finding a fugitive?”
“Some guy has committed a crime against your people?”
“Some woman. As I said, she has escaped with knowledge.”
“Epically criminal.”
She squinted at him again. “It is considered so among our people. She had no right to take the knowledge. It is also possible she means to betray us in some way. We must have her back. We will pay fifty thousand of your Kingdom crowns for her to be returned to us alive.”
“Fif—” Kenji choked on the amount. “Fifty thousand, you said?” He’d never had even fifty hundred crowns. Right now, his net worth was closer to fifty.
“Yes. We will pay you five percent up front and ninety-five when you return her to us. I assume physical currency is acceptable?”
Hell, yes, it was. That would be enough to pay the shuttle owner back with plenty to spare.
Once more, she delved into her pocket. He tensed, hopeful that she was pulling out money and didn’t intend to zap him again. She withdrew a wad of Kingdom crown bills and a compact comm device.
“We must have her back within the month. If you agree to the terms, you will take this and contact us when you have captured her. We will meet you at a designated area to pay the remainder of your fee and pick her up. Do you agree to the terms?”
Uh, did he?
He’d never bounty hunted before, and these astroshamans were no slouches, but what if their missing person was the woman he’d seen flying away on the air bike? He might be able to find and capture her before sunset. It could be the easiest money he’d ever earned, and it wasn’t as if he cared one way or another about astroshamans hunting other astroshamans. For all he knew, these people had been the ones to bomb his last home.
“You came up here looking for her?” Kenji asked. “Was she in the battle?”
“She was in one of our ships in orbit, as were the rest of us siblings, during the fighting on your planet, but…” The woman glanced at her twin, who was doing who knew what outside—Kenji couldn’t see her from the corridor. “Our leader thought she might come here. This ship has meaning to us.”
Kenji thought about telling them he’d seen her, but he didn’t know that he truly had. That could have been any woman on an air bike. This was clearly the hot spot of the Arctic Islands. Besides, it would be better to catch her himself. And collect the bounty. With fifty thousand crowns, he could finally buy passage on a ship heading out of the Kingdom. A luxury ship. He and Kay could head off to a new life, to a system where nobody had heard of his loathsome father.
“I can find her,” Kenji said. “What’s her name, what’s she look like, and I’ll take any other information you can give me.”
“Her name is Mari, and she looks like us. We are sisters, all born of genetic material from the same mother and father.”
“Bunch of test-tube twins, huh?”
“There are more than two of us, so that term is inaccurate, but as I said, we share identical genetic material. We are, however, all very different.” She sniffed. “Tari and I would never leave our people.”
“I’m sure your parents appreciate your loyalty.”
She stepped outside, waving for him to follow. “Loyalty is expected among our people.”
Before Kenji could step out of the corridor, a clatter-clank came from behind him, followed by a buzz. He whirled as he sprang out of the hatchway, anticipating weapons fire.
Four drones flew around obstacles in the corridor toward the exit. Kenji raised his rifle but hesitated. Were these astroshaman devices? Drones made from the very technology he sought to find and sell?
No, they looked like typical Kingdom drones, and each one was carrying either a bag or some device clutched in mechanical graspers. They had to be someone’s remote scavenging tools. Which meant that he and the astroshamans weren’t alone out here.
As the drones buzzed out the hatchway, the sister, who hadn’t yet given a name, ducking, Kenji lifted his rifle to fire at one of them. But his brain caught up with his reflexes and reminded him that he had a new gig. He didn’t need to worry about another scavenger taking things from the wreck. Besides, someone in a nearby ship would be irked if he fired at their drones.
But it didn’t matter. The astroshaman produced a pistol and shot.
“Those are our belongings!” she yelled, pelting the rearmost offender with energy blasts similar to but different from DEW-Tek bolts. The drone exploded like a grenade going off.
The other sister was at the base of Kenji’s shuttle—with Kay flat on his back at her feet.
Kenji cursed and ran down the snow drift, hardly caring about the drones. “That’s my robot. Back away from him!”
The three remaining drones flew past the shuttles, then over the cliff where they descended out of sight.
The astroshaman woman next to Kay frowned and faced him, one of the metal boxes in her hand.
Kenji ground his teeth, lifted his hands, and made himself politely say, “I would prefer it if you not damage my robot, ma’am.”
Was it too late? Kay wasn’t moving. Maybe he’d also been zapped with that current, and it had fried his chip.
“Especially if I’m going to be working for you,” he finished.
“The robot was going to attack me,” the woman said.
“That’s not in his programming. I assure you it was a bluff, that he waved nothing more menacing than a wrench, and only because he thought it would protect me.”
The astroshaman he’d been making deals with ran past Kenji to peer over the side of the cliff. She was still clenching her pistol, her mouth twisted in righteous anger. Kenji was glad she’d believed him when he’d said he wasn’t a scavenger.
“Repairing him will be a simple matter,” the closer woman said.
Kenji shook his head, lifted the inert but heavy Kay, and dragged him into the shuttle. The roar of an engine came from somewhere below the edge of the cliff. The drones’ owner? And his ship?
As Kenji settled Kay on the deck, the faint buzzes of weapons fire came from outside. Something slammed into the side of his shuttle, knocking him into a wall.
Cursing, he ran to the hatchway, though he wasn’t foolish enough to go back outside. A huge black vulture-shaped ship hovered over the cliff, casting a winged shadow. A railgun mounted on its belly swiveled toward them. It fired at the astroshamans’ shuttle, blowing a hole in the side.
The women ran for cover by the wreck, but the railgun swiveled to follow them. It fired again, blasting a blizzard’s worth of ice and snow into the air.
Kenji had no idea whose ship that was, but he felt it his duty to try to protect the women, astroshamans or not. He fired at the hull, realized his bullets would do nothing against the armored vessel, and targeted the railgun. Maybe he would get lucky and blow it off.
But it was one of the twins who came up with an effective attack. She dipped into that pocket of endless wonders, threw something at the ship hovering over them, and dove away before a railgun blast slammed into her.
The projectile she’d thrown looked like little more than a large marble, but it splatted against the hull instead of clanging off. A field of sizzling blue energy spread from the device like wildfire ripping across a prairie. The railgun stopped firing, nothing but popping and crackling noises coming from its barrel.
The winged ship wheeled away, soaring over the cliff. Kenji stood on tiptoe, hoping to see it crash in the foothills far below, but after a few wobbles from its wings, it recovered and gained altitude. Before it had gone far, it disappeared from sight. He blinked. He knew about slydar hulls, and their ability to camouflage spaceships except from very close up, but he’d never witnessed such a craft before, never watched a ship disappear before his eyes.
He tensed, afraid it would bank and come back to attack again. But the clifftop grew silent.
The astroshamans tugged at the hems of their parkas, then smoothed them, the gestures so similar that Kenji was sure the word twins applied just fine to them. Even if there were more than two. They weren’t quite identical, but they were very similar. If this Mari looked like them, identifying her wouldn’t be a problem.
“Is the woman you want to catch armed as well as you two are?” Kenji asked.
“She did not leave our base without resources.”
