Wings of the Magpie: Space Operettas (2 page)
The target, the girl, was high-caste Sini, a Pureblood, beautiful by the standards of a dozen of the thirteen spacefaring races. Her pronounced forehead was marked with her house identifier, a small, radiant jeweled sun. She wore a designer holographic mini which changed color with her every movement, expensive high-heeled black boots, and a pair of bonewhite Schuller-Mach headphones. She was obviously slumming.
“Oh my GAWD!” shrilled a cloying drag queen of a voice, disturbing Grummand Fifty-Seven’s revere. “There are robots in the disco!” Then the wall collapsed in a cascade of stone and smoke and fire, drowning the mash-up of the rap from Shrupa’s “Mutant You Loves to Hate” and the pounding beat of Panik’s “No-Go-Mo-Fo” in an unbelievable cacophony. For a split second, Fifty-Seven thought he’d been outed, that his cover had been blown. Then, as the smoke began to clear, he noticed the sextet of ludicrously-armed Bruisers and a pair of snarling leatherclad Badgers pressing through the rubble and into the battered, burnt, and bleeding audience, firing indiscriminately.
Grummand Fifty-Seven dropped to the dancefloor, his three meter metal body crushing a cluster of Konks, so inbred and stoned on Eros Psystim Candies that they hadn’t even stopped dancing, and sprinted towards the stage, shoving terrified dancers as he advanced. Nearby, a Noisebomb cut through the crowd, spattering his shell with half a dozen colors of blood and other bodily fluids. A Gwyndon male staggered past, his purple mane on fire, ineffectively clutching at a gaping neck wound that spurted a fountain of bright green blood in an impossible arc. Fifty-Seven backhanded a pair of shrieking Lizards, dolled-up as human females. (Hermaphroditic Lizards enjoy picking up human males, typically naïve spacers or drunk tourists, and simulating mating practices with them. Two weeks later, the poor saps suddenly find themselves birthing twelve thousand screaming, squirming tadpoles from their nostrils. Needless to say, everybody hates Lizards.)
Fifty-Seven knocked them out of his way and leapt onto the stage, gathering up the target into his arms in a single motion, severing the cord of her headphones with a single snick of his clawhand. She took one look into his Transplast face, her cool grey eyes met his visual sensors, and passed out.
It was at that moment that one of the Bruisers managed to draw a bead on Grummand Fifty-Seven, and a salvo of whitehot metal spit from its chaingun-barrel arm, tattooing Fifty-Seven’s back with a steady poc-poc-poc. Fifty-Seven shielded the girl with his body, the ricocheting lead bouncing off his shell and indiscriminately dissembling the bodies of nearby sentients into piles and puddles of meat, liquid, and bone. He realized that there were only three ways out, through the nightclub’s front doors, which were already choked chest-high with the bleeding and dying bodies of fallen scenesters, up through the ceiling where he’d come in (impossible without his flightpack, which he’d carelessly left on the roof), or through the hole that the Badgers and their motorized minions had blown in the wall. In any scenario, Grummand Fifty-Seven would have to make it past the gatecrashing Bruisers and Badgers, so once he’d calculated the odds, he decided to opt for the hole.
Fifty-Seven glanced back over his shoulder, noticing that one of the Badgers was priming a shouldered rocket launcher, and estimated how many seconds he’d have until all hell broke loose. This would be close.
Grummand Fifty-Seven set the girl down, continuing to shield her with his bulk, and began fingering the side of his chest. He found the panel release lever quickly, exposing his emergency transport cavity, then gathered the girl up again, stuffing her into himself. Fifty-Seven resealed his chest, then rolled left as a rocket cut through the space where he’d just been crouching. It exploded against the far wall where a choir of terrified Gnubs cowered, showering the scene with plaster and internal organs. The target was secure, for now. Grummand Fifty-Seven turned to face his adversaries. Two Bruisers stood a dozen meters away, wading slowly towards him through the carnage, chaingun arms trained on him. Ten meters behind them, the remaining four Bruisers gleefully fired zapguns and flamers at any sign of movement, mopping up the few remaining signs of life in the once-teeming dancehall. The two Badgers remained by the hole, barricaded behind rubble. The black and gray Badger with the rocket launcher swore loudly as he worked to reload his weapon. The other, brownfaced, snickered through a toothy mouth. “Give us the girl,” it shouted, “or you’re stewed.”
Grummand Fifty-Seven glanced down towards his feet. His internal sensors informed him that the girl’s heartbeat and breathing were steady. He’d suffered some cosmetic damage from the chaingun, but was otherwise unharmed. He regretted that he’d come unarmed, but reminded himself that a zapgun in hand didn’t necessarily equate a comet by the tail. He reached down, his fingers finding a reasonably-intact Lizard skull and spinal column, flesh cleaned away by a zapgun blast, on the ground by his feet. The Bruisers advanced, their head-mounted orange targeting lasers slicing through the smoke. Fifty-Seven closed his fingers around the skull, felt its weight, triangulated, then hefted it toward the foremost Bruiser, shattering its faceplate. The Bruiser dropped, sparks flying from where its face had been. Grummand Fifty-Seven rolled right, avoiding the retort emanating from the second Bruiser’s chaingun. Inside his chest, he felt the girl’s weight shift, her body thunk against the capsule walls, his onboard sensors showed her pulse rate increasing, but her vital signs remained steady.
With one of their number felled, the remaining Bruisers and the two Badgers turned their attention toward Grummand Fifty-Seven and his passenger. Zapgun blasts spit plasma in all directions. Fifty-Seven ducked another rocket, which decimated a bank of vidiscreens flickering behind him, then dove for the closest Bruiser, knocking it down and pummeling its metal countenance with his powerful hands. Sparks and bits of Plexiplast flew as Fifty-Seven battered the Bruiser into submission.
The four remaining Bruisers closed in, half-surrounding Grummand Fifty-Seven with zapguns and flamers at the ready. The Badgers hung back, a safe ten meters behind the Bruisers. “Yeah, you stewed,” chortled Black and Gray as he hefted his rocket launcher onto a shoulder and pointed it towards Fifty-Seven. Brownface sniggered in response.
Inside his chest, Grummand Fifty-Seven sensed the girl stirring to consciousness. Her pulse was quick, frightened. He felt the heartbeat rhythm of her fists against the interior wall of his torso, listened to her cries of “help” and “where am I?” As the Bruisers moved forward, Grummand Fifty-Seven displayed a simple, three-word message on his internal vidiscreen, “you are safe.” He released a light narcotic into his internal airfeed, hoping to calm her, subdue her. Her pulse slowed, and she drifted off to sleep. Grummand Fifty-Seven listened to her light snoring, enjoying its peaceful cadence. He raised his arms, displaying his empty hands to Bruisers and Badgers alike, in a gesture of surrender.
The Badgers cackled. “Drop to your knees,” shouted Black and Gray. Fifty-Seven moved as if to comply, compacting his body down into a squat, his head bowed forward in supplication. The Bruisers advanced, ten meters, nine, eight, seven. When they stood five meters away in a crescent arc, Grummand Fifty-Seven lept into action, and vaulted over the Bruisers in a graceful blur. A rocket harmlessly sailed past, impulsively fired by Black and Gray, and impacted against a far corner of the discothèque. Fifty-Seven landed directly in front of the Badgers, and with a single sweep of his hand, hefted Brownface into the air by his legs, swung him around, then clubbed Black and Gray soundly with his screaming comrade, sending him and the rocket launcher sprawling. Brownface passed out, the blend of inertia, fear, and impact far too much for him to comprehend. Still brandishing the limp Badger, Grummand Fifty-Seven spun to face the Bruisers, their backs still towards him as their simple mechanical minds worked furiously to grasp what had become of him.
Grummand Fifty-Seven smashed Brownface’s flaccid Badger body against the head of the closest Bruiser, sending it flying into a pile of smoldering bodies. He moved to repeat the gesture with the next closest Bruiser, then realized that, along with the Bruiser’s head, he had severed everything north of Brownface’s waist, converting the Badger’s corpse into a far less effective weapon. Fifty-Seven ducked, then rolled as the three remaining Bruisers turned and fired zapguns and flamers in his direction, avoiding the subsequent barrage of plasma and napalm. Five down. Three to go.
The Bruisers worked to corner Fifty-Seven, but he gracefully avoided their blasts and firestreams as if executing a complicated ballet of evasive maneuvers. Each zapgun blast, each torrent of conflagration, he countered by throwing shattered chunks of masonry, smoking furniture, and intact (and less than intact) bodies. First one Bruiser fell, its torso crushed by an ornate Corinthian column, next another, head smashed by a marble countertop. Finally, Grummand Fifty-Seven dispatched the last Bruiser, crushing its head with the repeated blows of a fallen Bruiser’s severed leg. His antagonists conquered, Grummand Fifty-Seven glanced around, surveying the carnage. He felt saddened by the needless expenditure of life, by the thousand tragic tableaus spread out before him, by the tangled and dismembered bodies of Sini clutching Konks, of Gnubs holding Gwyndons, of Lizards comforting Humans, in futile gestures of compassion amid incomprehensible violence. Fifty-Seven had experienced battlefields, had heard the dying cries of men and aliens alike, had seen blackened bodies indistinguishable from shredded war machines. This was different, an undeniable evil unhinged from nationalism, false patriotism, and mindless pride. Grummand Fifty-Seven wondered, for an instant, if it was possible for a robot to shed tears, then turned, and started towards the gaping wound rent in the discothèque wall.
From behind, came a voice, a rasping hiss, crying “Stewed.”
Grummand Fifty-Seven turned to face the voice and found himself squaring off against Black and Gray, the Badger’s bloodsoaked fur spiked in a dozen directions, one eye a bloodshot mess, his leathers in shreds. The battered rocket launcher pointed squarely at Fifty-Seven’s chest, at the sleeping girl tucked safely inside. “Stewed,” repeated the battered Badger in a guttural slur, his mouth a contorted mess of blood and razor-sharp teeth, his clawed finger twitching at the launcher’s trigger.
“No more violence,” announced Grummand Fifty-Seven, his electronic voice pure, clean, logical amid the silent dancehall turned charnel house. “No more.” Fifty-Seven dropped the Bruiser’s severed leg. It clattered, metallic, to the floor.
“Stewed,” hissed the Badger.
“No.” Grummand Fifty-Seven turned his back to the Badger and began walking towards the hole. Outside, the world was waking up; outside, the planet’s sun had just peeked above its horizon, beginning its climb along the ecliptic.
The Badger squeezed the trigger of the rocket launcher, setting into motion an unstoppable chain reaction. The shell ignited, then shot along the meter-long tube towards its exit point, surpassing the speed of sound. With only thirteen centimeters left to go, the rocket snagged against a tiny bend in the launcher’s barrel, trapping it within, its kinetic energy left with nowhere to go. “Stewed,” hissed the Badger, one final time, as the rocket exploded, still in the tube, blasting him into a thousand tiny pieces. As shrapnel and fur rained down within the lifeless nightclub, Grummand Fifty-Seven stepped out into the world, the girl still sleeping within his chest. Safe.
***
Later, Grummand Fifty-Seven piloted his flightpack through the clear and unpolluted atmosphere of Aleph IV, flying low and cautious so as not to draw attention to himself and his passenger. He approached a gated manor house, resplendent with its faux-Tudor styling and well-disguised defensive turrets, then landed in the back yard on a secluded wallball court, well out of sight of the proper landing area at the front of the house. A prancing Gwyndon, formally dressed in a long-tailed black coat with a fresh green carnation pegged to its lapel, met him at the pad and lead him silently through a back entrance into a small sitting room. “Drop the girl here,” purred the Gwyndon, indicating a plush fainting couch with a flourish, “and the mistress will be with you shortly.”
The Gwyndon then left the room, shutting the double-doors behind him. Grummand Fifty-Seven unsealed his emergency transport cavity, lifted the sleeping girl out of his torso and set her carefully onto the couch. Her eyes flickered as if dreaming and a smile crossed her face. Fifty-Seven turned to glance around, noticing for the first time the paintings hung in heavy frames on the wall flanking a tall wooden shelf of leather-bound antique paperbooks. He wondered if they’d ever been read, or if they were simply the required accoutrements of an affluent lifestyle. He briefly considered awakening the girl to ask her, but before he had the chance, the doors opened and a rotund Sini woman wearing a matching caste mark and wrapped in an orange bathrobe let herself in. “Oh, thank goodness you found her,” she trilled, rubbing her hands together as she crossed the room. “Her father and I have been worried sick. That’s the problem with children today, no manners.” She jostled the girl, who awoke with a start. “Young lady,” the woman scolded, “you are oh-so-losing your off-planet privileges, and you’re lucky I don’t take away your Comms unit for a month.” The girl grimaced and blushed a deep vermilion, then looked up at Fifty-Seven and rolled her eyes. “I’ve taken care of the fee with your agency,” the woman continued, not turning. “I assume there were no problems, and that this matter will be handled with the usual discretion. Mister Grieves will show you the way out.” The Gwyndon stood in the doorway tapping one foot, an impatient expression spread across his muzzle.
