What Price the Stars? Part 11

Michael awoke cramped and stiff on a hard bunk in the safe room. His head felt like a booster drop zone after a barrage launch. By the faint green light of the airlock telltales he could see that the room was empty. The kinks in his back coaxed him upright. He cursed softly when his elbow encountered the sturdy cradle that held the patchgun, and again when he thought of Alexi.

You idiot. Anyone could have seen that double-cross coming, he reproached himself. Alexi had played him like a fiddle. He checked his chrono, which still imagined him to be on Earth. It was 0400 in Montevideo. A bit of woozy math revealed he’d been under for no more than an hour.

There was nothing to be gained by skulking in the safe room. Michael cycled the lock and clambered down to the street. No one was in sight, but there were familiar human noises on the air. Somewhere close by, a couple was making love.

Light shone from a little window set in the door of the common building. Michael approached it as stealthily as he could, and peered through. Inside, there was a chaos of overturned chairs and scattered crockery around the dining table. Atop it, Jørgen was banging Alexi, and banging her hard. To Michael’s dismay, she seemed to be enjoying it. Hell, who was he kidding? She was insane with lust. She hadn’t bucked and writhed like that on their lone, red-hot fling way back in uni, and her frenzied squeals of “yescho! Yescho!” were as sincere as a heart attack.

Angry and ashamed of himself, Michael beat a hasty retreat. He nearly collided with Li, who stood in the shadows by the side of the safe room, a Buddha’s grin on his pale face.

“Excuse me,” whispered Michael.

Li ignored his apology. “A fine night, is it not?”

“Only if you say so,” Michael said glumly, and wondered what the wiry little president of Daiginga Corporation was getting at.

“It is. My enemy is making a mistake, and in accordance with Master Sun Tzu, I will not interrupt him.”

“You count Jørgen as an enemy? Why?”

“Don’t you? Even as we speak, he is taking what is rightly yours.”

“Alexi is not my property. If she wants Jørgen, that is her choice,” Michael retorted angrily, though the muffled gasps of Alexi’s pleasure stabbed him like knives.

“Her choice?” Li mocked. “None of us has any choice remaining. It is ours to play the parts assigned to us, to tick off the boxes of the test, to pass or fail. Like trained monkeys, we render ourselves up for Jørgen’s entertainment. Some to amuse him, as you did with your childish escapades in the tree. Some for his gratification, like her, and some to be ruined for sport, like that stupid professor. I am sure that he has a dishonorable use for me as well. But I am not a dumb animal, and any test may be broken.”

“What are you going to do?” Michael demanded. Li merely smiled.

The sounds coming from the common building stopped. In their place came the sound of a struggle.

Michael charged to the door. It was unlocked. He wrenched it open, but stopped cold when he saw what was going on inside. Naked but for her bloodstained jacket, Alexi knelt over Jørgen, squeezing his neck between her powerful thighs. The lean muscles of her legs stood out like hawsers. Jørgen struggled in vain against her nanotech-enhanced strength.

“Alexi! What are you doing?” Michael shouted.

“She cannot answer you,” Li said from somewhere outside. “She is such a clever, accomplished woman. Too bad she is blinded by her hubris. Her implanted weapons are the best available, but even a perfect system is vulnerable to an insider threat. My agents infiltrated her company’s special projects group a long time ago. They have provided me with many items of interest. Chief among them are secret protocols that can be used to turn the neural interface of an implanted weapons suite into a sort of remote control. I have the key pairs to her suite, and an interface of my own to control her. It is crude, and very unpleasant for her, but it will suffice for my purpose.”

“Which is?”

“To gain the foundry, obviously. Daiginga Industries must have it, or our products will go the way of automobiles and airplanes. The hard work and sacrifices of seven generations of my family would be lost overnight. I cannot allow that to happen. Miss Petavia, kill him.”

After the faintest hesitation, Alexi grasped Jørgen’s head in her hands and twisted it, hard. His neck snapped with a crunch like breaking glass.

“No!” screamed Michael.

With mechanical precision, Alexi rose stood up and turned her emotionless eyes on him. Long talons slid from beneath her fingernails. They glinted in the dim light like stilettos .

Li’s voice came again. “Kill him, too.”

“Alexi, it’s me, Michael!”

She froze, tension radiating from her body in waves. She was somehow fighting against Li. Unfortunately, it was a losing battle. She took a halting step toward Michael, then stopped, quivering.

“Alechka...” he whispered.

“For God’s sake, Mishka! Run!” she hissed through clenched teeth.

He needed no encouragement, but dashed out and slammed the door behind him. The narrow boulevard was empty. Li had vanished. Michael cast about for an avenue of escape, but there was nothing but the narrow mouths of forbidding alleyways and the gaping airlock of the safe room across the street. With only a single exit, it was a terrible hiding place.

Nevertheless, when the door to the commons flew open, he catapulted into the safe room at a dead run.

Alexi was right behind him, moving so fast that she hardly touched the ground. She shot through the airlock and homed in on Michael like a guided missile.

He blasted her in the face with the patchgun.

Sticky pressure-trapping foam enveloped her head like an orange jellyfish. She staggered, frantically clawing the rapidly hardening gunk from her mouth. While she struggled, Michael darted from the safe room, stabbing the panic button as he ran by it. The airlock snapped shut, and an earsplitting barking horn announced that the safe room was locked.

A few minutes thusly purchased, Michael fled as fast as his feet would carry him into the featureless expanse of the Hall of Receiving.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11