Zenith swirled the contents of her glass, stirring up the phosphorescent flakes within. The drink itself was a generic blended whisky from Brightstone mixed with a generous amount of soda. She had ordered the drink knowing that the conversation with Sturdy might go sideways. Getting smashed before potentially outing a spy seemed like a bad idea.

“Do you drink at all?” She asked.

“Not often, and only when I’m not on a job. I prefer these,” Sturdy said, pulling a cartridge from his pocket.

“Nox? That stuff is pretty addictive.”

“No more so than the normal vices,” he said, nodding at her drink, “and these will let you keep your senses sharp.”

“You worry about losing control?”

“No. I’m always in control.”

“Because you don’t drink?”

“Because I’m trained to be.”

“Do you worry about other people losing control?”

The question made him pause.

“Depends on how dangerous they are.”

“Oh yeah? Alright, how about Adam?”

“Mild concern, given his training.”

“Odybrix?”

“Very concerned.”

“Obviously. BOB?”

He hesitated, his posture stiffening ever so slightly.

“Negligible.”

“Me?”

“Also negligible, unless you’re piloting.”

“Ooh, big mistake. You haven’t seen me with a sniper rifle.”

“I didn’t take you for the shooting type. How did you pick up the skill?”

“My brother,” she said, a note of sorrow entering her voice. “I wouldn’t call our relationship healthy, but we did like to challenge each other. Didn’t take long before I was a better shot than him. Pissed him off, being career military and all.”

“What are you going to do if Remington wants him dead?”

“Save him. Blood’s worth more than credits, even if it’s bad. Anyway, speaking of skills, how does a mercenary learn to sneak into spacecraft and hack databases?”

“Experience.”

“Oh yeah? Because it sounds like professional training to me. Less merc, more spy.”

“You’ve met a lot of spies?”

“If I have, they obviously weren’t very good ones,” she said, taking a sip from the glass. “I’ve dodged a few teams working covert ops, so I recognize the profile of a spook.”

“Wait,” he said, lifting his fingers, but not his hand from the table. “Take a look around, but don’t turn your head.”

It wasn’t an attempt to derail the conversation. Dwarves in suits were quietly approaching patrons throughout the club, handing them what must have been vouchers, and escorting them out through side exits. The club was being systematically cleared out around them. Zenith’s finger twitched and she felt the alarming absence of her sidearm. This was bad.

She began to rise but, Sturdy took her hand. Her eyes met his and he gently nodded downward. A kinetic pistol rested on his lap.

“How did you get that past dock security?” She asked.

“I didn’t. I’ve got another under my shirt. We’ve been set up.”

“Yeah, got the feeling this is about to get hairy. We need to get to the others.”

“I can. I’ve got the stealth tech. Plan: we flip the table, you draw their fire, I get the crew.”

Zenith hesitated, knowing what he had been tasked to do to BOB, but there wasn’t much choice. She took his hand and said, “I’m trusting you to get them out of there.”

Sturdy nodded. “On three. One. Two.”

The countdown stopped when a dark-skinned infernum stepped into the Perihelion and was confronted by two of Tibor’s goons. One pointed to the door she came out of, clearly trying to get her to leave. Instead, she made a quick series of hand gestures and suddenly one dwarf was tackling the other. Tibor stood by the bar, shifting his gaze from the infernum to his grappling allies, then to Zenith and Sturdy. He reached for something tucked behind his back.

“Three!” Zenith yelled, flipping the table and grabbing the gun.

Sturdy actived the stealthweave causing his body to disappear in expanding blotches of invisibility. Zenith heard his first few footsteps before the table started getting peppered with bullets and the occasional plasma blast. The kinetic fire didn’t pierce the impromptu shield, but bright orange circles blossomed where the plasma struck. It wouldn’t be long before her cover was torn to shreds.

She waited for a lull in the hail of gunfire, then popped out and took two shots at a nearby thug. The first hit triggered a personal shield generator, causing blue light to cascade around the dwarf. The second took him in the head. The dozen or so remaining thugs took cover—they hadn’t been expecting resistance.

Zenith caught a glimpse of the infernum woman before fucking back into cover. Her own shield flickered as she took a shot from Tibor. In response, she raised a hand and a mote of flame flew from her fingertips, catching the dwarf in the head and searing his face. An instant later, she drew a small metal cylinder and a blade of crackling energy erupted from it. In a few seconds, she closed the distance between a group of gunmen and began their systematic dismemberment.

Who the fuck is that?


—


Buddy choked as she inhaled the searing vapor. Her hands automatically went to her hips for her pistols, but found none. The crew was still reeling from the ambush and barely able to dodge the first blast from the shotgun. The murder-bot took aim at Odybrix’ head and fired as she dove to the side, catching some of the spray in her shoulder.

The murder-bot swung the shotgun in Buddy’s direction, levelling it at her chest as pain lanced through her lungs. She wasn’t going to be able to dodge it. The muzzle flashed and, in the same instant, BOB sprung up in front of her, taking a direct blast to their chassis. They landed on their side with a heavy clunk.

“BOB!” She cried.

Adam surged forward, tearing one of the chairs in front of the desk from its fastening to the floor and smashing it over the bot’s head. Seeing a chance, Buddy ducked behind their would-be assassin and jumped on top of it, furiously attempting to kick, elbow, and otherwise bludgeon the weapon from its hands. A pink glow enveloped the shotgun a moment later, pulling it, the bot, and Buddy forward. Three successive shots blared in the death chamber, two hitting the wall and the last catching Jim in the hand as he jumped out of the line of fire. Buddy gave one last powerful downward kick and dislodged the weapon from its grip, then rolled forward, grabbing the shotgun and unloaded five shots into the murder-bot.

“BOB?” She asked, coughing as the other robot went limp.

“I am unharmed!” BOB said. “It did not penetrate the titanium reinforcement.”

“Jim?”

“I am functional,” Jim said, holding up his hand, which sparked and flickered from flesh tones to the onyx black of his microbots, “but I will need repairs.”

“We need to get out of here,” Hoxley said, hacking.

“The door disappeared; there’s no way out,” Odybrix said.

“There was a panel beside it when we entered! It has vanished as well!” BOB said.

Buddy took two shots at the walls beside the door and the pellets caved in a metal plate. BOB was there in a flash, extending their manipulator and pulling the panel open. Flesh melted and metal corroded as the crew watched helplessly. BOB’s arm was a blur of swift, robotic precision, cutting and extracting circuitry, then replacing it with other parts from somewhere inside themself. The yellow haze grew so thick that the stout robot was lost within and all that could be heard was the rapid tapping at the panel.

With a sudden click and hiss, the door slid open, spewing deadly vapour into the hallway. The crew surged out of the door like an uncapped soda bottle. Buddy took in a wonderful breath of clean air as she ran and had it immediately knocked out of her when she collided with something unseen. Sturdy materialized on the floor with a thud.

“It’s a trap,” he said, getting back up.

“We know that, genius,” Odybrix said, coughing. “Where’s ZT?”

“At our table. They have her pinned.”

“Not for long,” Buddy said, charging forward past Sturdy.

She turned the corner, shotgun raised, and took in the battlefield. Bodies and parts of them lay on the bloodspattered dance floor as its colour pulsed in time with the music. Gunfire zipped across the room towards an upturned table and, curiously, an infernum standing behind a pillar. A nearby dwarf caught her movement, sneered, and spun to spray her with a Peppershot Auto. Her finger was already pressing down on the trigger.

The dwarf flew back in a mist of blood and shredded muscle, relieved of his face. The body that hit the floor wasn’t a dwarf and Buddy was no longer at a club. Combatants wearing patchwork armour scattered for cover in a dark, empty street and took aim at her. Each fighter had three red stripes painted on their shoulders, a marking she didn’t know the significance of, but understood it meant they had to die. She blasted an infernum mid-slide as he tried to take cover behind a car. The body that rolled away was a dwarf.

BOB stomped into the fray, catching pistol fire that harmlessly ricocheted off their reinforced armour. Blue light flashed around Buddy—a laser triggering her PSG—and she somersaulted behind BOB. She popped out from behind friend-cover and shot the thug who tagged her, obliterating his own personal shield and scoring a hit in his abdomen. A number of the dwarves keeping Zenith pinned peeled off to deal with the crew.

Adam snatched a pistol from a corpse and expertly snapped off two shots at a thug running for cover, disabling his shield. The dwarf attempted to dive under a table, only to stop in mid-air. An instant later, he flew into the ceiling with a sickening crunch, then fell in a heap on the ground. Odybrix, glowing with a pink psionic aura, pulled another combatant out from behind a pillar, ready to repeat the maneuver, but a wave of force struck her.

Tibor stepped into the middle of the dance floor, glowing blue and surrounded by a barrier of psionic energy. Five of his stooges ran inside the protective field, shielding themselves from gunfire and focusing their own attack on the new arrivals. Odybrix and Sturdy fled into the hallway they came from. Adam joined Buddy in ducking behind BOB.

Buddy took a quick glance and saw three of the thugs pulling grenades from their vests. Before she could tell Adam and BOB to scatter, she heard bone-chilling screams coming from their assailants. She peered out again and witnessed an infernum woman inside Tibor’s barrier, shredding his lackies to ribbons with an energy blade. Before she could reach him, Tibor hit her with a psionic blast, sending her flying twenty feet away. She landed on her feet.

Buddy raised the shotgun to take the gang leader out, but BOB charged ahead, blocking the shot. Tibor heard the clang of the robot’s approach and raised a hand, holding them in place. He formed his hands into shaking claws and blue light surrounded BOB, accompanied by the whine of metal being pulled apart. Tibor smiled viciously as BOB’s form began to contort.

Buddy strafed left and unloaded the shotgun at Tibor, but the pellets either bounced off the barrier or were deflected enough to leave him unharmed. She sprinted towards the pair, ready to pummel the dwarf’s head in, then saw a panel on BOB slide open. Scalding coffee sprayed onto Tibor’s face, causing him to howl and drop to the ground, freeing BOB of the psychic grip. Before either Buddy or Adam could take a shot, the robot stomped forward.

“What the hell are you?” Tibor asked, clutching the raw remains of his face.

“An inspiring vessel for caffeine,” BOB said, falling onto Tibor and popping his head like a grape.

Another body dropped at the infernum woman’s feet, leaving only her and the crew. She took a moment to look over each of them, then approached. She stopped at the mutilated corpse of Tibor, bent down, and withdrew a PDA from his bloodstained vest.

“Y’all are pretty impressive.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Zenith said, walking out from behind her hole-ridden cover.

The woman held the device to a band on her wrist, which beeped after a few seconds. A hologram projected from the band a moment later, displaying text and a route to a nearby part of the station. She tossed the PDA to Buddy and gave the crew a sad smile.

“Looks like you got tangled up in some bad business, darlins’. I dunno how much you’ve dealt with Remington Corp in the past, but they’re not gonna stop comin’ for you until you’re dead or they don’t have a reason to anymore.”

“You know that for a fact?” Sturdy asked.

She nodded. “Mhmm, and I think we might be pursuin’ the same guy.”

“Who are you?” Hoxley asked, peeking out from behind the hallway.

“Ebshian Glaidur. You can call me Ebby.”