The Goddess of the Hunt. Part 4
22 Aug 2018Ouberos
Even though she knew how it ended Lori still found herself holding her breath. The theatre had gone blank and she took a nervous glance at the hooded man. His fists were clenched so tight his knuckles had turned white. She felt this was not a good sign.
“It, it err comes back in a few seconds,” she said as if to apologize for the blank theatre.
The barman pulled a tight fitting cork from a bottle of dark Rum and poured out a three fingered measure for himself.
Lori steeled herself for the second act. For someone who had begun to make money from the Holologs of Kara Walden she could still never get used to the violence.
There was sound first. A high pitched oscillation like tinnitus on Onionhead. Then colours spilled and blurred into marionettes struggling to stand upright after their strings have been cut. The puppets became humans dressed in black EVA suits whose camouflage flickered in and out while they clutched their heads in agony. Across their bodies, lights and sensor read-out’s blinked displays of confusion while their powerful energy weapons grew dark and cold. The soldiers gathered each other up and butted their helmets against each other as they pointed at their ears and comms arrays. One of them pointed forwards and another made a signal for retreat.
They bunched together while they tried to rally themselves.
The first arrow flew through its human target almost unnoticed. The body became a puppet once more and flopped lifeless on the deck. A second soldier suffered an explosive decompression as his visor was punctured by an arrow he only saw coming at the last possible moment. The third died with an arrow lodged in his spine and a trail of frozen blood splatter which followed his corpse as the momentum carried it away.
Then a figure in a radiant white EVA suit was amongst them. She carried a spear in one hand, a bow in the other and her touch was death. Where they staggered she danced. Where they faltered she moved and where they died she lived.
Lori turned her head just as a drone pulled into a close up of a screaming face inside a helmet. A second later Kara’s spear blade burst through the face and visor.
Even the barman flinched at that one.
Lori looked back at the theatre just as Kara stood victorious over the bodies of the fallen soldiers. She held the spear aloft and her suit pulsed one final brilliant, blinding white light before it began to fade back to black while her breathing subsided.
Ouberos came into shot carrying his mechanical antique pistol and the useless blaster whose charge had been scrubbed out by the blast from the powerful EMP. He pointed the pistol at some of the corpses but the job had been done.
Kara put down her weapons and began to search the bodies. She checked packs for intel but found nothing which hadn’t been fried. She was swearing and flinging comms devices across the corridor in disgust as she tried each one and found it lifeless.
“Frak, frak, frak, frak frak” she shouted angrily as she ran out of bodies to search. In the back of the shot Ouberos could be seen to move away. He was watching her carefully and still carried the gun.
Then Kara stood upright and looked his way.
“There’s one missing,” she said and counted the corpses again.
“Nine, there should be ten. There’s one left,” she said and the music skipped a beat before the tenth soldier leaped from a makeshift hiding place of debris. He was on Ouberos first and the pair of them vanished as the adaptive camouflage came back online. Then the soldier reappeared and Ouberos was flung against the wall.
The soldier was holding the pistol. He pointed it the stunned Pirate and pulled the trigger.
Only Kara had slipped between them and the kinetic rounds hit her. One, two, three, four, five.
There was no sound. The music had cut out but each round made the woman flinch. Each bullet made her fall inwards on herself until she was down on one knee and then on her side and finally there were great fountains of frozen red droplets flying away from her body as her blood squirted out into the vacuum.
Lori looked away again as the Drone’s destabilised and the feed rotated between many different angles.
Ouberos killed the soldier with Kara’s spear. Stabbed him so hard the body was pinned to the wall.
Then he was down beside Kara and the feed came back under control as he tried to lift her but she was telling him she was cold. His visor cleared and he was reassuring her it would be ok. She told him another squad was incoming and he needed to go. She wanted a weapon and he gave her the pistol. She coughed and said something that he didn’t hear so he put his ear to her mic and listened.
Kara brought the pistol up and put it against his helmet. The feed zoomed in on the gun and caught his eyes widen in shock. She pulled the trigger but the gun clicked loudly. She tried it again and again until he pulled himself away. They looked each other in the eye one last time and Kara gave him her killing smile.
“Fuuuuu,” she gasped and died.
The feed went fuzzy and blurred. The music faded. The screen went black.
Lori rubbed her sweaty hands on her skirt. The silence in the room grew oppressive. She felt she needed to say something. She focused on the reason she was here.
“So do we have a deal?” she asked. The man didn’t respond at first but eventually nodded.
“Your account has been credited. There is a bonus in it for you,” he said. The huge barman returned to the door and released the maglocks.
“You can go,” he said and Lori didn’t need to be told twice. She checked her account as she left and discovered she might never need to work again. The barman was closing the door behind her as she turned around. She just caught sight of the dealer as he removed his hood but then the door was closed and the maglocks engaged.
“I still don’t believe it,” the barman said to Ouberos as he returned to the bar. He sat on a stool next to the Pirate and passed him the bottle of Rum he had been drinking from. Commander Ouberos nodded silently. He took a swig before he spoke again.
“After she died I got back to the T9 and powered it up. I could see the Conda but it was having issues from the EMP. I disengaged and Hi-waked away as soon as I could. I had to leave her body behind. I guess the Feds got what they wanted in the end. I guess they got her,” he said.
After a short while he pulled out the mechanical pistol and placed it on the bar. The barman asked if he could look at it and the other man agreed.
“Never seen one before. Seen them on the theatre and read about them but not in the flesh. How come it didn’t fire?” he asked and Ouberos looked at him for a while.
“The ammo. It was home made,” he said. “It wasn’t quite the right size and the chemical accelerant in the charge was dirty enough to throw things off and jam the mechanism,”
The barman thought about that for a while. He turned it over in his hands and squinted down the sights as he aimed at a bottle of Lavian.
“Homemade eh? Lucky for you you are a better at Pirating than you are at making ammo,” he said and handed it back.
Ouberos took it and opened the gun. He retrieved the last round. The one that didn’t fire. The one that was meant for him. He stood the little brass casing up on the bar and they both looked at it.
“That’s the thing. You see, I didn’t make them,” he said and took another swig of Rum.
“Because, if I had made them, I would have put a lead bullet in that casing,” he said and pointed to the wax plug on the top of the casing.
The pair of them stared at the blank round for sometime.
Deep space. System unknown.
Faulcon Delacey Anaconda. Medical transport. Designation unknown. Heavily armed and escorted. Destination unknown.
Inside the medical bay of the Anaconda the two men in hazmat suits unzipped the body bag and checked the tag attached to the foot.
“Finally got our hands on another one. This one still looks in good shape. Report says she bled out in hard vacuum. The pictures in the file are quite something, frozen blood everywhere. Seems she had a real talent for theatrical violence,” the taller man said.
“It makes a change though, the last one they brought us was in six bags,” the other man said.
On a metal table next to the body he set about laying out tools designed for the dissection of human bodies. There was a long serrated bone saw and a self powered, small bladed circular saw. Then he put down a series of bright steel knives while his colleague began to cut the EVA suit away.
“You never get used to it. Just how similar they all are. I mean I know they are genetically identical but you know, they look so alike,” said the taller man. The other was about to reply when something clattered to the floor beside them.
They both looked at the object in confusion and the shorter man bent down to retrieve it.
“What’s this doing in her suit?” he said and held up an empty plastic ketchup bottle.
Then the woman on the slab sat up and helped herself to the circular saw. She smiled at the men in the hazmat suits as they stared slack jawed at her.
“I really cannot believe you lot fell for that one,” she said.
“But I’m glad you did," she told them and the saw sprang into life.
"So shall we get started? I have so many questions,” she said happily.