Big Dicker, page 22
“Great.” I sigh. “Just what we need. More hordes of Loathsome Borgs.”
The boy is fucking with another control panel, making better progress than I am. Because he says, “Yes,” then leaps up out of his chair just as doors start clicking open out in the hallway.
Dozens and dozens of Akeelian boys appear. All about the same age. Maybe twelve or thirteen, at most. And again I get that sick, sick feeling in my gut when I picture my twin in a place like this.
Our boy starts telling them the details. Then he grabs the two rifles from our blown-up friends and hands them to the oldest ones for backup.
“Where are the girls?” Delphi asks, taking the extra rifles from my shoulder as I continue typing.
“They don’t keep them here,” our boy says. “This is the semen farm.”
“Gross,” I mutter.
“Where do they keep them?” Delphi asks.
“I don't know. Some other station like this, I guess.”
“Do you know where my brother is?”
“Not here,” the boy says. “Probably with the girls. He’s… the right age.”
“Got it!” I say, after ending my last command. “Docking bays are unlocked!”
“Then let’s go!” some random boy shouts at me.
I glare at him over my shoulder and say. “You can go wherever you want, but I’m waiting to see my fucking ship appear.”
She doesn’t appear.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - DELPHI
“She’s not dead,” I say. Because I can tell that Jimmy is starting to lose faith. “She can’t stay on this side of the gate for more than thirty-seven seconds, remember?”
“So she has no idea what’s happening? Or when to even try to come back?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I was so worried about my part in the plan, I didn’t get filled in on hers.”
“Well, that’s fucking perfect,” one of the random boys says. “We all just escaped our cells and now there’s no way off this fucking station?”
“Hey, you,” I say, pointing at the kid. “Stop being an asshole. You’re lucky your friend here got you out in the first place. So just shut up and let the grown-ups work things out.”
He’s got one of the rifles and he’s older than the rest. Almost as old as me, probably. Maybe seventeen. No wonder he’s being an asshole. He’s about the right age too, isn’t he? Gonna be a daddy soon.
Just like Tycho.
I shudder at the thought.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Jimmy says. He’s propped both his hands on the monitor and he’s staring down at it with intense concentration.
“There’s borgs coming!” some random boy screams.
I grab Jimmy’s rifle, toss it to another random, then say, “OK, boys. Time to fight like girls. Everyone with a rifle, blast that shit until you’re empty. Everyone without a rifle, grab something heavy or be prepared to pull hair.”
“What?” one kid asks. “They don’t have hair.”
“It’s a figure of speech, kid. Just… hit them with whatever you got, for fuck’s sake!”
Just as I finish speaking three things happen at the same time.
Jimmy says, “There!”
The borgs burst through into the hallway.
And shit hits the fan because almost a dozen untrained kids start firing plasma rifles and two dozen more leap out into the fray to attack.
I wish I could say that goes well. But it doesn’t. Half the kids who rushed the borgs get hit by friendly and unfriendly fire, most of the kids with rifles do nothing more than hit the lights, so now this whole area is dark and the only thing I can see are crackling streams of firefight.
Then Jimmy takes a hit to his shoulder.
“Retreat!” I scream, rushing over to Jimmy. He didn’t even fall down, just backed himself into the control console. “Come on!” I say, wrapping my arm around his waist. “We have to make it to the docking bays! We have to!”
“Lead the way, princess,” he says.
But I don’t know the way.
My eyes meet the boy’s and he nods. Then he yells, “Everyone follow me!”
I don’t know how we make it through the next hallway, because there are borgs streaming in from open doorways in every direction. But somehow, some way, these kids with the rifles get their shit together and actually pick off a few. I hand my rifle off to someone else because I can’t fire while I’m holding on to Jimmy.
The boy who takes it is a little kid. Maybe nine. Maybe ten.
But in Akeelian years, he’s more like a four- or five-year-old in maturity.
He looks at me with wide eyes as we run.
I say, “Just hold it for me, OK?” And he swallows hard and nods his head.
I want to get him out of here. I want to save him. Hell, I want to save them all. But half of them are already dead and almost all the others are wounded and falling fast.
What a complete fuck-up of a rescue.
I look over my shoulder and watch as the asshole kid stops when one of his friends falls. He screams something incoherent at the approaching borgs, firing his plasma rifle with precision. Then he grabs his friend and starts dragging him along the hallway.
“Leave him!” I scream.
He doesn’t hear me. Or maybe he ignores me. Because he stops in the hallway and stands over the body of his clearly dead friend, shrieking as he fires a stream of plasma in a sweeping arc.
We round a corner and he disappears from sight, but the barrage of destruction that comes after tells me all I need to know about the fate of asshole boy.
We stop at a door. My boy opens it, then we all rush through into the inner docking bay.
Dicker is landing.
And then things go from almost good, to very bad, to worst-case scenario in the span of two seconds.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - JIMMY
Dicker is landing, but she’s three docking bays to my left, which is not close enough to us to make this easy. Borgs come up from behind us and then, on the other side of the airlock windows, I see more borgs streaming in from every docking bay entrance there is. Rushing towards Dicker and taking position between her and us like they’re a fucking wall.
And that’s when I realize… I made a big fucking mistake back in that control room.
I didn’t stick around to lock the docking bay back up. And now it’s in total vacuum and none of us have suits.
We can’t even go out there.
I look at Delphi and feel heartsick. She’s holding the hand of a very small, very young Akeelian boy who’s holding a rifle to his chest, and he reminds me so much of Serpint and Draden when they were young, I have to turn my head away.
But then the little kid is rushing forward towards the fight, shooting a too-big plasma rifle as he screams, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
Delphi’s boy reaches out as he passes him, grabs him by the scruff of his shirt, and the little one is yanked off his feet, rifle skittering away across the polished metal floor.
But he’s still screaming. He’s kicking Delphi’s boy, and scratching at his face. “I hate them!” he yells. “I fucking hate them!”
This is what that bitch did to these kids. This one right here is all you need to see to understand the damage she’s been doing.
I want to go back in there and kill her myself. I want to pick her up by her silver fucking hair and squeeze her neck until her eyes pop out.
But there’s no chance of that happening now.
We’re done.
We made it all this way. Dicker is literally just two hundred meters to my left, and we’re done.
We’re all going to die here today.
Just as I turn to Delphi to tell her I’m sorry, there’s another barrage of plasma fire at the end of the hallway we just ran through.
But it’s weird. Because the plasma fire is taking out borgs.
And then, like the sun-fucked, golden light of luck he is, my brother Luck appears with Cha-Cha and the asshole boy. And every single borg between us and them goes down in a matter of seconds.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” I yell at our few remaining boys. They are so stunned to see the splendor of a fully enraged, shirtless Akeelian male and a souped-up sexbot come to their rescue, they actually listen.
Another barrage of fire comes from behind us, and this time when Delphi and I turn around we see Xyla and her friend Ladybug. Full fucking exoskeleton suits on, coming out of Dicker and charging at that wall of cyborgs in the docking bay like this is the goddamned sexbot apocalypse.
I look back at Luck and smile. You sneaky little motherfucker. I could hug him right now.
“So,” Luck says, hugging his rifle to his bare chest and letting out a sigh. There’s still a shit ton of fire happening out there in the docking bay and his side has a black scorch mark across it like he took a hit, but Luck acts like this is no big deal. He’s all good and he’s sent the girls in to clean up the riff-raff. “You uh… need a hand here, Jims?”
Jims. I want to kiss him for that.
“Dude,” I say. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. How did you find us?”
He says, “Please. You can’t hide from Lady Luck. And we’re not out of the woods yet.” He places two fingers up to his lips and shrieks out a whistle so high-pitched, every kid immediately shuts up. “Listen up, you little brats. You, you, you, you, and you, come with me. The rest of you, go with Jimmy and”—he points to Delphi—“whoever that beautiful little thing is. Got it?”
Everyone, including me, just stares at him.
“I said,” he growls, “got it?”
Every single boy—and Delphi—says, “Yes, sir.”
“Good. We’ll give those girls a few more minutes to wrap up that shit show outside and Jimmy can start pressurizing the docking bays.”
He looks at me like… Well, go fucking do that.
I just shake my head and laugh. Then reluctantly let go of Delphi and go over to the nearest console and take a seat.
My shoulder is killing me, and when Luck comes up behind me and slaps a hand over the still-smoking, cauterized hole in my flesh on purpose, I want to punch him in the face. But I don’t. Because I’m tough like that. And he did just save my ass.
Luck leans down into my ear and whispers, “So listen. I didn’t want to alarm the kids or anything, but you should know that on the other side of the station, there are three Cygnian warships spinning up.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
“Not kidding. Wish I were. Dicker has some serious power behind her and so does Lady Luck, but honestly, brother. It’s not looking good.”
“What should we do?”
“Take our chances, man. That’s all we can do. Get these kids on board, take off and hope for the best.”
CHAPTER FORTY - DELPHI
It takes a while for Xyla and her friend to kill every last cyborg on the docking bay deck, but eventually they get the job done, Jimmy gets Dicker’s bay and the two bays in between us and her pressurized with an atmosphere, and then Luck starts barking orders at the boys like he’s now the proud general of a pack of kid soldiers.
“You, you, you,” he yells, pointing at three of the tallest boys, including my boy and asshole boy. “Grab a fucking rifle and make sure no stray borgs appear to fuck up my escape plan.”
They, of course, “Yes, sir!” him and get all serious as Luck points to the others and says, “Go, go, go, go…”
Jimmy ushers the younger ones, including the little one, into the airlock and then out into the docking bay.
Cha-Cha is walking next to me, scanning the bay with her rifle. She’s kinda making me nervous and she’s not even wearing an exoskeleton.
“So,” she says. “You and Jimmy, huh.”
I slide my eyes to the side without moving my head, trying to gauge what she thinks about this.
“Don’t worry about me,” she says, slapping me on the shoulder. “It’s Xyla’s test you have to pass.”
I don’t know what that means, but there’s really no time to think about shit like that. We still have to get off this station and make it back through the gate. And even though Luck didn’t tell me that there are three Cygnian warships preparing to launch on the other side of the station, he didn’t have to. Flicka heard everything and buzzed right over to fill me in.
Lady Luck, Luck’s ship, is docked right behind Dicker. She’s smaller than Jimmy’s ship, but not by much. She’s also yellow. Bright yellow. And for some reason that fits what I’ve seen of this brother so far.
Luck is tall, muscular, and has a head of shaggy blond hair. His boots make an ungodly amount of noise as he paces his line of boys. Like they’re made of metal. And he’s dressed up in brown tactical pants and shirtless, so you can see all the scars and tattoos on his chest. Like this is the brother who doesn’t ever walk away from a fight. I don’t think he’s shirtless on purpose, because there’s burn marks on the side of his torso. Like maybe he caught on fire and that’s why he had to take the shirt off.
Cha-Cha catches me staring at him just as I reach Dicker and says, “They feel pain differently than most people.”
“What?” I say, forcing my eyes to look away from Luck and up at her.
“That’s why he’s so good at this shit.” Then she winks at me and walks off towards their ship.
“OK,” Jimmy says, once our half of the boys are entering Dicker’s hull. “You ready for this?”
I take a deep breath and let it out. Flicka buzzes by my ear, letting me know she’s top-notch. I don’t really know what I should be ready for, but there’s no way out but forward. If those Cygnian warships fire on us, it’s pretty much over.
But reminding Jimmy of that serves no purpose. So I just nod my head and say, “Let’s go.”
Inside the ship Jimmy points me to an envirosuit, then starts putting his on.
The boys all look around for their suits, but it’s clear. We don’t have enough. Jimmy and Xyla travel alone. The fact that he has an extra suit for me is just dumb luck.
“What about us?” Asshole Boy says.
Jimmy just glares at him. Then growls.
The asshole backs off and stumbles into Ladybug, who says, “If those ships fire on us, these suits won’t matter. Now sit your ass down and shut up. Then think about how lucky you are to be rescued by Harem Station.”
This mostly has the desired effect. They do sit down, but then immediately start whispering things like, “Harem Station,” and “ALCOR,” and little one even says, “Fuck, yeah.”
He’s gonna be a handful.
If we survive.
And then things start happening too fast. Dicker’s door begins to close, Ladybug stabs at a screen and the airlock slams closed, and the second that happens, Dicker’s engines spin up and we rise, turning to see Lady Luck hovering in front of us.
She fires on the side of the station and two seconds later there’s a massive breach in the docking bay.
“Hold on!” Xyla yells back from the cockpit.
Ladybug pushes me to the wall, I grab a handhold, and she grabs me, holding on to another handhold.
It occurs to me that I should probably be sitting down and strapped in for this, but there’s nowhere to sit with all these kids.
And then there’s no time to think. We follow Lady Luck out the hole in the station and enter the deep dark of space.
I’m thrown back into the wall, lose my grip, and start to tumble backward, when Ladybug’s strong sexbot hand reaches out and grabs my arm. Holding me in place.
Jimmy and Xyla are talking to Luck and Cha-Cha on the comms. Something about cannons coming online and target locks having found us already.
We’ve been outside the station for less than ten seconds and we’re already fucked.
I look at Ladybug and she just shrugs. Like this is just another day in her life. Flicka is clinging to my shoulder, buzzing like crazy as Dicker maneuvers us around until—
“Holy mother of fuck,” I whisper.
Because I can see the screen in the cockpit and a Cygnian warship is so close to us, it fills up the entire area.
There’s a second one too. Just above.
“You take that one,” Luck says through comms. “I got this one.”
“Firing!” Xyla says. And then there is a great burst beneath my feet and above my head as cannons fire on the warships.
“Get out of there!” Cha-Cha yells from the comms. “Just get out of there!”
I glance over at the boys and now every single one them is silent. Their eyes wide, their mouths open as understanding sinks in.
We are fucked.
Dicker’s hull shudders—again, and again, and again.
“We’re hit,” Jimmy says.
“Us too,” Luck says back, over comms. “Just keep going. If we can get to the gate—”
But his sentence is cut off.
“Comms are blown,” Xyla says, just as she releases another barrage of defensive fire.
“Sorry, kids,” Jimmy yells.
We don’t have time to wonder what he’s sorry for, because every single one of us is thrown to the floor with sudden acceleration. Including Ladybug.
We become a heap of bodes, sliding towards the rear of the ship, as Xyla yells, “Sending them everything we’ve got! SEAR cannon activated!” Just as we crash into consoles, and equipment, and one kid even disappears down a stairwell, screaming.
That’s gonna hurt later.
If we survive.
“One down!” Jimmy yells. “One down.”
I crane my neck, desperate to see the screen in the cockpit so I can see what that means.
It’s a split screen now. One view in front of us, where the gate shimmers off in the distance. The other view behind us, where one warship is tipping sideways, a huge hole in the center of the hull.
But right behind it is the other one. On fire in spots from Luck’s attack, but still very much intact.
And then, like a fucking ghost rising out of the left-behind ether of colorful gasses, a third Cygnian warship appears.
