Knowing that any second, the Shaddill woman would come around the corner and see what had happened, I used my good hand to snatch up the ingot I had dropped earlier. When the woman appeared — a beefy red-faced human with hair of stringy white, her body clad in admiral’s gray — I hurled the chunk of metal with all my strength straight into her stomach.
The impact made a satisfying thump. Her shoulders jerked in a sharp spasm, but she did not buckle over. Instead, she reached toward her belt where a pistol hung in a holster; I recognized the gun as a hypersonic stunner, the type carried by human Explorers. Such a weapon had murdered my sister and nearly killed me as well. Therefore, I was desperately trying to roll away from the line of fire, when a slim brown hand slammed the pistol out of the woman’s fingers.
The slim brown hand was attached to Festina’s arm.
A moment later, a slim brown fist attached to Festina’s other arm caught the woman with a cracking blow to the jaw. The woman’s head snapped sideways, but she showed no sign of being hurt. In fact, it was Festina who yelled, "Fuck!" and jerked her fist away as if in great pain. Even so, my Faithful Sidekick went back on the offensive within a split-second: she slammed her forearm across the woman’s chest while simultaneously sweeping a leg behind the woman’s knees. The alien admiral woman toppled backward, striking the floor with a bang. Then Aarhus and Uclod were there, pounding and stomping and generally committing mayhem until the woman lay still.
"Damn!" Uclod panted. "That was one tough honey."
"Her partner was not tough at all," I said. "He is no longer breathing."
"Christ!" Festina cried. She raced toward me and dropped to her knees, touching her fingers to the fallen man’s throat. Her face turned even more anxious; after probing the man’s neck at several points, she said, "I can’t find a pulse. Shit!"
With desperate urgency, she dragged the man off me, flat onto the floor. Kneeling beside him, she tipped back his head, blew two breaths into his mouth, then began pushing down on his chest. Under her breath she whispered, "One and two and three and four and five and…"
"Oh, missy," Uclod said, hovering behind Festina’s shoulder, "this is not good. They only had zappers and stun-grenades. We had no justification for using deadly force…"
Lajoolie, still crouching beside the crate of platinum, let forth an anguished sob. "I just…" She buried her face in her hands.
Uclod rushed to her side, calling out to the whole room, "It’s not her fault. She didn’t know her own strength."
"I do," she moaned, "I do know my own strength. Over and over again, they told me never to hit people or else… or else my brother…" She sobbed and crumpled.
"I’ve got bad news," Sergeant Aarhus called from a few paces away. "This woman isn’t breathing either."
He was squatting beside the red-faced admiral; he had placed his hand on her throat in the same manner as Festina had touched the man. "No pulse," he said.
"Both of them?" Festina broke off pumping the man’s chest and sat back on her heels. "Shit — the League is going to love this."
"Yes," agreed Aarhus. "To lose one opponent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
Festina stared at the man she had just been attempting to revive. "How the hell could we kill them both?"
"Perhaps these Shaddill are shamefully weak and fragile," I suggested.
"These people aren’t Shaddill," she told me. "This man is Jhimal Rhee, Admiral of the Brown. The woman is Gunsa Macleod, Admiral of the Orange. They’re members of the navy’s High Council; I’ve met them a few times."
"Oh goody," Aarhus said, "I just helped snuff a high admiral. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ll bet that’s a court-martial offense."
"Rhee and Macleod?" Uclod asked. "Killing them isn’t an offense, it’s a humanitarian service. We should all get a bounty."
The little man was holding Lajoolie, stroking her shoulders… and for once, she was no taller than he, for she had sunk to her knees and was hunched over almost to the floor. She wept piteously — the sort of weeping when the weeper seems terrified to make the tiniest sound, so it is all choked whimpers and sniffles. Uclod squeezed her and spoke gently. "It’s all right, sweetheart, you don’t have to worry. You’ve read the files on these bastards. Rhee and Macleod were two of the worst on the council. Rhee arranged for that colony to starve to death, remember? He tampered with the food shipment schedules. When the colonists were dead, he sent in settlers of his own and claimed the whole planet for himself. As for Macleod, she killed her first three husbands for their money. The files absolutely proved it. Remember that, honey? Rhee and Macleod were both dangerous non-sentients, and the League doesn’t give a self-righteous crap what you do to them."
"I do not understand," I whispered to Festina. "If these humans were dangerous non-sentients, how could they journey through space? Would the League not prevent them from doing so?"
"Damn right it would."
She stared at the man, Admiral Rhee, lying motionless before her. Suddenly, she reached for his jacket, ripped up the slap-tab, and tore open his shirt. In the pit of his stomach, where Lajoolie had struck him so many times, his skin had burst under the force of the blows. Beneath lay a crushed mass of wires and electronic circuitry.
"Okay," she said to everyone in the room, "I have good news and bad news…"
The Shaddill And The Admiralty
It did not take long to ascertain that the red-faced woman was also a person of mechanical construction — Aarhus rubbed her arm hard against the sharp edge of a sheet metal container and the woman’s skin split open, revealing a collection of shiny steel armatures.
"You see, honey?" Uclod murmured to Lajoolie. "They were just robots. You didn’t do anything wrong. Doesn’t that make you feel better?"
Lajoolie made an indeterminate noise.
"Makes me feel better," Festina said. "I thought I was losing my edge when I socked that bitch in the jaw and damned near broke my fist."
"Of course," Aarhus said, "you have to wonder why the Shaddill have perfect copies of two
Technocracy admirals." He touched his fingertips to the robot woman’s cheek. "The skin feels amazingly authentic — best meat-puppet I’ve ever seen. Bet she even had a neck-pulse before we bashed the crap out of her."
"What I’d like to know," Festina said, "is whether the real Rhee and Macleod are still back on New Earth… or if they’ve actually been missing for years."
Uclod blinked. "You think these robots had replaced the real admirals? Like… the originals had been bumped off and these robots were the ones sitting on the High Council?"
"It’s possible," Festina said. "Your files claim the original Rhee and Macleod were both murderers. Okay: that means they weren’t sentient. The Shaddill could cold-bloodedly kill the two of them without upsetting the League. Once the real Rhee and Macleod were gone, android duplicates could quietly step in."
"After which," Aarhus said, "the meat-puppets took their places on the council, all the while working for the Shaddill. Sending their masters Admiralty secrets, and doing their best to influence council decisions."
"Yeah," Uclod agreed. "But then the council caught wind of York’s expose. If it ever became public, every high admiral scumwad would get thrown in jail… at which point, they’d be strip-searched and put through medical exams. An X-ray was bound to show that the fake Rhee and Macleod had gears between their ears. So the Shaddill swooped the robots off New Earth, whisking away the evidence before anyone learned the Admiralty had been infiltrated."