That left me. I pushed myself into position, planned my approach descent, and “climbed” down the rungs intended for use with gravity. It worked pretty well.
I was concerned about where Sasha would lead us once we arrived on, or in this case near, the main deck. I needn’t have been. In spite of the fact that she had pooh-poohed my concerns regarding security, the girl had good instincts, and headed for the point where the bulkhead intersected the vessel’s hull. While not exactly a fortress, this would protect our backs, and allow space for a kill zone between our quarters and what I increasingly thought of as the forest.
Though not as tall as your average tree, the bushes did tower over me, or would have if I’d been standing rather than floating. That made them a forest, as did the brooding feel that surrounded them, and the rather large amount of space that they occupied.
A cloud of glittering robo-insects rose into the air, hovered for a moment, and settled back down. Light glinted off their silvery wings and made them look like branch-grown diamonds.
It was then that I noticed the fragrance that drifted up around us. It smelled good at first, like perfume on a high-priced hooker, but grew thick and cloying after a minute or so.
Once there we found the corner already occupied by four storage modules. I tried one and found it unlocked. A quick investigation revealed that the boxes contained hand tools, fertilizer concentrate, and a whole bunch of lab equipment that I didn’t understand. But density is density, and if lab equipment can shield me from darts, then I don’t care what it’s for.
Sasha grumbled when I freed the containers from the deck, and insisted on rearranging them into a protective semicircle, but went along with the plan. Not because she liked it, or thought it was necessary, but because I’m a crotchety old bastard who has to be humored.
Once our newly formed bulwark was in place, and was mag-locked to the deck, our next requirement was furniture. Beds had first priority, since they could do double duty as acceleration couches, and would cushion us from the effects of gravity.
With that in mind, we spread out to see what we could find. I wanted to say something cautionary, like “watch out for people with Mars Bars,” but knew better than to push my luck. I took the port side and headed towards the bow, while the others took the bulkhead and headed towards the access tubes.
We’d been at it for fifteen minutes when a squadron of mechanical insects took to the air and Joy came swinging through the branches. You could see bushes swaying all the way back to where she’d come from. Her last swing, followed by a split-second release, sent her flying towards my shoulder. She hit with a thump. I fell backwards and struggled to right myself. “Damn it, Joy…what the hell are you doing?”
“Arriving,” she said brightly. “And I found what you’re looking for.”
“You did? Where?”
“In a storage room near the access tubes. Cargo pads…lots of them.”
I used the bush tops to pull myself along. Blossoms came loose and floated through the air like organic confetti. The smell of them stuck to the back of my throat. Joy held onto my right shoulder tab and chattered the whole way. I didn’t pay much attention to what she said, but realized how pleasant her voice was, and understood how lonely Wamba must have been. I wondered if he’d make another Joy, or if that was possible, since she was one of a kind. I hoped so.
The cargo pads were right where Joy had said they’d be, and while some of them were raggedy, and others were stained, most were reasonably clean. It was a simple matter to free the pads from the straps that held them in place, sort them in mid-air, and take the ones we wanted. Sasha arrived towards the end of the process and helped tow them to our newly created home.
It didn’t take long to discover that securing the pads to the deck was going to be a problem. But through the judicious use of magnetic clamps borrowed from here and there, and the huge roll of duct tape that I had included in our luggage, we created what looked like comfortable beds. Gravity would provide the true test.
With that effort out of the way, Sasha and I discovered that we were tired. So, after eating some rather salty ration bars, and washing them down with water siphoned from the irrigation system, we strapped ourselves in for a good night’s sleep. Not that “night” had any particular meaning within the realm of the eternally lit cargo bay.
I felt one of us should keep watch, but Sasha thought it was unnecessary. So, since robots don’t sleep, and she would be up and around anyway, Joy was the logical compromise. I’ve got to admit that I felt some qualms about entrusting our safety to a twelve-inch-tall android, but my eyelids grew heavy, sleep beckoned, and I went along.
It was two or three hours later when I was awoken by the sudden and unannounced imposition of Earth-normal gravity. And, while I was growing more and more accustomed to zero-gee conditions, it felt good. And so it was that I had just rearranged my bed, snuggled under a cargo mat, and drifted off to sleep when Joy jumped up and down on my chest. The poppers attacked two minutes later.
13
“Good for one free meal.”
A pass to the Lunar Gardens Cafe found in popper number two’s waist pouch
The poppers were cautious, and that was a mistake. Had they rushed in and nailed us in bed, the whole thing would have ended right there. But they didn’t, and we made reasonably good use of the extra seconds. I scrambled to my feet, checked to make sure Sasha was up, and pointed to the right. “You take the right, I’ll take the left!”
She nodded, held her gun in the approved two-handed grip, and took aim. There were four poppers in all. Two males, a female, and an android. A limited-edition model with three eyes, vampire fangs, and a pimp-city wardrobe. He, she, or it worried me more than the others did, because robots can be damned hard to kill. They charged the cargo modules, leaped to the top, and spent half a second looking at us.
I wasted half that time wishing I had the.38 instead of the dart gun, took aim, and pumped the trigger. Black holes marched across the front of the android’s peach-colored jumpsuit. Jets of bright blue fluid spurted out and splashed on the deck. The robot grinned. He was still grinning when his gun came up, his finger squeezed the trigger, and Joy climbed his pants leg. The first darts blew air into my ear and the rest went wide as Joy jumped for and grabbed his gun arm. Darts splattered against the deck at my feet while hot plastic peppered my ankles.
The robot frowned, tried to shake Joy off, and died as my darts found and destroyed his central processing unit (CPU). He was still in the process of falling when I picked my next target. I fired, but she had moved, and the darts tore through empty space.
Diving onto an opponent can be quite effective if you hit and knock them down. But if the other person turns sideways as I did, and the assailant hits the deck like she did, the shoe’s on the other foot. Only the most charitable of souls would have ignored the opportunity to jump on her exposed spine, and given the fact that I’m not especially charitable, I didn’t.
But, instead of the yielding flesh that I had expected to encounter, my boots landed on some of Pro-Tec’s finest semirigid body armor. It did what it was supposed to do, and spread the impact of my attack over a wider area. I was still in the process of absorbing that information when the woman did a military push-up. I tottered and fell sideways as she rolled. I saw her gun come up, fired mine in response, and watched a hole appear between her eyes.
The air whooshed out of my lungs as I hit the deck, and I was still struggling to breathe when Sasha arrived. She placed hands on hips and grinned sardonically. “What the hell kind of bodyguard is this? Lying around while I do all the work?”