Chapter 124: PB - #02 Duck’s Wings

Duck’s Wings

The barrel of her strange submachine gun slipped, poking Jim’s nose.

“Lady, if you ought to shoot… shoot,” the envoy retorted before dropping his arms. “But if you’d rather talk… we gotta be more civilized. My name’s Slim Jim, by the way.”

Her red iris glowed with anger. A bluish static discharge ran across the gold engravings lining from her cheeks to her black bodysuit’s turtleneck. Under her ear, her carotid pulsed, making the micro-hexagons of her synthetic skin shine under the buzzing ceiling lights. “Why do you—hey! Freeze, robot!”

The young woman swiveled towards Naamah, and pointed her rifle at her. The old android backed away reflexively until she stuck her back against a Blue pump. Trembling, she hid her face behind her wide flaky arms.

“Bullyin’ the mechie’s pointless…” Jim intervened, spitting what remained of his jerky stick.

The woman’s furious gaze shifted from Naamah to him, then to his brass Alliance badge. She swallowed, and tapped the flat key in his hand with her gun’s muzzle. “Give me that,” she ordered. He displayed the magnetic device she abruptly grabbed with her other hand. “The yakuzas are dead cold, right? You ran into them in town two days ago and framed them. I guess they had it coming.”

The submachine gun’s steel tip danced again over the representative’s nose who nonchalantly shrugged. Despite being at gunpoint again, he stayed put as the girl backed into the gloom of the red security LEDs inside her skiff.

Her step was hesitant. And for good reason. The spaceship’s inside appeared to be as dilapidated as the outside. Between various gleaming oil stains, twisted parts and severed colorful cables littered the rusty floor. As if someone tried to strip the aircraft from within; as if the same someone tried to escape from it.

Jim then remembered the ship was bolted from the outside.

Meanwhile, the girl struggled to close the airlock, repeatedly stomping the control pedal. The bleached rubber kept squeaking, but the hatch stayed still. When she tried a fourth time, the hinges grated. The result, however, wasn’t what she had hoped for. With a loud crash, the door fell on the hangar floor, inches from Jim’s toes, aborting her escape.

“What was the big plan, there?” Jim said, before she gave him another glare. “The ship’s in dry dock.”

“I assume yours would be more suitable.”

He bit his tongue.

“Naamah…” Jim had turned his head towards the mechanic, but kept an eye on the amateur hostage taker. “Please, stop being nice.”

The woman first followed his gaze. “Well, we will pay him a visit then…” she resumed, jumping on the floor. “And he better leave me the helm. Because otherwise, he will have your gruesome death on his conscience.”

Jim scoffed.

“Quiet!” She ordered him to turn around. “No gun?” she inquired, painfully pressing her strange rifle between his shoulder blades.

“No need. I’m just an affiliated insurance auditor.”

“You are a liar! You look like a hunter for sure with your scars and conceited attitude. Go ahead and stop clowning!”

At the same moment, the spaceport assistant announced the arrival of a new Concordia-class aircraft. Several sirens sounded in the lot as a long black civilian ship slid into its designated bay. The heavy metal doors leading to the void closed behind her engines, and four pairs of cushioned clamps stabilized the spacecraft. Once the maneuver accomplished, the retractable pontoon approached her left side, and the pressures quickly equalized. The second Plexiglas gates leading to the hangar slowly opened, and a ramp with an escalator unfolded towards the maintenance area.

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The first life forms to emerge from the forward airlock appeared to be eight top state-of-the-art MK-type androids. The disturbing security robots with a gait as heavy as their arsenal slowly walked in pairs down the moving staircase. A unique glittering purple orb occupied most of their square faces. When one of them landed on Jim and his kidnapper, the cyclops all took aim simultaneously.

The Alliance man growled. The situation went from bad to worse with eldritch bots around. Mechanical Killers never won fame for their delicacy when it came to handling armed nutjobs.

“Drat…” the Japanese woman reacted half-heartedly. “Them again…”

The first steps of the combat androids hitting the metal floor of the hangar echoed through the hoisting of the ship’s frozen thrusters cleaning themselves.

Raising an eyebrow, Jim glanced back at her. “Those tin cans some friends of yours?” he asked.

Shortly after the mechanized vanguard had descended, an organic visitor had jumped from the black spacecraft. A yellow-turbaned square-jawed man took a step forward to join the back of his henchmen cohort. Jim felt his eyes fall on him, although he wore unfathomable dark glasses.

“Who’s the mean-looking guy in the expensive Borderline suit?” Jim asked.

An almost whispered instruction escaped the newcomer’s charcoal-colored lips, and the androids began to circle the maintenance bay, zigzagging between the empty carts and the Blue pumps.

“Quickly! To your ship!” the woman ordered, jostling Jim.

But he remained motionless, rummaging in his back pockets for a missing beef jerky. “It costs me to say it, but there is a chance I’d be more comfortable with a corpo, rather than with you and your rifle peckin’ at my spinal cord—”

The fugitive immediately grabbed the collar of his sweater. Almost tearing it, she pulled her hostage on his feet. “Don’t just stand there, you clodpoll!” The ricochet of bullets could be heard all around. The MKs started firing blindly, their infrared targeting assistance unable to pierce the curtain of smoke. “Move at once!”

Juiced on adrenaline, Jim bolted towards the cells. Dodging the steel claws of a marauding MK, he quickly reached the motionless escalator leading to his ship.

Climbing four by four the stairs immobilized by a power outage inherent to rockets soaring in all directions, Jim reached the high dock with the frightened woman. They hadn’t passed the transparent doors further away, that the warring androids already hit the top of the steps.

“Must be time for his nap,” Jim replied. He turned around before facing their assailants. “Speakin’ of naps, be ready for a very long one...”

Forming two neat rows, the MKs slowly advanced onto the dock, laying sights on both of them like a firing squad would. Behind their armored shoulders, the sinister turbaned man appeared. He ordered them to stop before walking over to a bulky control console.

“Neat. I didn’t know we had those…” Jim said.

A click sounded behind him and the fugitive. A second after, a flap opened beneath the peeling wing.

Obliterated, the entire squadron joined the Universal Matrix. As for the turbaned-cyborg, Jim couldn’t be sure what had happened to him, and didn’t plan to go check.

She panted. “Your copilot just saved our lives…”

Jim awkwardly yawned to clear his eardrums. He could barely hear her voice through the tinnitus. At his feet laid his precious Walkman, unfortunately not nearly as unharmed as they were. And it rubbed off on his hitherto unflappable mood. “Don’t be a fool. That damned duck wanted to kill us too…” he ranted.

Disheveled, Jim’s partner and copilot appeared through the haze in the airlock frame. His blank stare lingered first on the young woman, then on the smoking remains of the MKs. Satisfied, he rolled his uniformly red feathers.

With a loud quack, Napoléon made it clear that his nap should never be interrupted again.