14.

Professor Nakayama, I Presume?

Don't take my admittedly limited experience for it, but best I can tell all laboratories look the same. Got your posable bench with wrist and ankle restraints for test subjects, tray of surgical whosits with which to do harm to said test subjects, your glass-fronted cabinets housing beakers, chemicals, microscopes et cetera, stainless steel surfaces and drainage pans for dealing with those pesky bodily fluids, your several hundred thousand credits' worth of eridium crystals spilled all over the place, your gun with some absurd bracket fixed to the bottom, honestly, what the heck's this guy planning on mounting it on, your whole mess of computers with which to record endless reams of collected data-not to mention the ad nauseum screams that will shortly be resoundin' through the laboratory in question-and your handy dandy all-purpose viewing window through which, should the doctor in charge of experimentation find himself squeamish, he might view the proceedings at a safe distance away from any nauseatin' smells that might occur when the test subject evacuates him or herself of the viscera generally kept inside the human body.

This window, this reinforced, utterly impregnable window, designed to seal soundwaves, smells and lethal gases alike, I like this window. Were I to be cuffed to the bed and viewed with a remote kind of professional interest as my bits 'n' bobs was poked 'n' prodded I can imagine hating it somethin' fierce. Under such circumstances, dependent on your perspective, it could either be a wall between me and freedom or a picture frame framing my tormenter, the fella pushing me through hell onto what lays beyond.

But I already went through all that back on the lower case h-station. Ain't nothin' but history, best put behind.

So I like this window. Which, no matter how many times I smash Professor Nakayama's forehead into it, utterly refuses to break.

"Please." Scrawny chap. Old, too. Oughtta feel guilty 'bout brainin' him to such a degree but for some reason I don't. If anything, I'm derving what you might call a certain sense of grim satisfaction from it. Scalp's cracked, smearing blood on the window. Bits of hair, too. You mightn't think a man as follically challenged as Professor Nakayama would have much in the way of hair up top, but there's just enough holding on to cling on strands to the clots he's leaving on the glass.

Careful sport, says the masked thing. You're gonna need him alive.

So I throw his worthless ass to the corrugated steel floor, where whatever disinfectants and cleaning fluids the caretaker douses it with clearly ain't enough to clean away all the blood 'n' crusted bits.

He collapses, sobs. Ain't much of a surprise. Anyone can see, skull he's got aplenty but he ain't in possession of much of a backbone.

"He sent you, didn't he?" Underscored by the rattle of spat teeth. "He found out."

"Yeah. He sent me."

"I just . . ." He bawls harder, just a kid in an old man suit. "I just love him so much! I wanted to fetch a piece of him, so he'd be with me always. He's an inspiration, a testament to what men can achieve when they sets their minds to it."

Truth is, I don't know what the hell he's blubbering about. Don't mean I care, though.

"So, I suppose you'll be wanting them back." Finally, he shows his chin. Such that it is. "Well I'm not telling you where they are! It's not what he'd do, so I won't either. You'll just have to find them without me; I'd rather die before helping one of you heroes"

"Listen, seems like you got the wrong end of the stick here. Whatever the heck you think I'm looking for, all I'm after's retribution, which I sorta feel we've gone half-way towards attainin'. And fer the record, I ain't no hero, neither."

"You're . . . you're not trying to retrieve the stolen samples of Jack's DNA ?"

"What? No! I'm looking for this gal."

Roland printed me out a picture 'fore I left Sanctuary. Blue eyes, hair like straw. Younger, somehow fresher than last time I saw her. Hold it up, shove it in his face.

"An' I been told you know where she is."

Behind the blood, grime an' mashed-up lips. don't seem possible for Nakayama to go any paler. He sure can shake a bunch, though. "Oh," he says in this small hurt voice, like he's looking to make an apology. "Well that's much worse."

"Oh yeah? How so?"

"Well, there's the baby she took-I'm sure you know all about that. And then there's the matter of what we took from her. Of course, I say took; she offered it willingly enough and was paid well for it. She should have read the small print in the contract, I suppose, not that she was in much of a mind to read anything after breaching the containment field. Last I saw her, she could barely stand."

"Now, yuh just ain't makin' sense." Prove my point, I stand on his ankle. Wouldn't think a robot leg'd stamp much harder than a regular one-were it overly heavy my hip flexors would hardly be able to lift it at all-but these freon-powered pistons give it real heft. I feel the ligaments binding his calf to his foot stretch, fray, snap one by one. "Jus' tell me where she is."

"Aagh, not here, not here! She should have been-she was, just a day ago. But I needed the facility all to myself so I sent her away, under guard of course, and with that child of hers. I'm, ugh, having a child of my own, you know. Jack's going to be the father, so I guess that makes me its mother."

Delirious laughter. Entirely possible I've pushed him too far.

"Sounds like you're brewin' up a real sweet family."

"I am! It's a little dysfunctional: the absentee father performing acts of bravery, fending off Vault Hunters, bombarding towns in the thrall of the resistance. And I must say, given that I'm a geneticist with leanings towards the field of cloning, even though the act of creation is one I'm wholly familiar with I'd never envisioned myself wearing a maternity dress. Do you wear a maternity dress when your spawn is gestated in a test tube? I'm starting to think perhaps I should."

"You'd better start tellin' me where you sent her. There's a whole mess of joints in your body, doc. I'll snap each of 'em easy as the last."

"But of course! I wouldn't . . ugh . . . wouldn't dream of getting in your way. But there's a problem."

I answer real slow, rolling the syllables around my mouth.

"A problem?"

"Not one that can't be fixed, you understand! But in order to make room for the extra software needed to control the, er, shoulder-cannon I was about to install before you so rudely interrupted, I had to dump some of my short term memory. The brain capacity of even a genius such as myself is at a premium, you know. Who knows what else I might have forgotten? Even I can't remember that." It's some feat for a guy as broken as he is to squirm as he does, but he manages. "But I can see you're growing impatient. If I'm to locate your missing, er, squeeze, I'll need access to the ship's computer. I was going use it to plot a course, anyway; I hear Aegrus is quite picturesque at this time of year. If you'd please give me a hand over to the console. I'd walk there myself only, well, you know."

Light as a skellington, this dude. Bearing up remarkably well under the circumstances, though I can't help wondering if that's partially down to him being a gold-plated whackjob.

Only when he slips on piss running down his leg do I realise slim though it is, something ain't right with his body. Under the lab coat, the tacky-as-hell shirt he got on underneath, these weird spiky protrusions find my fingertips.

"Oh, do you like them?" he says, hobbling on. Sits on a stool looks like a long-ass buttplug, undergoes a number of scans so the computer can recognise him 'fore we log on. Each wave of light passing over his face sends a frisson up my spine. W33d sense is still there, I guess, but it's fading, and what lies beneath its hazy comfort don't bear thinking about. "Self-implanted. Requires quite some reach to perform surgery on one's own thoracolumbar fascia, but I follow a good regimen of stretches and yoga. Got to keep one's self limber in one's middle age, wouldn't you agree? Especially with the baby on its way. Also, the numbing of pain is one of the better side effects of eridium implants although I still feel it when you punch me please don't punch me."

Mid-way through cringing from me, he stops, inclines his head, first one way, then the other. "You know," he says. "And maybe I shouldn't be saying something like this, rape culture, Stockholm Syndrome, uh, Fifty Shades of Grey and so on. But there's something gnawingly familiar about you, and gnawingly handsome too. Do you work out?"

I limber up to thwack him good. "Oh, son, you heading down the wrong route."

"Sorry, sorry! I always do this-never know the best time to make my move. Keep your mind on current affairs, Gerald, not affairs of the heart. Now, let me see. Lieutenant McCormick. That's who you were after."

The words that fill the screen don't make too much sense. Ain't like I read militarese, or you know, English too well.

Nakayama translates: "It says here that one of my underlings performed her surgery. He's dead, of course; pryed too far into my personal affairs. What Jack and I have is a special relationship, you see. When underlings start asking questions like "I have a PhD and several Masters degrees from Academios, why am I scouring the CEO's toilet with q-tip?" I have to find ways to stop them asking questions. Permanently. Poor Alan; he was such a dab hand with a pair of rubber gloves."

"Where. Is. She?"

"Hold your horses, I'm getting there. This is her biography. This is her employment history-did a stint on the Terminus, of course; that's how all this trouble started. These are her x-rays taken before and after surgery. This is that douche Veden's requisition for an all-points bulletin-ugh, I do hate that guy. Ah, here! Signed by Professor Gerald Nakayama, transportation forms for prisoner McCormick plus infant from the H.S.S. Terminus to . . . oh."

"Oh? What d'you mean, 'oh'?"

"It says she's being transported to the H.S.S. Gray Sun, but that the order's incomplete."

"And?"

"Well that could mean any number of things. The cargo unit was shot down. They died in transit."

"They died?"

"Ow, yes, I mean it's possible, probable she isn't dead. There's no death certificate listed here; it's just one of a number of possibilities presented by the order, such as it is. I mean, if you go solely by what the documentation says it's also possible she and the infant never even left the ship."

"You mean she's still here?"

"On board the Terminus? I suppose. Wouldn't it be absurd if she were! Wouldn't it be funny if some disruption were to have occurred, postponing her release and transfer-something like, oh, I don't know, bandits attacking." He titters high and unbalanced, but already I'm heading for the lab door. "Bandits attacking a science-class Hyperion vessel!" he calls after. "Can you imagine how unlikely that would be? If you're going to leave so rudely, would you mind shutting the door so I can continue implanting myself with-"

Door slides closed, shutting his words with it.

Couple steps past, the entire ship rocks, knocking me sideways against the corridor wall. It's far away-the Terminus is a big ship after all-but I can still feel the violence caused by a series of explosions to the aft.

Breeg leaves, going for the engines maybe. Wouldn't that be a sight to see?

"Oh crap."

Driven by the masked thing, I run.

Two thirds of the way back I run into signs of the Bloodshots' demolition derby. Seems they couldn't wait to get to the rear: scratches in the ship's decor become gouges, gouges become rents, rents fill with cast away resistance, the guards they met who failed and fell, and the floor between the rents becomes greasy with a slippery film of guts and gore that puts me in mind of my own none-too-distant captivity and makes every step a hazard. Crazy, I think Someone really ought to put up a sign-'fore I notice there are signs, signs stuck to the walls that point this way to the bridge, this way to the laboratories, that way to engineering and that way to the transport bay. Treadmarks and lost legs lead left, away from the ship's reactor, criss-crossing like there's been some kinda kerfuffle.

Keep moving. Alarms that blew out my eardrums are now shadows of their former selves. Had to guess, the reduced volume's down to Bessie chewin' through the ship's interior; broken wires dangle like shoelaces from the holes in the walls, sparking and spitting as I hustle past. Burst and broken pipes spill something blue and luminescent across the floor, not so much washing away the gore as throwing it under a spotlight. It's difficult getting around the fluid 'til I favour my robot foot. Got a limping, leaping gait going on here, bounding over obstacles like a superhero.

Lights flicker; backup generators working overtime. In the background the low thrum of the ship marks us flying over the Borderlands. Distant and in both directions come screams, laughter, sounds that might be both.

Bessie's tracks weave in long lazy curves side to side. More signs spring into focus as the ceiling lights fade and the red back-ups kick in. There's an alternate route to engineering on the right; must be the one Bessie and the Bloodshots took. Judging from the tracks Breeg escorted Bessie this way, but first he went straight ahead, doubling back later. Bessie's path of destruction continues ahead; an arrow in neutral colours on the left wall points the way.

Transport bay.

Indecision catches, but not for long. Breeg's welcome to fuck up the the Terminus; I'm only here for Junior and Maggie May.

But when I get there, turns out the Terminus ain't the only thing Breeg's managed to wreck.

Two Hyperion transports are docked in the hangar, snub-nosed things wider than they are long. They're hunkered down on their landing gear like they're about to take a dump, only just as they was about to pinch a loaf off Breeg came along and shoved 'em over. One side of each vessel scrapes the hangar floor, Bessie having swept the legs right out from under 'em. Transport 8004's the worst, having fallen right on top of Bessie before she drilled her way through its back end, crippling it forever. Transport 8005's lucky; she only fell on one side, snapping a wing in the process.

"Maggie?" Voice echoes like I'm yelling into a tin can. "Maggie May?"

Alarms still sound in the distance, and the softly crackling fires where Bessie chewed something volatile and spat out flame; they're here and there on the hangar floor, patchy between the limbs 'n' cargo and stuff I can't identify as either or. Even with the sprinkler system everything's ablaze and smoking. The thickening atmosphere and fine mist of the extinguishers give the scene an unreal quality, like I'm still asleep in my cell and wading into a dream.

But the dark things live only in my head. 8005's loading ramp's been deployed; the whole ship's keeled over and the tip of the ramp digs some way at an angle like a needle from one of them music machines from the really old movies. That kind plays songs from black discs through some kind of long-forgotten magic; the song this one plays is one of great foreboding, a grandiose sweeping soundtrack scoring D.P.'s descent into mystery.

"Maggie May? You in there?" Bit by bit, eyes adjust to the dark. Back of the ship yawns open; there is some kind of lighting inside, something undarkened by Bessie's black fury, but it's soft and it's dim and don't help me see none. Brace my good foot on the ramp, make sure the whole kaboodle won't fall no further. Last thing I need's to be crushed under, well, anything.

Something falls, scaring the bejeezus out of me. Just a coil of cable, not a snake, not a noose. I s'pose she could be in 8004, crushed and burnt and drilled through and dead. Ready for transit, she could be anywhere. Papers unsigned, she could be anyplace.

But no, she has to be here. Ridges, steps in the ramp that once helped cargo lifers gain traction. They're skewed at an angles-everything's skewed at an angle-and I've heard from folks further travelled that out on the ocean you gotta have sea-legs.

But this sickness, this fear in the pit of my stomach ain't got nothing to do with the pitch of the waves. Even the masked things swim away, hang back, still grinning.

The low blue lights are too soft to make anything out. They throw shadows like a toddler throws toys. Some bulbs blink; some don't; all are attached to all manner of high-end technical Hyperion this-and-thats. This is, after all, a spaceship, one with just enough power to break Pandora's atmosphere and reach one of Jack's H-stations in orbit. Where would a spaceship be without its blinking lights?

But this one don't just house lights, but a shadow play also. Here comes the hero (am not!) seeking his maiden fair (is not!) and now's the time to tell: will there be a happy ending, or is today's performance a tragedy?

Robot leg's loud as shit on the floor. No blood or gore here, but cold coffee stains and playing cards, that's a different matter. Had to guess, whole crew ran like hell soon as they heard Breeg . Dumbasses should have flown the coop 'stead of taking arms to repel the invaders. Way the hangar floor's decorated with burning body parts you can guess how well that went.

But.

They left something behind.

Seats for the pilot and co-pilot up front. Benches with double-breasted seat-straps to hold personnel in place. 8005's a multi-purpose transport unit, taking people and cargo wherever they need to be. Usual assortment of crates stacked to the sides, magnetic security deployed to hold 'em fast during take off. Open one of the small ones just to keep my hands busy as I steadfastly ignore the damned elephant in the room. Credits, weapons, grenades inside.

But who gives a shit about that?

'Cause it's the size of a coffin, the elephant, a gleaming white trunk 'bout seven feet long with a fancy sliding mechanism makes the thing open like a flower. The switches on the side, the monitor, read-out-none of it makes any sense.

But the contents label, that blue strip of alphanumerics containing almost too many letter Ms . . .

I know that one, just as I know which catches will make this flower bloom in the dark.

Hiss of gas escaping, and the whole room lights up bright as a flashbang. See her face peaceful and at ease, just before comes to, whooping for air, and with a hacking cough throws up all over my shoes.

Pale blue eyes and hair the colour of straw.

"Easy now. Easy there."

Mouth opens. Closes. Eyes dart, and then she's trying to burrow through the walls of the stasis pod. Somehow these things look even more menacing when laid out like this, with a person in 'em. You'd think they'd be worse when attached to some hulking Loader firing laserbeams at your head. Looking back it seems almost comical, whereas this thing's so innocuous, it's horrifying.

Reach over, try to help her out.

She shies away like I was trying to grab her throat. "Nuh . . ." she says, voice thick, disoriented. "You . . . you get the hell away."

"Maggie May, it's me! Good ol' D.P."

But she keeps slapping my hands, keeps scrabbling at the pristine and unforgiving interior of her coffin, and the lights keep on blinking and the boom of distant destruction keeps on booming, and it's not 'til I grab her wrists and pull her into my arms that she quietens, still shaking, crying as best as she can.