As always, translations for the few Titan/Spanish/Slang terms are at the end of this chapter.
With every gun at his head
He never fears his own death
Can't break a man
Already broken.
~Karliene "Already Broken"
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Brief History of Violence
NEW LEHI, FOUR YEARS AGO
"I get tres perdurable mans," said Ursan Dorj. The pale, hulking Titan native held a scanner at arm's length, sweeping it before him at the warehouse's gray exterior. At least, it seemed gray in the night's darkness, lit only by a spluttering light above door's alcove.
"What the fuck does that mean?" snarled Greg. "I don't speak Titan."
"Yeah," chimed in Tessa. "English, Ursan, not that Titey-Whitey bullshit."
"My vocabs est buono. Est tu qui non vocab adroit."
Elda, the team's only Balmeran and ever the diplomat, cut in, "He said there are three robot sentries."
Greg leaned over Lance, who was crouched in the alcove, hacking into the building's door lock. His elbow nudged Lance's shoulder, hard. "Bullshit, am I right, Lancey boy? 'Perdal' ain't a word."
Lance repressed a sigh and kept struggling with the lock. Hacking wasn't his thing; but as the resident "smart guy" on the team, he got stuck with the task. "'Perdurable' is a word in English. It means 'enduring' and 'imperishable.'"
"I knew that. You think I don't know that?" Greg jabbed Lance in the ribs, hard enough to bruise if he hadn't been wearing a tacsuit.
Lance, knowing he shouldn't take the bait—Greg Helguson's stupid, one-sided rivalry with Lance was only getting more violent—straightened, shoved his tac goggles up off his face and glared down at the man. Greg was several inches shorter than Lance, but had the advantage of muscle mass and was unburdened by the weight of sanity.
"Oh, here were go," muttered Soren, a skinny Altean. "Not now, gentlemen."
Greg's close-shorn blond hair and ritual chin scars added to his stupid pugnacious aspect. "What are you staring at, pretty boy?"
Lance shoved the goggles back down over his eyes. "A big nothin', according to my HUD."
"Nothin'?" Greg lifted his bayard, shoving the business end against Lance's temple. "Is this nothin', huh?"
"You're getting cranky, cabrón. Maybe you need a nap."
Greg flicked his thumb over the weapon and Lance heard the high-pitched whine of the blaster priming. "I'll give you a nap, forever."
"Witty repartee isn't your thing, is it?" observed Lance.
Greg's pale gray eyes jittered from a mix of toxic stupidity, lunacy and no doubt some kind of narcotic. ChemLore scraped the bottom of the merc barrel to dreg up this idiot. Worse yet, he was the team's medic.
Tessa stepped in between them. "Stow this bilge! We're on a job. You two lassies, do the bromance later."
Greg turned on Tessa. "You taking the dirt monkey's side?" he asked using the Martian and Titan derogative for Earther. "Why? You two bumpin' uglies?" His long, unrequited lust affair with Tessa was expressed, at least once a day, by accusing her of bumping uglies with Lance.
Pointedly ignoring the conversation, Lance went back to work on the door.
"No, you idiot, we're not," she snarled at Greg. "The only side I take is the one that drops molto Mammon in my account. I'll sell the both your skulls for the right payday."
"Ah, it's good to be loved," muttered Lance as he stood, the door sliding open with a breathy sigh.
"You buono mans, McClain," said Ursan happily, slapping Lance on the back, and then raising his bayard and immediately edging into the building, taking point. With a final glare at Lance, Greg followed, then Tessa. Soren, a sardonic smirk on his long Altean face, gave a Lance an "After you" gesture, and Lance stowed his datapen, and pulled his bayard from its holster.
Compared to a Voltron bayard, the bayards that flooded the market after the Galran defeat were toys that mimicked the real thing's ability to transform into the ideal weapon for the situation. But walking up to an arms dealer and asking for the "Cheap, knock-off-not-bayard" got Lance, at the very least, dirty looks, so "bayard" it was.
He entered the dark hallway, night vision amping automatically on the goggles. Ahead, Tessa moved with surgical precision, her tacsuit and natural stealth making each footfall silent. Despite himself, he panned a long look up and down her athletic form. It was a nice view even in false light.
Tessa hadn't lied to Greg, not precisely. "We've not 'bumpin' uglies,'" she had pronounced huskily after an especially vigorous bout of ugly bumping with Lance, "We're fucking."
It was an apt description of a relationship that was all lust, and not much like. It was evident that Tessa, though human, bore a superficial resemblance to Allura. She had the same willowy grace, with skin several shades darker than Lance's, and sandy brown hair that was a mélange of dye jobs, blue, gray, and white, intermingled with sandy brown. The resemblance, however, was only skin deep. Tessa Guard's favorite hobbies were breaking the law and making things bleed.
Reaching the end of the long hallway, Ursan halted and Lance moved up to stand at his side, datapen out and studying a schematic.
"Onde em tesore?" said Ursan. Behind them, Greg and Tessa grumbled.
"Through this door, then down two levels," said Lance. Then, to irk Greg and Tessa, added, "Passe etta porta, then doe etage abaixo."
They were in a seedier district of New Lehi, Europa. (They were always in the seedier district of somewhere.) The warehouse was owned by Corvin Industries, an air and spacecraft manufacturer that had recently diversified into agricultural biotechnology. "Diversified," as of late, was corporate lingo for steal another company's idea and run with it.
Lance and his team were in the business of stealing back stolen tech. Or at least, that was the justification for all the breaking and entering he'd been doing the past four years. Lance knew that he was enabling as much intellectual property theft as he was rectifying. An endless fucking circle jerk.
ChemLore's eagerness to get him educated had been far from benevolent. In him, they saw yet another reckless young man, damaged, but not too damaged, by combat, who came preloaded with military training and just needed an education upgrade to be truly useful.
But the work paid troppo Mammon, money he was using to pay off the last of the debt on his family's farm. Money that also went into repairing broken machinery, upgrading water and fertilizer delivery systems and regular maintenance. If this job went down right, his parents could finally be out from under Banco Cubano's heel.
If this job went down right, it would be his last. No more thieving; no more of the ancillary violence that frequently came with thieving. He'd already told Stephen, the team's handler, that he was out after tonight. Stephen had grumbled something about his superiors not liking this, but whatever, Lance was out.
As this was the ass-end of the solar system, Corvin assumed that the warehouse's official, stated use as surplus and decommissioned parts storage wouldn't be worth much examination. The building was secured by the standard locking systems and a few lethal robot sentries. Sending in his team of mercs was overkill.
They moved through the building, meeting no resistance, the only sounds their footfalls, and persistent drone of the building's mechanical systems. The tell, as Lance saw it, that something more valuable than old hopper parts lived here, was the level of cleanliness. Otherwise, it was like any other industrial building.
Reaching the laboratory where the target was stored, Lance synched the datapen with the door, and hope the stolen codes worked. He really wasn't a hacker. Not for the first time, he wished his old friend Pidge were there. Then again, she probably wasn't his friend anymore, and would find his line of work, at best, ethically challenged.
The pen's display whirled as it synched. Lance's mind went to those days at Galaxy Garrison, when it was just the three of them—him, Pidge and Hunk. When combat and war were fun fantasies, like a video game. Before they learned it was blood and piss and shit.
The door opened, and after the usual scans, they entered. The lights hummed on and Lance marched up to the fridge where the Firasid, a potent ChemLore biocide, was stored. The stolen codes for the fridge locks did their thing, and Lance opened the door.
He could see there was a problem immediately. "Is this a joke?"
"What?" Soren peered over his shoulder.
"Home brewing supplies," said Lance flatly.
"How can you tell?" asked Tessa.
"Because," Lance pointed at one box, "it says so on the box. 'Premium homebrew grains and malts.'"
"Mayhap decoy," said Ursan.
"Nah, I don't think so." Lance tapped his bayard into knife mode and sliced open the box, then another, and another. The bready smell of grains began to waft around the room. "Someone's fucking with us."
"Now what?" said Tessa.
"Yeah, now what? I did all this shite work for nothing?" grumbled Greg.
Work? Treading water in the shallow end of the gene pool isn't work. Lance held his snarky comment, his mind whirling. Everyone was looking at him, as usual, because he'd somehow become the designated brains of the operation. Pidge would laugh her ass off at that.
"We have an hour and a half before the security system does a reset. The Firasid, if it's here, is probably on this level or the one above. There are only five rooms above, and eight on this level, including lavatories and offices." He hoped the Firasid, if here at all, wasn't on the first level which had at least ten rooms and the sentry bots that they had managed to avoid. Waking the bots would set off alarms and soon they'd be ass deep in human guards and Varge hounds.
"I'll upload the sec codes to everyone's pens along with an image of roughly what we're looking for." He looked around the room. "If anyone finds something promising call me, and I'll confirm. Got it?"
"Righto, sensei," said Ursan, clapping him on the back and heading for the door. "I take etage pracima."
"Soren," said Lance, nodding his head, indicating the Altean go with Ursan. "Elda and I will take the first four rooms on this level. You and Greg can do the next," he said to Tessa.
Lance was stepping out into the hallway, when a door at the far end of the hall opened. Two figures emerged and opened fire. He got a glimpse of extra arms on the figures, then hot blasts tore into the wall. The team immediately returned fire, dropping one shooter. The other retreated into the room.
Lance opened his mouth to state the obvious—Get the bastard!—but scorching pain seized his left hand, crawling up his arm. He staggered, clutching, then releasing his arm, gasping in agony.
Tessa, taking immediate stock, snapped at Greg who was already halfway down the hall. "Medic, get back here, now! Soren, you and Ursan exterminate the flea."
Lance lifted his arm. Somehow, he'd taken, he guessed, at least a dozen blasts to the hand. It typically took six to cut through the suit's gloves. His pinkie clung to his hand by a few feeble tendony bits of flesh, the left side of his hand opened to the wrist, pinkish bone and scorched flesh laid bare. Where the wound didn't cauterize, blood started to drip heavily. A dozen smaller scorch marks pocked the tacsuit on his torso. Bugs used me as target practice.
Tessa stared at the wound, lip curled. Humor always a reflex, Lance quipped weakly, "Unilu pirates? Ya'll take me to the nicest places."
Greg shoved him back into the room, pulling out his kit. "Even the bugs have a boner for you," he sneered.
"Bedside manners suck," rasped Lance. "Will I still be able to play the violin, doc?"
Greg took out a syringe, snapped in a cartridge, and with no preamble jabbed it against Lance's wrist, inches from the injury and hit the autoplunger. Lance hissed in pain and then subsided as the agony receded. Though he was otherwise an idiot, Greg was a competent medic, and within minutes had temporary plasters applied, the damage stabilized.
In the background, came the splat, splat, splat of blaster fire.
The room, however, was getting floaty. "Was that Narvinal?" asked Lance, eyes on the med kit.
Greg giggled menacingly. "Yeah, and I cut it with Zero."
"You what?" said Tessa. "Are you insane? We need him, here, with his head screwed on right!"
"Zero-G?" said Elda, who had remained with them. "The narcotic?"
"You fucker," growled Lance, advancing on Greg.
"Calm down, pretty boy. An injury like that," Greg gestured at Lance's hand, "Narvinal won't cut it. You need the good stuff."
Tessa stepped between the men. "Let it go, boyo."
"Just lie back and enjoy the ride." Greg laughed, gathering up his gear and edging for the door. "You want us to continue with the recon?"
His senses already dulling, pain receptors retreating under the combined bludgeoning from Narvinal and Zero, Lance felt time slow. "Yeah. Stay frosty. There may be more bugs," he said, using the derogatory term for Unilu pirates. And the sentries are probably on the way…" He trailed off, eyes lifting skyward, partially because the drugs had him floaty as Hel, but also because he'd had a lightbulb moment. He made a "Go" gesture at Greg and the others.
People never look up. So, the best place to hide stuff is over their heads. "Well, hello," he said. "Elda, give me a hand." Together they moved a nearby desk to a spot before the fridge and Lance scrambled awkwardly on it. Without tac goggles, the control panel would be invisible, but the HUD's algorithms cut through the masking light bend.
It popped open easily, revealing a switch. "What does it open?" said Elda.
"I have no idea," he admitted. "Probably a portal to a dimension full of rabid kittens that will eat our faces." He flipped the switch anyway, because he was floating, and starting to lose any sense of self preservation. Something whooshed behind the fridge.
"Behind the cold device," said Elda. Lance climbed off the desk, and went through the motions of helping her moved the desk and then the fridge. She was physically stronger than him even when he had two good hands. The switch had shifted a wall panel revealing storage locker holding a second large fridge.
"Payday." Lance grinned and held his good hand up, palm out to Elda. Elda, his usual partner when the team split up, and accustomed to his silliness, slapped her enormous palm against his, a smile on her broad, green-gray face. The two were equally uncomfortable with moral ambiguity of the work, but both motivated by a commitment to family. Elda, like Lance, sent most of her pay home to family. And they genuinely liked each other.
From somewhere in the building, more blaster fire erupted. "We are not a subtle bunch, are we?" said Elda.
Lance chuckled and reached to open the fridge, but instead rested his hand on the door, head woozy. Elda laid her hand on his shoulder. "Let me."
The fridge contained two cylindrical cryo tubes, about one meter tall, and 25 centimeters in diameter. Lance flipped open the tube's control panel, and noted the settings. He attached a probe onto his datapen, and snapped it into a port on the panel. "Chem analysis says this is our target."
Elda pulled a collapsible trolley from her backpack and expanded it. Heavy footfalls fell behind them, but Lance didn't turn, assuming it was Ursan or one of the team returning. Elda did the same, her attention on lifting the tube. She set it on the trolley and turned. "Urs—"
The blaster fired just as Lance was turning. Elda, or rather Elda's head took the brunt of the fire. Lance, standing a step behind her, was hit by a barrage of heat and fleshy debris. The robot sentry fired again. Lance barely had the wits to grab what remained of his friend and use her body as a shield.
Elda's body was heavy and Lance only had one good hand. Slow, steady, metallic clunks resounded through the room as the sentry approached, still firing, rapidly shredding his shield. The smell of fried meat fill his nose and he gagged.
The only way to reach the bayard was to drop Elda. His brain addled by the damned Zero, Lance blinked, trying to pick out a rhythm in the robot's firing pattern. Now or never.
He dropped Elda, snatched up the bayard and fired. The bot got one lucky shot, grazing Lance's shoulder before Lance's response hit home, frying the bot's servo. The sentry took two more steps, sensors still humming, weapon pointed at Lance, and then stopped and flopped over sideways with a metallic clank.
Only a few seconds had passed. In an instant Elda was dead and Lance was staring at her corpse, chunks of her skull and brains splattered on his face and body. Stunned, he looked down at himself, and used the bayard to make a halfhearted attempt to scrape the gore off his other arm. A bit of something that looked like an eyeball dropped to the floor and Lance looked away, bile clotting his throat.
He'd seen death before. He'd caused it. There wasn't anything particularly different about this ending. It was simply one too many. She was my friend.
Footsteps alerted him to someone approaching and he lifted the bayard, ready. Tessa, Greg, and Soren burst in through the doorway. Lance, still shell shocked, didn't lower his weapon. Soren lifted his hands. "It's us, McClain. McClain? You alright?"
Tessa swore and stormed into the room. "Fucking bot!" She kicked the sentry and marched over to Lance. "What happened? Where's Ursan?" Lance's reply was a bleak stare.
"Hey!" She snapped a hand onto his forearm, pushing the bayard down and into a less threatening position. "Snap out of it!"
"Yeah," he muttered. "I'm fine. Help me with this." He gestured back at the tubes. Together they loaded the tubes on the trolley.
"Let's move." Tessa started for the door, just as Ursan burst in past Soren. "There est un—"
"A fucking perdurable mans." Tessa kicked the sentry and gestured at Elda's corpse. "We found it, Ursan."
Ursan swore profusely in Titan and Soren nodded in agreement. Lance stood dazed, staring down at Elda's remains. "We should…."
"She's gone, nothin' but meat." Tessa's hand on his arm was almost gentle. "More tin soldiers will be here soon. And human guards with Varge hounds. Move."
At that instant he was perversely grateful for the spiked Narvinal. Buried under the insulating layers of Zero and painkiller, Lance's psyche had collapsed into gibbering hysteria. But outwardly, he remained calm, brushing the worst of the Elda's gore off his suit and staggering after Tessa.
They encountered no resistance on the way out, fortunate because Lance's legs began to cut off contact with his brain. Ursan, recognizing he was failing, grabbed his arm, slinging it over his shoulders, and half carried him to their waiting hopper.
"I can save your hand; do a quick nerve patch. If you want it scar-free, that'll be extra. If you want complete function, that will be more too." The doc shoved a datapen, its holoscreen showing the butcher's bill, in Lance's face. The doc was an Unilu, which Lance took as clear evidence that the universe had a perverse sense of humor. Or was it irony?
If walking were now impossible, maths were more so. His addlepated brain calculated. The basic repair at an off-the-grid, chop shop like this one was cheap; they always got you with the "extras" like full functionality and scar-removal. An official ChemLore med facility wasn't happening because Lance and his team were "off the books."
With Elda dead, the team would share her cut equally. He'd planned to give all his share of Elda's cut to her family in Balmera. The "extras" would devour that money and most of what he planned to send home to Cuba. He could get the nerve work done later. The scar, well, it was just another scar.
"Just the basics," Lance said before passing out.
Thanks for reading this far! Readers are awesome! 3
Titan/Spanish/Slang Translations-
I get tres perdurable mans: I've picked up three auto sentries on scanners.
Titey-Whitey: Derogatory term for a Titan native; a reference to Titan's characteristic pale complexions.
My vocabs est buono. Est tu qui non vocab adroit.: There's nothing wrong with the way I speak. You, however, have terrible language skills.
Cabrón: Bastard.
Molto Mammon: Big money
You buono mans: You're a good man (or good people).
Onde em tesore?: Where is the treasure/target/goal?
Passe etta porta, then doe etage abaixo: Through this door, then down two levels.
Troppo Mammon: Ridiculous amounts of money. Too good to pass up.
I take etage pracima: I'll take the upper level.
Varge hound: Domestic canid derived from coyote/wolf hybrids, used as guard dogs on Titan and other colonies/stations.