Jim's lungs were burning and his mind was racing. He knew that Aisha was right- Melfina would never give out any information to the pirates that she knew could be used against the Outlaw Star- at least as long as she had a say in the matter. In fact, Melfina didn't even look like she was awake, just like when Gwen Khan used a command code to suspend her personality functions. But there was a code phrase that restored it, also. He knew it- he was there when Melfina was reactivated. If these pirates had used the same code to shut her down, then maybe he could reactivate Mel. But only if he remembered the code. Something about an early meal and silverware.
"Melfina" Jim yelled out in desperation "Breakfast is served with a silver spoon!"
Through the monitor, they saw that Melfina's eyes were now open and her personality functions were re-activated.
"Wh....where am I?" she asked quietly. Within a few seconds, Mel had answered her own question by sifting through the pirate ship's database.
"NO!" a horrified Lan yelled. This was the worst case scenario. If she regained her personality functions while in the Necromancer's control tube, there's no telling what kind of damage she could inflict. How could the Outlaws possibly know that command code? Khali should've killed them all while she had the chance.
"Mel....." Gene gasped. The bio-android's eyes widened in terror as she saw thought the screen her savior, protector and beloved drawing his final breath.
"Leiline Project command: It was you who br-" Lan started to speak up. He was interrupted by the deafening screech of feedback from the ship's speaker consoles. She was doing her best to mimic the noise that greeted them when they first entered the galactic Leiline by using the Necromancer's internal communication systems. Melfina had wasted no time in sabotaging the ship's other systems and cast an uncharacteristically hateful gaze at the pirate who kidnaped her. He had passed up the opportunity to rape or physically molest her- at least for the time being. But going through her intimate and personal thoughts like that was much worse. She felt even more violated.
"WHAT'S HAPPENING? THAT NOISE- WHAT IS IT?" Khali screamed as she was doubled over in agony, her hands unsuccessfully trying to block out the high-pitched noise.
Melfina turned her attention to the Outlaw Star. Aisha was quietly moaning in agony, since her ears could pick up the noise Mel had created almost as well as anybody on the pirate ship. Sensing this, she filtered out the noise and spoke.
"Gene, Jim. You should have control of the Outlaw Star's life-support, communications, propulsion and weapons systems now. I'm working on bringing Gillium back on line."
"Melfina?" Gene asked, still dazed from the lack of air. His Sleeping beauty was awake and very much in control now. Was this some sort of hallucination in his final moments? He inhaled deeply and realized he wasn't dreaming up anything as the oxygen hit his lungs.
"Once Gillium's back on line, I'll cut the anchors. Don't hold back...." the bio-android said.
"Mel- what are you....?" Aisha asked quietly. None of them liked the sound of what she was saying.
"The pirate ship is defenseless for now, but you'll have to hit it with everything you've got after I bring back Gillium. Don't give them another chance to kill you."
"There's no way in hell we're leaving without you, Melfina." Gene said. Jim and Aisha in particular nodded their heads emphatically in agreement.
"It's too risky!" Melfina warned. However, she knew it was futile to try and talk Gene out of something once he set his mind to it. From what she saw through the monitor, Suzuka and Aisha were getting ready to join him.
"I'll see you in a few minutes Mel." Gene said with his usual bravado. "Jim! End transmission!"
The screen went blank.
**
"No sense in broadcasting our plans to the enemy." Gene said to the others. "Jim, what's the ships weapons status?"
"Looking pretty good. Full compliment of missiles, lasers are still 87% charged, the grappler arms have the straight razor and flail.....and get this; would you believe that Fred was nice enough to include one of Izhmash's new 25mm ass-kickers as part of our inventory?"
"Really? How many clips?"
"Five twenty-round clips."
"I guess nothing's too good for the Luo Enterprises' unofficial pack-mules....." Gene pondered
"Yeah, especially when we're supposed to be hauling dragonite around."
Gene had forgotten all about the dragonite, but it didn't matter to him. All that mattered now was getting Melfina back. Getting her back and never letting her out of his sight again. Amazing how his priorities had changed since meeting Melfina. He absently slid a #7 shell into his Caster.
"Jim- get ready to move in and fire the assault bolt. We're going in." He slammed the breech of his Caster shut. Suzuka sheathed her bokken and Aisha eagerly cracked her knuckles.
"What's the plan Gene?"
"Walk on in and make them wish they'd never been born."
**
Daro stormed onto the bridge, covering his ears. The deafening, screeching noise was emanating throughout the whole ship. It had to be the bioandroid that was doing this, there was no other explanation. His beautiful sister was writhing in agony on the floor. This was too much for him to stand. First the Ctarl Ctarl that was with the outlaws scalded her lovely face and now the bioandroid had reduced her to a whimpering, helpless heap on the floor. Incompetents like Lan deserved to wallow on the ground like that, but not his precious, delicate sister.
The bioandroid was now wide awake and looking at Daro from the control tube. Something was different about her. She was completely unafraid. However, Daro was now operating on pure rage, and the shrieking noise that was emanating through the ship was no louder than a gnat buzzing across a room as far as he was concerned. He took a step towards Melfina's tube.
"If you come any closer, I'll blow all of the hatches off of this ship!" Melfina cautioned
The mute pirate didn't take her threat seriously.
"Do you think I'm bluffing? You were going to use me to do the same thing to my friends." Melfina didn't actually remember being given the instructions, yet there were still traces of the commands in her memory from when her personality functions were suspended. Daro knew that she wasn't bluffing because it occurred to him that she could open all of the hatches and airlocks long enough for the whole crew to get sucked out into space, and she wouldn't even need to breathe while she was in the tube- it was self-sustaining. There was only one way to remedy that, Daro thought. He picked up a heavy chair and threw it at the tube. Melfina flinched as the chair bounced off of her tube and left behind an intricate spiderweb of cracks on the glass. As the chair impacted with the glass, the noise Melfina had created suddenly stopped and the bridge was filled with the metallic clattering of the chair hitting the floor. There was a deafening silence on the bridge. Lan and Khali looked at each other in bewilderment, their ears ringing as Daro and Melfina simply continued glaring at each other. Melfina now focused her energy on purging the pirate's virus from Gillium's system.
The mute pirate went over to where the chair had fallen, and as he was getting ready to pick it up and throw it again, the whole ship rocked.
**
"Assault bolt in place!" Jim confirmed.
There was a quiet high-pitched whirring as one of the pink Gillium-cans slid along its rail and into the cockpit.
"Oh my." It declared, surveying the scene inside the bridge. "How long have I been offline?"
"Long enough." Jim said.
"Where is Melfina?" it asked.
"She'll be here soon enough." Suzuka spoke up.
"All right then Jim. We're going over!" Gene said.
"You Terrans talk way too much. Let's get going already!" Aisha said, cracking her knuckles and brimming over with her usual confidence. "Look after everything while we're away, will ya Jimmy?" the Ctarl Ctarl asked as she looked behind her and waved good-bye to Jim over her shoulder. She looked as casual and relaxed as if she were going out for groceries while heading down the corridor leading to the umbilicus with Suzuka.
"Don't I always?" he smiled back at her.
"One more thing Jim, Gillium" Gene spoke up before joining them. "If the pirates are able to launch their fighters, hit 'em with everything we've got. We'll be back soon."
"You got it..." Jim said, giving him the thumbs-up.
**
Daro glared at Melfina and decided he didn't need the chair to smash open the tube. He strode purposefully towards the tube containing the bio-android.
"What do we do now?" Khali asked Lan rather loudly, both of their ears still ringing from the noise.
"She's not going to blow the hatches now, not with her friends on board." Lan spoke up.
"Lan, prep one of the suits, take some men and get ready to greet our guests!" she said as the thin pirate took his leave. "Get her out of there!" Khali angrily hissed at her brother.
Daro didn't need any prompting from her. His fist smashed through the tube and his arm wrapped around the protesting bioandroid as he none-too-gently dragged her out of the tube. The broken glass cut and sliced away at Melfina's mid-section as he pulled her out.
"If nothing else, we still have our bargaining chip."
**
"How quaint." Suzuka commented on the interior of the Necromancer as she stepped out of the assault bolt. They were in one of the ship's dimly lit and cavernous loading bays. Two pirates inside the bay were startled by their presence, but Suzuka made quick work of them with her sword.
"Where do we go from here?" Aisha asked
"I'm not sure." Gene said "Can you get Mel's scent?"
The Ctarl Ctarl shook her head "no" after sniffing the air for a moment.
"Then we'll just have to stop and ask for directions." he said, approaching one of the pirates that Suzuka had knocked down. The pirate was slowly trying to get back on his feet. After getting a closer look, none of them recognized the pirates as the ones they saw in Anaconda. These looked more like lower-echelon worker pirates. Gene roughly grabbed him.
"How do we get to the bridge?" he demanded.
"Go to hell.....I'm not saying......." the pirate started to say, but he was interrupted by a burst of machine gun fire and bullets clanging off the wall. Gene, Suzuka and Aisha scattered as Lan tried picking them off one by one with the machine gun on his mechanized suit. It was the exact same design as the ones that attempted to recapture the XGP on Sentinel-3. Behind the outlaws, a dozen of the Kei pirate ninjas were approaching. The worker pirate had fallen next to Aisha, but he didn't stay on the ground for very long. Aisha picked him up over her head and like a barrel, tossed him towards the approaching ninjas. About ten of them went down in a heap. Bullets from Lan's suit flew around her head like angry hornets, but dodged the gunfire and dove behind the relative safety of a shuttlecraft that was being kept under a tarp.
Suzuka noticed chain attached to a winch that was secured to a sliding metal door leading into the cargo bay. As Lan was busy firing at the Ctarl Ctarl, Suzuka stood up and used one of her secret techniques on the chain that held the door in place from several yards away. There was a short but strong gust of wind from the assassin's sword as the winch began spinning on it's own and the door slid down. Before it could close completely, two of the ninjas had stood underneath it and was trying to keep it open long enough for the other pirates to slip inside. Suzuka thought she'd have to close in and take care of this problem herself, but Gene took care of that when he stood up and fired a #19 shell from his Caster. It hit one of the Kei ninjas and he flew backwards in a brilliant blue-white explosion which was partially obscured from them as the door slid down further. But the other ninja had still managed to keep the door from closing completely. Gene put his Caster on the floor and drew his traditional pistol before emptying the entire clip into the ninja. A blackish-red ichor spurted from the bullet holes and the ninja collapsed as the door slammed shut. The Outlaw stood up long enough for Lan to line him up in the sights, but the mechanical whirring of the sighting device tipped Gene off. He was able to activate his light shield as Lan fired another burst.. The bullets were stopped by the thin layer of white light, and Gene scooped up his Caster as he dove for cover.
"Shit!" Lan whispered. It was just him and the suit against the Outlaws. The odds were pretty even, but pirates detested a fair fight.
**
"Systems check, Gillium." Jim asked, mostly to occupy his time during the waiting game.
"All systems functioning normally"
"Any activity from the pirate ship?"
"I am unable to determine at this time."
Jim wrung his hands and sighed. He knew that this was the calm before an even bigger storm and for the time being, he was on his own.
**
Lan tried tracking the three of them with the mecha's sighting device, but that wasn't working- not on all three of them. He realized that the lumbering mecha wasn't suited for close-quarter combat. He figured his best bet was to fire a volley of grenades behind the crates he saw the Outlaw run behind. Before he could fire, he heard what sounded like footsteps on top of the suit.
"SHIT!" he yelled out as a wooden blade sliced through the top of the suit, narrowly missing him.
Suzuka pried the hatch off of the suit and locked the pirate in her cold, steely gaze.
"Paguwa-sun-ba!" Lan yelled out in desperation while trying to stand up as much as the interior of the suit would allow him. A ball of blue-green lightning shot from his palm. Suzuka easily dodged it, landing gracefully on top of a nearby stack of crates.
The suit's weapons systems were still functioning normally, so Lan tried lining up Suzuka in his sights. Before he could get a lock on her, Lan felt the suit shake and rattle. Beneath him, Aisha wrapped her arms around the mecha's right leg and was lifting and pushing with all of her strength. Within a few seconds, the suit started to topple and fall backwards. Before Lan could correct the suit and take care of Aisha, the suit shuddered again and there was a bright, blinding flash. Gene had shot out the eyepiece of the suit with a #16 shell from his Caster, one of the older ones he obtained from Hasek. As the giant suit hit the floor, Lan was thrown clear of the hatch. He rubbed his head and as he looked up, he found himself looking down the barrel of Gene's Caster. Behind him, Suzuka leapt down from the stack of crates and Aisha was climbing over the fallen mecha suit that was blocking her path. He was surrounded.
"You have three seconds to tell us where Melfina is...." Gene said. "One....two......"
**
"Oh my...." Gillium said, as close to sounding dismayed as his programming would allow
"What is it Gil?" the boy genius asked.
"It may be nothing but.....the connection Melfina has established with us from the pirate ship has now been terminated."
Jim climbed into the pilot's chair and put on the eyepiece that Gene used for grappler combat. There was a look of concern on his face.
"OK Gillium. You're going to have to walk me through this."
"Certainly, Jim. What is it you need to do?"
"I want to cut the anchors coming from the pirate ship."
"I see..." the computer automatically selected the straight-razor from the ship's grappler combat arsenal and tried feeding the best possible view from the camera pods to the eyepiece. "One clean move should be sufficient."
Jim grabbed the control lever and slowly moved the arm with the straight-razor back and forth, getting the feel of maneuvering it. Then he slashed it sideways, severing the cables from the Necromancer's assault anchors that had attached themselves to the Outlaw Star in one clean move. Now he could see why Gene enjoyed this so much.
***
Gene roughly shoved Lan through the doorway and onto the pitch-black bridge. The outlaw had been in enough of these scrapes to know that they were walking into a trap. Better to have the pirate go first, he thought to himself. Almost as soon as he thought that, Gene felt something fly across the bridge, narrowly missing him and hitting the pirate. As his eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, he saw that Lan was clutching his throat, with the hilt of a knife sticking out. Blood trickled from the wound and he collapsed on the floor, dead. Instinctively, Gene pulled a grenade from his overcoat and threw it in the direction where the knife came from.
"Cover your eyes." he quietly warned Suzuka and Aisha a split-second before the grenade went off. It wasn't a fragmentary or concussion grenade, but a phosphorous grenade that burned a bright light and could flush out any enemies that were hiding in the shadows. As the grenade detonated and burned a bright blue-white light, the trio saw Daro step back, holding Melfina out in front of him. There was a series of scratches and cuts across her naked body.
"Congratulations, you just killed your own man." Gene said.
"So be it. Lan outlived his usefulness to us ten minutes ago." a voice above them spoke up.
Aisha looked up just in time to see Khali jump down from the rafters above the bridge and land almost on top of her and knocking her slightly off balance. As Aisha was trying to recover, Khali had a dagger in each hand and was simultaneously trying to sink them into each of Aisha's ears using a sweeping thrust with both hands- she knew the ears were one of the few weak spots of the Ctarl Ctarl. The piratess smiled triumphantly until she saw that Aisha had blocked her thrust by keeping her forearms rigid on each side in front of her. Each blade stopped just shy of the inside of the cat-girl's pointy ears. The two of them glared at each other...
"You managed to mask your scent. Not bad.......!" Aisha said, almost as if this were a game to her. She inhaled and hissed softly as Khali was trying to summon just a little more strength to sink the daggers home into her ears.
"........but not good enough!" She growled, getting in the last word and letting the piratess know she was now deadly serious. The Ctarl Ctarl rammed her forehead into Khali's face with surprising ferocity and the piratess let out a startled groan as she dropped both knives and her hands flew to her face instinctively. Blood was now gushing through Khali's fingers as Aisha kept her close and roughly kneed her in the stomach. "The problem is, your stink is all over this ship." Aisha informed the piratess as she dropped to the floor.
Daro tightened his grip on Melfina. He was close to choking her. Suzuka and Aisha looked at the two of them and then at Khali, who was semi-conscious at their feet.
You and your collection, big brother the two remembered overhearing Khali saying to him. Ordinarily, a proud Ctarl Ctarl or disciplined assassin would never resort to taking a hostage, but in Khali's case they would gladly make an exception. Aisha roughly picked up the Tao-mistress by the scruff of her neck as Suzuka held the blade of her bokken against Khali's throat.
"I propose a simple trade." the assassin said to Khali's brother. The pirate slightly loosened his grip on Melfina. "Your sister for our navigator."
**
"Warning!" Gillium spoke up "Enemy vessel is launching cub-fighters- count, many."
Prior to that rude awakening, Jim was sitting in the pilot's chair and idly daydreaming about flying the ship wherever he wanted to and fighting off all sorts of vicious pirates, mercenaries and Outlaws.
"Ah, shit!" he yelped "....uhhh OK. Gillium, bring up the 25mm cannon."
The right grappler arm produced a machine pistol about the size of a small automobile that was stowed in the underbelly of the ship. Already, nearly a half-dozen ships were emerging . Jim pulled the trigger on the grappler arm, and the initial burst of shots went well to the right of the Necromancer. The enemy fighters continued advancing as Jim adjusted. Another burst of fire and one of the cub fighters exploded. Jim emptied out the cannon just as there was an explosion from the tube where the fighters had emerged- one of the cannon's High Explosive rounds had found it's mark. The boy genius correctly assumed that the Necromancer would be unable launch any more fighters, but he didn't have time to celebrate. There were still four more fighters heading his way, and he couldn't budge an inch without severing the assault bolt and leaving the others stranded on the pirate ship.
"Gillium, Fire missiles!"
A volley of missiles flew from the Outlaw Star. The cub fighters tried turning at the last second to avoid them, but it was too late. They were each destroyed in a series of explosions.
"Damn it! That was close." the boy genius said after wiping his brow "How does Gene do it?" he wondered out loud.
"Easily- just ask anybody here." the Outlaw bragged. While Jim was busy trying to figure out how to fight off the cub fighters, Gene, Suzuka, and Aisha had returned from the Necromancer and brought Mel with them. She was wrapped up in Gene's cloak and looked somewhat disheveled.
"Mel! Welcome back!" Jim said as his eyes lit up.
"It's good to be back, but I still have work to do." She replied in an uncharacteristically businesslike tone as the tube popped up from the floor with a mechanical whooshing. The bio-android shed Gene's cloak and the boy genius' facial expression changed to great concern when he saw the scars zig-zagging along her midsection. Suzuka and Aisha returned to their station on the port and starboard side of the ship while Melfina stepped into the tube and reappeared suspended in the translucent gel behind all of them.
Immediately, diagrams of the Necromancer appeared on the viewscreens in throughout the ship. Certain areas of the ship were outlined with a red circle.
"These are the weak spots on the pirate ship- what's our armament status?" she asked.
"We have the pistol, most of our missiles and the laser cannon." Gene said as he gently ushered Jim out of the pilot's seat and brought up the weapons inventory on screen.
"What type of munitions for the grappler pistol?"
"Regular jacket, armor piercing and high explosive."
Melfina brought up an enlarged section of the Necromancer's schematic on Gene's monitor. "The armor is thinner over here- a single high-explosive round could set off a series of chain reaction explosions throughout the ship. We need to do it before they're able to get their weapons back online." Despite the extensive damage she wrought on the pirate ship from inside, it was only temporary.
"But..." Jim started to say "only one out of every fourth round in each clip is high-explosive." he said. He was the one who oversaw the loading of the munitions before leaving Heiphong.
"One way around that...." Gene said. The grappler arm shot out and leveled towards the area of the Necromancer that Mel had highlighted and Gene lined it up through his eyepiece before pressing a button. The grappler's pistol emptied it's entire clip in no more than five seconds. For a moment, it appeared as though nothing had happened.
"GENE!" Jim yelled "You idiot! Do you have any idea how much those things cost...."
He was interrupted by a large, brilliant orange-white flash as the pirate vessel exploded, sending debris in nearly every direction.
Gene grinned triumphantly and looked at Jim. The boy was awestruck at what a few well placed shots from a small grappler ship could do to a seemingly invincible ship like the Necromancer.
"Now that's what I call money well spent!" the red-haired outlaw said.
**
He did the math over and over in his head. There were slight variations on his original estimates each time he tried adding it all up. Weapons, fuel, food, supplies- yet hardly anything set aside for the creature comforts. Now matter how many times he added, multiplied, subtracted and carried the four, each new total he came up with led him to the exact same inescapable conclusion.
Jim sighed "Damn it! This whole trip has been a waste."
"I wouldn't go so far as to say that." Suzuka spoke up.
"Ngyaa..?" Aisha asked with a bewildered look on her face. She was about to ask Suzuka why, but she had the feeling an explanation was forthcoming. At this point, all eyes were fixed on the assassin as she was letting her hair down. The cliche about her looking like another person held true- this was the first time Gene saw her like this since yanking off her sash and unraveling her kimono during their duel outside of Hugo. She looked even more beautiful and a lot less standoff-ish and tense with her hair down. None of them immediately noticed the vial of dragonite that was previously wrapped up in a red cloth and holding up her hair. She rattled the vial of unrefined dragonite ore to get their attention.
"I estimate that this trip has paid for itself. All Fred Luo wanted was an evaluation of the property he came into possession of, which I'm certain you're more than willing to give him. There's no reason he has to know about this, is there?"
Simultaneously, everybody on the bridge shook their head "no".
**
Dinner for all of them consisted of lukewarm reheated emergency rations as they reached the halfway mark of their return course to the Heiphong system. It was tempting to go ahead and splurge on some fancy meals now that they had brought back some precious minerals, but for the time-being they had to make do with what they had. Gene and Suzuka ate their dinner in relative silence as Aisha regaled Jim with a blow-by-blow account of her heroics while on board the Necromancer. Jim feigned disinterest and skepticism at first, but before he had finished his dinner, he was hanging on her every word. If Aisha would pause for so much as five seconds to chew and swallow, Jim would try and prod her into continuing by asking "....and then what?". As she headed into her room, the bioandroid couldn't help but admire and perhaps envy the rapport the brash and vain cat-girl had built up with the boy genius. Melfina stood in front of the full-length mirror and lifted up her blouse. The cuts from being forcibly dragged out of the tube was healing nicely, but there would inevitably be some scarring. There were a few knicks and scrapes along her waist and back, and there were several smaller cuts on her right arm and neck. However, the one that had her attention was a long, slender gash that ran from just below her right breast to her belly-button. She realized that would probably never go away.
"Knock knock." Gene said, the door to Mel's room barely slowing him down.
Ordinarily, she would've lowered the blouse and maybe blushed a little. As much as she loved and admired Gene, she was still a little intimidated by him. However, that seemed to diminish with each passing day. Instead she continued holding it up and checking over her wounds. It's not like she wasn't wearing any underwear beneath her skirt and blouse. Even if she wasn't, it was nothing Gene or the others hadn't seen before.
"Are you OK Mel?" he asked.
The bio-android smiled at him. "I'm fine- want to compare battle scars?" she asked somewhat sarcastically, showing him the long cut on her belly with pride.
Gene couldn't help but chuckle. "You're off to a good start," he said "but you've still got quite a ways to go if you wanna match my collection."
There was a long silence as the two of them looked into each other's eyes. It was so hard to believe that the beautiful and increasingly self-confident young woman standing before him and the frightened, almost pathetic bio-android born in a suitcase on some desolate farm in Sentinel were the same person. Gene had stopped thinking of her as a bio-android a long time ago- he realized this as he pulled her close and kissed her. Then the two of them found themselves on Melfina's bed- not on top one another, but laying right next to each other. Gene was keeping his lecherous twenty-something instincts in check for the moment. That horrible thought Melfina had while being held on the Necromancer- that Gene and the others weren't real and her whole existence was a lie- was breaking to the surface of her consciousness again, but it wasn't as overpowering as before. If her life was merely some sort of fabrication, than she was going to make the most of it while it lasted. Gene didn't know what to say or what was on Melfina's mind- he could only sense that something was bothering her and looked at her with a bewildered expression as she wrapped her arms around him.
"If this is a dream.....please, let me enjoy it a little longer." she murmured to nobody in particular as she drifted off to sleep in Gene's arms.
It wasn't a dream. For better or worse, it was her reality.
THE END