Plasma rifle.
Which is mounted on my left arm so it hits the station, not the borg. And then I take a moment to aim and press it again, and this time I blow that fucker to dust!
I yell, “Fuck, yeah, motherfuckers! Come get me!” like the badass I imagined myself to be.
Except they do come get me. And there are four of them, but they don’t have weapons mounted to their bodies, just random tools for repair work, so this actually works out for me. Because I pick all four of them off with plasma in a matter of seconds.
“Ha!” I yell. Then laugh a little, because holy shit, this stupid plan fucking worked.
I am right up next to Lair Station and FlingBot is tugging me along towards the nearest airlock. Which doesn’t even have a code to anything on the keypad to cycle through, just a big green button that says OPEN.
I hit the button, clamber inside, then hit the one on the inside that says LOCK, and the door begins to close just as my exoskeleton boots magnetically attach to the floor.
“We did it!” I say, hunching down a little as I turn—because my three-meter tall exoskeleton is actually too big for this space—and spy another borg peering at me through the airlock window.
“Shit,” I say. Because this one does have a weapon.
I can’t fire on him because the airlock is still doing its thing. Saving grace is that he can’t fire on me either. So there are ten whole seconds of us staring each other down as we wait for the other side of the airlock to open.
Long story short. I am a motherfucking badass. This Xyla suit is top fucking notch. Not only does it automatically target any weapon pointed in my direction, it actually makes a calculated decision on which weapon to use in retaliation.
So basically I stand inside the suit and let it do its thing until the borg is just a little pile of used-up metal and smoking guts.
FlingBot begins chirping like crazy and heads off down a hallway. I unhook the tether from my end, which is probably a bad idea because now it’s clanging along behind him on the metal floor, pretty much announcing our arrival.
“Stop,” I hiss through the comms. He does. I remove my helmet, attach it to the clip on my back, and take a moment to unhook the tether from the bot and stuff it in a cargo pocket on the side of my thigh.
My heart is racing at this point. Like hammering inside my chest. “What happened to Dicker?” I ask the bot.
Which is dumb, because I can’t understand him. I have no access to my wristband to activate a translator.
But he chips in low tones and I’m not sure if he’s doing that to be stealthy or if he’s doing that because Dicker is dead. Blown to bits.
Which is both sad and unfortunate in more ways than I can articulate right now.
“OK,” I say. “Whatever happened to her, we’re here and we have to see this through. We might need to steal a ship. But… first. Let’s just find our people.”
I think FlingBot agrees because his chirps change tone and his little round body spins as he hovers off.
The magnetic boots aren’t magnetic anymore because there’s a grav drive inside the station, and I’m surprisingly quiet as I follow him down the hallway.
We get to an intersection and stop. Then FlingBot goes left.
At the end of this hallway is a large steel door, but it’s not locked. It’s cracked open and we can hear people inside.
The sound of borgs walking around, but more disturbingly, the sound of people. Moaning and groaning, like they are in pain.
Jimmy could be in there. Tycho could be in there.
I make an executive decision and move forward, throw the door all the way open, and aim both my arms at the two borgs within.
They don’t have weapons so the suit doesn’t automatically react. One of them is holding a tray while the other scoops some kind of goopy food into a bowl.
And that’s when I realize what this is and who is being held prisoner here.
I gun down both the borgs with button two—laser pistol—and they fall over face first.
I might feel guilty about this later. Once I have time to fully internalize that I just murdered two defenseless borgs. But not now.
Because this is a prison and lined up in cells in either side of the main aisle are kids.
Teenagers. Akeelian male teenagers, to be exact. I know this because they are naked. They are filthy, and starving, and magnetically bound to the walls as sexbots kneel at their feet, jerking them off and giving them oral.
None of them look like they’re enjoying it. Several are crying. At least one is unconscious. And one is coming—semen spilling out of both his cocks and collecting at the bottom of a vial in his sexbot’s hand.