Chapter 3: Inner Systems

Chapter 3: Inner Systems

Kith went to his executive terminal, and set the course to Kabalaah, the outermost planet in the inner planet system. They could make a killing with the Erowid -14 in the hold. There was a note that came with it, saying that 100,000 units of money were to be delivered to some guy on one of the outer planets, so that meant that Kith could keep the profits, and he expected almost double that price. Slight grin on his face, he went back over to the workbench. The tears still hadn’t dried on the receiver of the shotgun. Kith immediately went back over the memory of that ambush. In a shaky voice, he commed Arana.

“I’ll be in my bunk for a while. Don’t let anyone disturb me.”

“Knew there was something wrong, Cap.”

“Its nothing. I’m just tired. See ya in a few hours.” With that, he turned off the comm, pressed the implant in his chest that shot painkillers into his heart, lay down in his darkened cabin, and stared at the ceiling. He felt the numbness creep into his body. Finally, it reached his head, and all calmed down. He stared at the ceiling some more, thinking, and then fell into an intoxicated sleep.

He awoke slowly to his door being slid open and the light being turned on. Cai, the ship medic, stood in the doorway, a stern look graced her face. Kith took one look, and knew he was in for some hell. He turned over, hitting the painkiller implant again. Lord knows he was gonna need it.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? YOU’RE ADDICTED, YOU KNOW THAT?! YOU CANT JUST KNOCK BACK SOME PAINKILLERS EACH TIME YOU FEEL BAD!!” she yelled at him.

Kith rolled over and grinned at her. She was wearing a rather thin, revealing bath robe. “Well, for your information, I just did. You’re pushing me to do it, you know.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Next time you’re under the knife, I’m taking that injector out. You’re on a road to self-destruction, over something that happened over eight years ago. Yes, I know your wife died. Still, you need to get over it. There are other people out there, and most of them don’t like their captain when he’s being in one of his melancholy moods. Next time I operate on you, that thing is coming out.”

“So I get to die a painful death?”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“Then why do you care about me taking them?”

She sighed again, rolled her eyes, and left the room, swearing under her breath. The faint scent of lilacs remained behind her. Kith grinned. She was almost as much of a knock-out as Ja’ara. Tall, buxom, and vibrantly redheaded, she had a heart shaped face, and rather large temper. There weren’t many wounds that she couldn’t fix, and she was the one who had designed and installed the special implants on most of the crew. Much like freeze-dried dessert rations, they came in different flavors: adrenaline, painkillers, cell division boosters, temporary steroid boosters, caffeine injectors, eye-dilation night vision boosters, all the goodies one could want. Cai had designed, patented, and installed all of these by herself. She was one of the most useful people on his crew. Course, she was also a total health nut, but she was a damn fine one at that.

Kith stumbled out of bed, slipped on some clothes, and went out to the living area of the ship. Aidan, the ship technological whiz, was sitting in an easy chair reading a book on the newest computer self-reasoning programs. Nyth was working away at the punching bag in the fitness center, located in the aft corner of the large room. Kith caught a glance of Cai disappear into the corridor that led to the medic room, and her personal room.

Kith sighed, he was sure he hadn’t heard the last of that argument. He walked over to Nyth, who was flinging spinning side kicks away at the bag.

“Remind me, I got you a present that I’m working on. It should be ready in a few hours more of work.”

“Thanks,” he said, huffing. “I’m sure I’ll like it.”

“You will. Get the team together. I want to have a briefing. Meet you on the bridge in five minutes.” With that, Kith left to gather the rest of the team.

Five minutes later, Kith was standing on the bridge, staring off into the blackness of space through the re-entry glass polymer. He could hear the whole crew assemble behind him. He turned to face them. Ja’ara was there, dressed in her tight fitting matte-black stealth combat suit. Nyth was there, legs propped up, loading bullets into a magazine. Arana was at the controls, looking anxious. Aidan was also there, tinkering away on a robotic hand. Cai was still glowering at Kith.

“Well, you may be wondering why I called you here…. God, I’ve always wanted to say that. Anyway, I’ve reset the coordinates; we’re going to a desert moon of one of the inner planets, a moon called Nauidos. We’re supposed to land in the city of Ca’ar 6, pick up a demolition/assault automaton, and bust open an Syrinct bank with the codes the bots got on its hard drive. We take all we can, drop it off and Heg Maar, we get 15 and the automaton. Aidan, you’ll have a new toy to play with, and I want it to be another fighter. We could use another gun hand on this ship.”

He grunted.

“No wonder you get the ladies, Aidan. With your social skills, it’s a wonder they aren’t crawling over you right now.”

“Who needs women, captain? I’ve got my one true love right around me. As long as I’ve got something to build or work on, I don’t need a woman,” he replied, without looking up from his work. Nyth stared at him, slack-jawed. “Aidan, that’s just not right,” Kith remarked.

“No, it aint, Cap. No it aint,” said Nyth, still staring in disbelief at Aidan.

“Anyway, crew, There’s probably gonna be some fighting. Nyth, gear up soon, same to you, Ja’ara. Ja’ara, you should suit up for stealth, we might want a hidden advantage. Cai, ready up the implants and ready up the medic area, then I’d be much obliged if you’d take up sniper duty. Arana, you’re gonna keep the engines warmed up for a fast get away, and keep an eye on the passengers. Same for you, Aidan. We’ll be picking up the robot in about half an hour. I want you all ready by then.”

They disassembled, and readied for landing. The ship touched down with a whump! that was felt by them all. The robot greeted them at the spaceport as the doors to the cargo bay opened.

“Nice to know a man doesn’t have to wait anymore. Come on in,” Kith remarked to the automaton. It was a well-built bot, titanium plating, humanoid frame, and two utility arms ending in many tactile digits, while the main two arms ended in a protrusion of gun barrels, blades, and blunt objects. Kith walked over to it, looking at it from every angle. The bot’s head spun to watch him.

Nyth was standing at the doorway to the dorms with an EMP gun and a revolver loaded with depleted uranium slugs. “Paranoid, aren’t we?” asked Kith, watching his friend cover the robot with the EMP gun’s sights.

“Cap, how can you be sure that that robots not just here to kill us and take the ship?”

“Because I already tagged the bastard with both a mind probe and a EMP self destruction unit. If he takes one step out of his preset moral parameters, he’s dead.”

“Nice thinking, sir.”

“I always try. Shoot him if he does anything bad. And gear up, too.” With that, Kith walked out of the room, going to his dorm. He slipped on the tight Bullet-Blok jacket, strapped on his rudimentary leg armor he had been working on, and started strapping on his two hip holsters, quick draw style. He pulled out the bulky 40mm pistol on his left hip and loaded a buckshot canister into it.

Suddenly, his door opened, and a little African boy of about six bust in, laughing and running around the room, before dashing out the door.

Kith swore.

“Cai, you dirty bitch, I told you no more little kids...”

“Am I interrupting something?”

Kith, still looking at the door, saw a tall, slender, shapely, lightly tanned black woman walk through the doorway. Her skin, if anything, could be called dark amber. Her doe brown eyes scanned the room, and found Kith.

“I'm very sorry, he's so hard to keep up with.”

“I'm sorry for the comment, I didn’t mean it. It just, you know, I'm a little bit too laid back to have little kids running around me constantly.”

“It's okay, I think I'm beginning to regret it myself...” she left it hanging, and laughed, a laugh that sounded like water falling on a drum skin.

“Well, anyway, I'm your captain, Kith Tarker.”

“So young to be a captain of a ship. You must be quite gifted,” she remarked, sounding more amused than impressed.

“All I've got going for me is guts, sheer luck, and being too stupid to stop what I'm doing. I take it that you are Kynasi, and that was your son, Bynasi?”

“Quite correct, captain”

“Destined for Dietrez. Nice planet. A little too sunny for me. We will be there next after we land here to pick up some supplies. Can I ask you to stay to the recreation areas and your dorms until we're space born again? I don’t know how long this might take us, and we're on a relatively tight schedule, so if you’re in the market when we get back, we might have to leave you here.”

“Anything you need me to do, Captain.” And with that, she left the room, dragging the little boy with her. The ship got slowly airborne, and zoomed low over the city. Once the bank was in sight, about two miles away, Arana had Kith, Nyth, Ja'ara, and the robot jumped down onto a local building. The ship flew off and deposited Cai about two blocks away. Nyth zoomed in and watched her set up her sniper rifle.

“One damn fine class of work there, Cap. She can fire my rifle any day.”

“Could you be anymore crude?” her voice floated over the COM

“Just sayin...”

Ja'ara laughed her bell-like laugh, and shook her head.

“You should hear what he says about you, sweetie,” Kith remarked, and she shut up and glared at Nyth. Nyth's cheeks burned.

“Ja'ara, sneak in the back way, stay on channel three. Go ahead and kill anyone you see, they're just Syrincts, and I don’t really give a damn about them. Nyth and the bot will go with me. Cai, cover our backs when we inevitably have to make a run for it. Arana, park in the nearest open space, keep the engines running, and have the magnetic docking clamps lowered to pick up the goods. The rest of us will get on those, and we'll breeze by Cai and pick her up. Everyone ready?”

A resulting chorus of affirmatives sounded in his earpiece. He drew his CLK-44, loaded a filled eight round rotary mag into the well, pulled back the slide, and eased down the hammer. He slipped the blued steel gun into its holster, and started walking to the bank, clear as day. A guard stopped him at the door. Another came around behind him, rifle shouldered. Both had patches that identified them as Monks, the Syrinct police guards.

“Sir, you’re going to have to deposit all of your weapons,” the cop in front asked, his hand on his sidearm.

“How bout if I give you my bullets?”

“No, sir, now deposit your weapons.”

“Didn’t want to have to do this.” Kith quick drew his gun, and bashed the first guard in the side of the head with the butt. Almost simultaneously, he was hit by a spatter of blood, as Cai picked off the other guard. The cough of a silenced large caliber rifle met his ears a second later. The guard’s rifle fell to the ground, and was immediately picked up by Nyth. They dragged the bodies into a nearby alley, the shot guard leaving a blood trail. No sirens were ringing, though. They were in the clear, so far. They piled the two guys in a trash receptacle. Nyth drew his KP-45, threaded on a silencer, and shot twice into the dumpster. He popped out the magazine and loaded two rounds.

They walked back out of the alley, looking around to see if anyone cared. The robot was standing in the sun, head swiveling. It spotted them, and ushered them along with a beep. They ran to it, turned at the bank door, and stopped, putting on a couple of full-face masks. A blue light began blinking on the top of the bot, getting faster and faster in succession. When it was almost a solid blue light, it rose up one titanium plated leg and kicked the bank door open. It burst through the door, its two weapon arms shooting tongues of flames. Shotguns, mini guns, and tear gas grenades detonated all over the room. The two utility arms, Kith saw, had also armed themselves with twin pistols.

“Well hell, we don’t even get to do anything.” Nyth said, staring at the carnage of sputtering and dead left by the robot. Suddenly, off from the left, came a vague coughing sound. A clerk coughed up more blood, gasped, and hit a button. Sirens erupted around the bank.

“Eat your words, Nyth. Lets go.” Kith waked up to the gasping clerk, raised his .44, and drilled the man between the eyes. The back of his head disappeared into a cloud of red mist and chunks of brain. They receded deeper into the bank, as the Syrinct Enforcer cop vehicles started to pull up at the front of the bank. The robot's extended his left arm and fired off a couple rockets before turning to follow them. Their heavy feet thudded on the stairs down to the underground vault.

“Hey, Kith, did you know that there’s a barracks down here?” Ja'ara's voice whispered in his earpiece.

“Umm...no... where are you?”

“I'm in an air duct, and I can see you now. They aren’t far behind.”

“Well, we're screwed. Try to drop down and grab a few stragglers. We're going to try and bust in the vault. Nyth, you stay a little behind and try to take out some. Ja'ara, take out as many as you can. Just be careful, I might want a little private party after this all is done. And Nyth, try not to get killed. So lighten up on the grenades, then we have no way out.”

“Cap, you are no damn fun whatsoever. I’ll try. How many are there, Ja'ara?”

“At least 20.”

“Just twenty? Hell, that’s less than one clip.” Nyth back-tracked, his KP-45 out in his right hand, combat knife in the left.

Kith grinned, and asked over the COM, “Did you get to the video records and delete them yet?”

Ja’ara responded with a snappy “Yes sir!” and turned off the COM, giggling.

Kith turned, and followed the bot through a pair of high impact polymer doors to the vault entrance. There, standing before him, was one of the biggest guard robots he had seen in his life.

Nyth, to be quite frank, was kind of bored with this mission. He was raiding an Syrinct bank, and here he was, already walking away from the vault doors, and he hadn’t even killed five people yet. In his mind this was a great shame. Syrincts were considered varmints where he came from. Hell, his uncle even had some officer’s helmet over his mantle.

He broke from his musings, as he heard the clip-clopping of several pairs of boots. He flattened himself against a wall right next to a corner in the passage leading down to the vault, KP-45 locked and loaded with its silencer attached. His knife hung loosely from his hand, his fingers tapping a silent beat on the grip apprehensively. An Syrinct Planetary Guard soldier walked around the corner, gun drawn, his black uniform standing out from the dim walls. Nyth put a single .45 round into the visor of his armored helmet, watching the wall behind the soldier get covered with blood and brains.

Other soldiers had already started walking into Nyth’s line of sight; apparently they hadn’t noticed what happened to the first man. Nyth again and again fired visor shots, and soon had four dead before it finally hit the rest of the group that there was someone behind the corner with a gun.

“Hell, these guys are stupider than I thought,” he muttered under his breath

The rest of the soldiers had backed up, and started firing at the metal walls, hoping for a ricochet. Nyth was forced to eat his words as he blocked his face with his armored sleeve. His hand slipped down to his pocket and drew a flash bang, and he primed it and threw it around the corner. He covered his ears as the passage was suddenly lit up, and a small concussion shook him. He turned the corner to see a group of disorientated soldiers trying to clear their heads. Nyth switched his KP-45 to full auto and mowed them down with impunity. As soon as they all lay on the ground, he went around from body to body, looking for survivors, money, or any other valuable objects. Suddenly he heard a quiet phutt followed immediately by a gunshot right next to his ear. He whirled, gun drawn, in time to see a soldier’s gun filled hand drop to the ground, and he looked up to see a hole in the ceiling the bullet had made. He turned to see who had saved him, and saw Ja’ara gracefully jump down from an air duct, her ASM/P-9 sub-machine gun in her hands. The skin-tight black stealth suit framed her extremely well, as Nyth had to turn away before he embarrassed himself. She put the gun back into its holster, and looked at the pile of bodies.

“Well, see anything valuable?” she asked, her thin black eyebrows arched.

“Well, now that you mention…” but he was cut off by a cold reprimanding glare. He turned back to the bodies. “Eh, just a few personal trinkets, ‘bout 1600 units of cash, their guns, of course, and not much else. This guy’s got gold teeth, though,” he said, kicking one nearby man. “Seems to have eight of them on the lower jaw, I don’t know how many he had at first, I kinda accidentally shot off his upper jaw. Guess I shot off most of his head, come to think of it. I guess you could try to find some fragments.”

“Lovely.”

“Just saying. I guess we should go check to see how Kith is doing with the real extortion.”

“Yes, I guess so.”

Kith stared up at the behemoth of an automaton, marveling at its towering thirty-foot height. It was covered in thick steel plates, and as it turned to face them, the ground shook with its footsteps. Kith’s robot fired three rockets, and ran dry, ducking behind a pillar. Kith furrowed in his pockets, scrambling desperately for an incendiary grenade, but found none. He heard the pistons move, and the small whine of an electric motor starting up. He turned and ducked behind a steel pillar as the giant guard robot opened up its minigun, spraying the walls liberally with armor-piercing bullets. Kith waited for a pause in the gunfire, drew his 40mm pistol, and loaded in a high explosive shell. He followed the grenades path, and watched it make a shallow crater in the robot’s breastplate, the steel still taking the shock. He heard the whine of the motors again, and he ducked back behind a pillar with his bot. The walls past him were showered with the armor piercing steel. The shooting stopped, and he whirled around the pillar with another Explosive round, hoping to weaken the breastplate. Again, the grenade made little more than a dent. He fumbled in his pockets more, and produced a flash-bang. He threw it, hoping to overload the auditory and visual sensors on the bot. He was rewarded with a whirr of frustration, and Kith ran to another pillar, chancing a glance at the guard robot. His ruse with the flash-bang seemed to have worked; the head was spinning around, as the bot stumbled blindly. Kith didn’t want to chance getting stepped on, so he had to figure some way to take down the robot.

He fired his CLK-44 at the robot, but the .44 slugs splatted harmlessly on the steel. The only shells he had left for his CLG-40 grenade pistol were buckshot, and also useless. The robot that served him appeared to be completely dry. Looks like they might have to call this one quits. Then he remembered the EMP mine on the back of his crime robot. He’d have to get his robot out of here; the EMP blast would permanently fry it. And how would he get it on the flailing guard robot?

Then the sound of two lone gunshots jarred him. Nyth was standing in the doorway, his revolver drawn, pelting the bot with Teflon-coated uranium slugs. The high impact bullets ripped into the dents where Kith had hit with the grenades. The robot started short-circuiting, twitching, and firing randomly. Ja’ara leaped out of nowhere, grabbed the EMP node off of Kith’s new bot, and deftly climbed up to the haywire bot’s level and stuck the node on the flailing automaton, her adrenaline and muscle boosters kicking in. Kith got his robot out of the room, sealed the lead enforced door, and fired the EMP. The robot fell, a lifeless mass of steel, wire, and sparking circuit boards.

“Well, I guess I should thank you guys for saving my ass,” Kith said, grinning, “but I think that a bonus and maybe a vacation might do it, eh?” With that, he entered the main vault. Before him lay some gadgets and a single, shining card on a pedestal.

“Oh boy,” said Ja’ara sarcastically, “we can buy an on-deck pool.”

Kith admonished her. “You gotta have a little more faith. That cards solid Varinium-379, one of the rarer elements in the whole damn system. That little baby is worth about a million units. The Syrincts use them ‘cuz they’re easier to transport than a pile of credits. Now grab it, and let’s start trying to make an escape plan. The cops are gonna be swarming like ants on synthetic honey. Did everyone think to bring masks?”

Nyth asked, “But why? We already shut down the camera system and deleted the files.”

“Cuz I have a feeling that there are going to be about 30 cops outside the bank doors, and if we pull through, I don’t want my face on every screen from here to the Outer Rim. So put on the masks, and lets try to get out alive.”

He turned his attention to the earpiece on the side of his head. “Cai, make sure you’re hidden, get ready to start taking some people out. Arana, get the engines warm. I want this to be quick. Since they’re bound to have a News Crew out there, we’ll come to you. Park close, maybe on the D-48B docks, and out of sight, we’ll give them the slip and meet up there in 30 minutes. Team, I want you to split up. Ja’ara, rooftops. Nyth, well, just try not to leave to big of a trail of destruction…”

Ja’ara slipped into an air duct, off to find an escape route. Nyth loaded a fresh clip into his KP-45, and reloaded his revolver. “I guess we get the front, then.”

Kith ejected the eight round rotary mag out of his CLK-44, and slammed in a longer, jutting twenty rounder. “Time for a hell of a fireworks show.” They slowly walked to the front of the bank, where Kith peeked out. Surely enough, there were two Syrinct deployment vehicles, dropping cops like a rank hound having a litter.

Kith turned to Nyth. “Flash bangs primed and thrown on three. Cai, is there a news crew out there?” he whispered over the COM link.

“Yes sir, out there in an autogyro. Just one, though.”

“Good, see if you cant put a round through the camera, or if need be, bring it down. Are there any other cameras? And how’s the escape route? Tell Arana to patch into the police radio and put a call that they think there’s a strange ship in hangar 47D that the robbers came on.”

“Sir, a couple more cameras, easily taken out. The route’s crowded, it’s a market day, you should be able to pull off a rip-and-slip. And do we know who we’re setting the cops on in 47D?”

“Some holy men heading off to missions in the outer ring. They should be leaving within the hour. Tell Arana to keep the engines hot, and the people entertained. No Screen news or audio broadcasts for them, either. Don’t want them running to the cops. Get Aidan to bring out his bots for a show.”

He paused, peeked outside, and said, “OK, Cai, cap the ground camera’s, and tell me when you’ve done so.”

There was a slight pause when Cai’s voice came back online.

“Ok, Cap, they’ve been neutralized. You better get moving soon, sir”

“Right. Cai, as soon as you see the flash bangs and smokers go off, crack the news camera.”

“Understood, sir” she went offline, and Kith pulled out a voluminous smoke grenade along with his flash bang. He held up his hand and started counting down from three as he pulled both pins. He tossed the two out of the bank, as Nyth did the same. The flash bang went off first with its 5-second fuse, followed immediately by Nyth’s. Kith could hear the scream as almost forty officers were blinded. Then the smokers detonated, and green smoke exploded out. Nyth shot at the officers with his KP-45 while they clutched their heads. Nyth turned to Kith.

“We better get out soon, cap. The flash bangs really only last well about 5 seconds, and the smoke’ll start dissipating in about two minutes.” Kith nodded, and yelled out over the COM link “105 and rising, have a merry White Christmas!”. He got several Com flashes, brief bursts of online static to signal that the team had acknowledged.

The pair of fighters burst out of the front of the bank, weapons drawn, stepping into the smoke. Kith shot off a buckshot canister at hazy shapes in the smoke and was rewarded with several screams of pain.

Nyth sprayed indeterminately, trying to hit the cop vehicles with his revolver. A cop leapt out at him in the smoke, gun drawn, and was rewarded with a uranium slug to the head. “Come on, ‘Jerriah’, let’s run.” Kith tossed another primed smoke grenades, and ran. The second batch exploded with pinkish-red gas as the duo ran for their lives, boots kicking up dust as they ran through the streets and the markets full of people. Kith found an open doorway, and ducked in, grabbing Nyth and jerking him in too. He checked the interior to make sure that no one was in there, and they jerked off their masks, and changed shirts, stowing their jackets, shirts, ammo belts, and masks in a backpack.

“I think I tossed a couple of tear gas grenades there at the end by accident. Lets get out of here.” Kith and Nyth walked through the house, and exited the back door into an alley. They ran through the narrow deserted way, and slowly walked out into another crowded bazaar. Nyth started to run again, but Kith grabbed him and hissed in his ear.

“Play it cool. Best urban camouflage is to look like you belong. Nyth, I want you to go ahead, play it cool, chat with some of the vendors, even get a little aggressive with someone if you want. I’ll be on the other side of the market, we meet back at the ship in twenty. Cop comes, don’t be afraid to look them straight in the eye. Act like a buffoon. Play up to what you look like, a regular dumbass, too goofy to pull off some big crap like a bank heist. Got it?

Nyth turned to him. “I look like a dumbass, sir?” Kith stared him straight back in the eye, and with a sober face, said “Yes, Nyth, you sure do,” before cracking up. “Come on, get out of here.” Nyth left, then Kith a few minutes afterwards.