11. Unreasonable demands
Riddik docked his Marauder with all the care he could, which was a lot. After all, he carried the most valuable cargo he could imagine, his wife. The emergency life support units were ready when he landed and he along with the dockhands started unloading the valuable cargo from his hold. When the medical recovery crew had taken the other pilots away, he found a stretcher and readied it for Keria. He was bent over her, unstrapping her gently when someone started to shout over at the entrance. Not used to shouting in a Serco military installation Riddik looked up and saw two small black clad officers that had stopped the stretchers. They were using a handheld DNA scanner to identify the pilots but didn't seem to find what they were looking for. Riddik shook his head slightly; he absolutely hated the secret police. They always seemed to carry themselves with an air of self-importance that didn't measure up to their effectiveness. However, what they lacked in efficiency they made up for amply in ruthlessness. Riddik lifted his wife gently; the fact that he outweighed her four times and the fact that was cybernetically enhanced to the maximum ensured that he didn't tremble the slightest while lifting her out of the prone position. He turned to put her on the stretcher but was interrupted by one of the GESTEBO agents.
"You must submit to a DNA scan at once. And the unconscious pilot."
Riddik slowly ground his teeth; these guys were incredible. He started smiling, unsettling the GESTEBO agent and rightly so; Riddik imagined the untold mental horrors that would be unleashed upon the manling if he ever were to say please and it probably showed on Riddik's face. He nodded; after all it was probably not worth calling for SCAR immunity right now. He extended his right hand to the man, keeping Keria to his chest comfortably resting on his left arm. The machine swiped across his hand and the manling nodded. He took the scanner and pressed it against Keria's arm and let it do its work. He looked up at Riddik.
"We need this female for questioning. Hand her over immediately."
The manling looked up at Riddik, pointed to the stretcher with one hand and put his hand on the ornate needlegun at his side for emphasis. Riddik didn't know why the GESTEBO wanted her but this would be a good time to call in the guild.
"No. We are SCAR; you have no jurisdiction over us. Take it to my commander."
"If you will stay there one second, I will."
The GESTEBO agent's eyes glazed over as he initiated a secure call to his command. The other agent placed himself behind and to the left of Riddik, the place where it would be hardest for him to see and thus attack the agent if trouble was to arrive.The first agent blinked and smiled, the effect chilling on Riddik.
"I have received an extradition order countersigned by SCAR. I will send the form over now. Hand her over citizen."
Riddik received the signal, but chose to upload it in his auxiliary brainplant, using a rather illegal programme he had purchased in Aeolus Trading Prefect in Helios by one of his trading associates. The extradition order was in order, complete with SCAR digital signatures and all, but it was the small black ice programme that was uploaded at the same time that decided for Riddik. The black ice programme was designed to shut all of his implants down, effectively rendering him defenseless. Riddik dropped Keria, drawing the small thin-gun from her waist, the small one-shot holdout pistol that she kept for extreme situations, with his left hand and extended it towards the agent behind him. At the same time Riddik bent in his knees, allowing the right hand to grasp the large caliber flechette pistol that he had strapped on his thigh and point it towards the agent to the front. Simultaneously he depressed the triggers of the two weapons, firing the single shot from the thin-gun through the left eye exiting in the back of the skull of the agent behind him and six hundred hyper velocity fourteen gramme samoflange darts that turned the agent in front into a bleeding hulk. Riddik dropped his left gun and caught his wife; the entire sequence had taken less than 0.3 seconds. He looked down at the quivering mass of bleeding flesh that was the sorry remains of the agent. The man was going into shock, but in itself the wound was not lethal; he was Serco after all.
"I said no."
Riddik raised the gun and fired another set of darts into the neck of the agent, messily separating the head from the body. He then turned and put Keria back in her crash seat, strapping her down methodically but fast. He launched his Marauder and set the course for Helios. He was not sure that he would be welcome in Serco space the next many months.
###
"If he dies, the entire programme will have been set back for a long time, it may even stop here unless we find out why it happens. We need to think out of the box, we need Captain Taerow up and about. Gentlemen, ladies, I need your ideas and I need the right solution within the next hour or we are deep inside Arklan land with no turbo."
Raewon looked around the table for any takers but nobody had any ideas. He fixed his gaze on the senior medtech.
"Tell me again why we can't just put his brains and vitals inside a clone?"
The medtech looked down to the table and then up at Raewon.
"We would love to Sir, but a far as we can see the body is doing fine. It is the mind that seems to be slipping away slowly. We can keep the body alive for an indefinite amount of time but according to Itani law, a body that has no mind is legally dead and can be reused or destroyed as per the last wishes of the previous inhabitant. We expect that with the current decline, the body will be uninhabited in less than four hours."
"Anybody have anything?"
Nobody had any clues and they adjourned to their respective departments for an hour. Yarina Oselasis decided to pay a visit to the captain in the vain hope that she would be inspired to a solution. His appearance shocked even her but still she didn't let it show on her face. The technician inside looked at her and decided that she should just keep focus on her readouts instead of talking. Yarina walked over to the comatose grey-skinned man and grasped his hand. It showed no sign of life except for a feeble pulsing at the wrist, the fingers feeling very cold in her own hand. She squeezed his hand slightly for support, stroking it slightly with her thumb. She felt a small quiver in the hand she held and almost dropped it in surprise. She got an idea and turned to the medtech.
"Leave us."
The medtech frowned and looked into her screen, deciding that she could use a break anyway. The patient was not going to move any time soon.
"All right, but I'll stay outside if ya'll need me."
Yarina nodded and waited until the medtech had left before testing her idea.
###
Fletholm was briefing the UIT high command on the recent developments regarding several pirate incursions into the Azek system and the connections and implications regarding the low scale war between the trade guild named Sigma Shipping Company (SSC) and the Cargo Liberation Movement (CLM) when his beeper went off in his pocket. Ignoring it he continued to show in what intervals the attacks happened when the beeper went off again. He finished his part and nodded to the Chief Security Officer of Azek and walked outside to see who had called. It was not one but two persons, both with priority ASAP-Z signals. He sighed and informed the military policeman that was standing guard that he had to go and left for the secret facility nicknamed Hobbitrup but he called work. He entered to a flurry of activity in almost all his departments with several calling for him as soon as he entered the room. He sighed once more and walked over to his office with the lead expert on the Itani and Serco military following with Eggert in tow. He sat and immediately punched a message to his wife Camille explaining that he would once more not be home for dinner before looking up at the impatient men.
"So, what happened?"
###
Cat docked the by now rather battered Warthog in Aeolus Trading Prefect and exited the ship warily. It was the first time she was in a grey sector station, and the first time she was outside of Serco space alone. She walked over to the dockhand and haggled a good price for storage of her ship before heading deeper into the station. She was probably ripped off but she was satisfied with the agreement. She had to find the Hands of Kali, and if this station was anything like the standard Serco barracks it would be in the commercial sector on level 42a. She found an elevator and entered it along with some of the human wreckage that space always seemed to wash up in grey. One of them was an amputee, and without a prosthetic arm too. She had never seen anything like it and found it hard not to stare, Serco space might not be perfect but was at least rich enough that nobody went without medical aid if so needed. The elevator stopped at 42a and she walked out expecting to smell the usual powerful spices and heavy tangy smelling drinks that were on all Serco commercial levels. Instead it was pungent as hell in the corridor she entered and she was immediately aware that she was in the wrong place. The many crates of unidentified gunk emanated a smell that was sweet and yeasty but at the same time oppressively pungent. It was immensely hot and moist in the corridor and her skin started to gleam of sweat as her body responded. She checked the crates and saw that they were connected by brass pipes with openings in the top. She was curious enough to peer into one of them and was hit by a solid dose of the smell and moisture of the liquid below. She pulled her head back and would have gagged if her body hadn't been modified to such an extent that she did not own that reflex. She moved back to the other side of the corridor and looked at the crates. All 23 of them had the same label on them, "Property of Hortan". Someone had a sick sense of humor, or just a very weird and obscure hobby. The elevator pinged and she turned ready for anything.
"I should have known. Good thing that the boss is so prescient as to the behaviour of you military folks."
Cat frowned, who the hell was this human norm talking to her as if he knew her.
"Who are you, and what do you want?"
"Beria, at your service. I believe that we should meet up at The Arms of Kali? How about I show you where it is and let you meet the boss?"
Cat merely nodded and entered the elevator with the small man. This was going to take some getting used to.
