Code Enforcement: Wetware

Bolts of magnetically confined plasma burn streaks through the air and leave blazing red impact-marks on the walls. I wince, spots swimming in my vision as the Gaian mercenaries pour blue-white fire through the gap in the bulkhead. The Daughters return a mixed volley of projectiles and energy weapons, and the smell of ozone fills the air as sounds and ricochets bounce off the walls.

I'll give Clearfield credit; she's got balls of steel. As Alex reels back from the blow to his face, she breaks free of his grip and dives into the line of fire, still cuffed tightly. Maybe she's got nothing to lose. But I do, so I don't run headlong into the heated exchange of projectiles and plasma. I grab Alex's shoulder, hauling him back to his feet.

He shakes me off, wiping blood from his chin. "We're in over our heads," he calls above the cacophony, pulling the pistol off his belt. "My team is on the way, but there's only two in meatspace, and they won't be here before this is over."

Cartwright hefts his rifle to eye level, backing towards us but holding fire. "We'll pull back to the ship," he says, focusing his aim on the cut bulkhead as a merc leans from cover.

A blue streak takes one of the Daughters in the shin, and her shriek pierces the air as she falls and thrashes. I cringe, my belly roiling as I see her clutching the bubbling stump and flailing on the ground, howling wordless. "No! We can't leave Sparrow out here alone; if she doesn't get shot, she'll probably be captured and interrogated about that fucking squid!"

Two bolts of blue streak toward us from the gap before dissipating against the bulkhead with a sizzle. Cartwright growls and sends a burst of three bright white rings of plasma back, making me shield my eyes from the flashes. He sidesteps, looking away. "What about Clearfield?"

I look back; she's fallen face-down in the throng, fire flitting above her and crawling along the floor towards the gap. Her hands are still cuffed behind her back as she rolls to her knees, crouched by the fallen section of doorframe. Chills run down my spine as I see her grab Baldy's discarded weapon. Oh, holy void-spawned- "Ashton, shoot her!"

The blade erupts with a brilliant purple arc that cuts the cuffs like butter. Blade in one hand, she dives for the headless form of Cid and hunkers beside him, rolling the merc's body aside. Cartwright sights her but holds his fire. "Jess, don't!" He shouts above the chaos. As she grabs Cid's plasma pistol, my blood turns to ice in my veins. He's not going to shoot her.

I toss Clearfield's pistol aside and rip the stun-stick off Ashton's belt, ignoring his protest as I sprint towards her. One of the Gaian's screams as he takes a coil-gun round through the belly, sending ribbons of blood and viscera through the air as Clearfield kicks him aside. She whips the pistol around, aiming at Cartwright, and pulls the trigger. I can't hear the sound, but her brow wrinkles in confusion.

"It's safe-slaved to his prints, you oxide-huffing bitch!" I cackle as swing low at her, then bring the stun-stick humming around high. She ducks, just barely rolling aside. "I learned that the hard way, and it looks like so are- oh shit!" I stammer as she grabs Cid's limp hand and presses it to the weapon.

I tackle her before she can get his hand on the pistol, but she deflects my strike and kicks the stun-stick from my hand. The violet arc of plasma ignites again, held in her off-hand, and she roars as she lashes at the blade at me. The whine and heat of the plasma arc make me flinch, and I pull my head back as the blade whips past my eyes, singeing my hair.

I lose my balance, gasping as I fall and hit the deck hard, flat on my back. Clearfield lunges at me with a snarl, and I barely get an arm up. There's no avoiding that violet arc of magnetically confined, superheated gas as she swings for my face.

Until a blue-white bolt strikes the hilt and it explodes in a spray of dissipating heat that crisps my eyebrows and makes Clearfield screech. She tugs her hand back protectively as I kick desperately at her legs and turn my head.

Alex is kneeling, sighting from his pistol and guarding Cartwright's prone body. Wait, does Ashton have a fucking harpoon in his thigh? When the hell did that happen? There's a growing pool of blood under him. Fuck. "Alex, stay with Cartwright, get him clear and make sure he doesn't bleed out!" I call as I scramble to my feet.

Clearfield's swollen nose drips blood and she cradles her blistered hand as she glances back to Alex, but she drops the broken hilt and dashes past me, slowing only long enough to lunge and wrap her fingers around the discarded pistol. Hah, it's her own pistol, and the powerpacks a dud... oh.

I see her drop Cid's pistol from her good hand, holding his power pack as she ejects her own. Sprinting for the south door, she slams the fresh pack into the weapon and diving through the opening door. Oh, holy void-spawned fuck. Sparrow!

My feet are moving before I think. I see Alex lift the injured Cartwright's by the shoulder with one arm and hold his pistol out to me with the other. He mouth's something that I miss, gunfire drowning him out, but the meaning is clear. Sprinting past, I snatch the offered weapon and widen the bandwidth of my link to the chassis. Overclocking as much as I can, I get the datastream just in time to catch a flash of Sparrow's face through the camera. "Clearfield's coming, run!" I cry out in D-space and meatspace simultaneously, to her shock.

Piloting the chassis is difficult enough without a gunfight around me, and the broken wheel slows my piloting to a crawl. Thankfully it's not going far; just to the docks on the other side of the station. Using Admin access, I lock the doors around my route and begin to clear a ship for takeoff. With admin access, the flight plan is accepted, despite the unpaid refueling and dock fees on the... Erinyes? Ugh, Casey, not a good ship name for a man. I send a command to open the airlock and docking arm, letting the chassis trundle through in a jerky fashion, before sending the command to lock access down.

But so much is flooding my mind, and I can't process. There's too much sensory input and it's overwhelming. The staccato of projectiles, the whine of plasma weapons, shouts and screams and curses? The smell of sweat and blood and cooking meat, and too much light and motion from too many directions. My vision swims, and I struggle not to pass out as meatspace and D-space seem to merge. But my heart stops when I catch sight of Clearfield's desperate eyes and bloody face in the camera feed and see her slamming someone into a wall, raising the pistol to a figure in a brown jumper with short blue hair.

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I watch Clearfield tugging at her top with the other hand, shaking back and forth. The dampener! Clearfield... with her CE key, she'll own D-space. Fuck! I link-in to the closest node with the admin ID and ping a command to shut down all power in the docks for two minutes, and the lights flick out.

The dock is immediately plunged into darkness. Strobing red emergency lights blink on, bathing the empty space in in blood-light and making shadows dance on the wall. Even in my overlay, the silver knots and lines have vanished, and the sound of breathing echoes in the darkness. There's a squeak that could be Sparrow, but it's cut off almost instantly. It's followed by the plink and crunch of something being ground into the floor. The dampener.

I feel my heart pounding in my chest, the sound of blood in my ears drowns everything else out. We're all helpless right now; I leveled the playing field. But she's going to turn the tables when the power turns back on.

Her voice snaps from the darkness, full of tension. "Where's the squid?" The echo seems to bounce from the bulkheads, coming from everywhere.

I grit my teeth, squinting as I peer around. "The Daughters have it. You watched the fat guy with synthetic arms take the tank-"

"I'm not a chrome-licking moron, Dame! Obvious decoy is obvious," she snarls, and I can hear her voice cracking. "Your partner had the squid."

"No idea what you're talking about," I murmur, hearing footsteps and a shuffling in the darkness. "The handoff is done."

"Really? So your girlfriend ran back to her ship during a gunfight because she forgot her purse?" A snicker rings out in the darkness. "I don't think so. That pack has the package, so where is it?" she hisses, and I catch sight of motion.

"It's over, Clearfield," I say, ducking and stepping silently as I heft the pistol. To the left?

There's a low growl in the dark. "Nothing is over until the airlock seals and someone flies away," she calls out, and a brilliant bolt makes me squeeze my eyes shut as it flies past my shoulder.

I gasp, diving and rolling as two more rings of plasma go wide and splash against the floor, dissipating with the odor of ozone. "I'd prefer to bring you in alive. I'm sure Cartwright would too," I pant, stumbling as my foot hits a rise in the floor. I catch myself without hitting the ground. Fuck this. "This is your last chance, Jessie; don't just throw it all away over sunk costs," I spit with venom. "If I have to, I'll kill you."

I hear a hard, bitter laugh from the darkness. "I'd prefer not to kill anyone either, Dame. But I've made exceptions before, so I don't have an issue making a few more," she says bitterly. "Go suck hard vacuum; if you knew me at all, you'd know I don't back down."

"Me neither," I murmur as I close my eyelids to slits, shading my forehead with one hand and counting down the seconds. Three... two... one...

The lights flare on suddenly, making me wince even with the shade. "Melody!" I hear Sparrow's voice cry out, then a strangled yelp as I lift my other hand, sighting along the sleek composite body of the pistol.

The captain's hand is an ugly messy of bubbled skin, but her arm is hooked around Sparrow's neck. In her good hand, the pistol presses against Sparrow's temple. Both women flinch from the light, with Clearfield wincing and instinctively raising her arm against the unexpected glare.

Pulling the barrel away from Sparrow's skull.

My shot takes Jessie Clearfield between the eyes and blows off everything above her nose in a plume of vaporized blood and sizzling lipids. Her body jerks and thrashes twice before stilling, her mouth falling open in an expression of shock. Both eyes gone, and brainstem sending a few final messages, she dances on trembling legs before slumping and collapsing to the ground. Her ruined skull pumps a few gushes of crimson into a widening pool before I tear my eyes away.

Sparrow falls forward as the arm goes limp, clutching at me. "Melody!"

I drop the pistol and catch her, gasping and sobbing. "Sp... Sparrow..." I pant. You're safe now. "We... ugh, have to get back to the ship with Cartwright and Alex. Quickly," I pant, as I help her stand. Or maybe she helps me. Or both. I don't spare a glance for the corpse as I turn, but I do send a ping.

"Package delivered."

I get the confirmation of the ping as we stumble back to the dock. It's a bit of a mixed blessing, but it looks like the fighting is done by the time we arrive.

It's only been a few minutes, but there's carnage everywhere. It looks like Cid and at least three Gaian's are dead, but Caspian Casey is nowhere to be seen. As for the Daughters, Baldy and two others are down, and one androgynous Daughter is cruising on morphine while her ruined leg is amputated.

Trinity is flanked by two surly looking men, tapping her temple impatiently and fingering her weapon. If she's disturbed by the blood, she doesn't show it. I look around, holding Sparrow's shoulder with one hand. The woman with the pink fade is standing between us and the airlock, and I can only assume Alex and Ashton have pulled back into the Chimera. I gulp, approaching with empty hands.

Sweaty, shaking, and only a few dozen meters from safety, I try to look unthreatening. "Listen, I'm not looking for more trouble. We're just going to board our ship-" I start, but Trinity holds a finger up, the heavy coil-gun pointed at my feet.

Perhaps ninety seconds go by of what must silent discussion and growing dread. There's no ping from the boys and still no sign of Alex's backup. My belly drops when Trinity's lip's part and her eyes focus accusingly on me. "Oh? Interesting..." she whispers, green eyes glittering in the low light. She doesn't speak, but suddenly the other two tense, and one flicks his safety off. Trinity lowers her hand and meets my eye. "So, Dame, it turns out the squid was a fake. Nothing but a holo-projector and a tank of saline."

I feel a bead of sweat roll down my neck. "Yeah, sorry about that," I murmur, watching the other two step around to each side, flanking us.

Trinity steps closer, leaning in as her lips seal into a tight line. "Where's the real squid?"

The hair rises on my arms at her soft tone. "There is no squid. It was a bluff. The holo was just a concession to convince Casey the Chimera was transporting the xeno," I say, heart hammering in my chest. I keep my eye from drifting down to her coil-gun. "We had to make sure he wouldn't be tempted to shoot it down."

There's a tense moment of silence as she examines my face. "Really? So, just a lie you used as a shield?"

I scoff and hope my disbelief is believable. "Do you think a Code captain would really get his hands on the first confirmed xeno and just keep it as a pet? Then turn it over to a CI to sell?" I put as much scorn into my tone as I can, as Sparrow's arm tightens on my waist.

Trinity raises an eyebrow and touches her temple with a finger. "What do you say, chief?" There's a long silence that stretches on for a moment that never seems to end. After two-dozen heartbeats, she nods and gives me half a grin. "Well, it seems the boss believes you. Or at least isn't pressing the issue." She skeptically looks me up and down, considering. "Though he says he'd like a word with you before you leave."

I feel a giddy rush, a flood of relief, and can't help but smile. "That's good to hear, because I want to talk to Dyer too," I say, noticing how her other eyebrow rises. "I think he owes me an explanation. And a drink."