Objective: BYOO (Steal financial information and murder billionaire)
The young man that the biot had kidnapped worked quickly. For all he had done to lie to get in to this place, the shuttle actually was in need of repairs. With all the volcanic disturbances, equipment had been breaking down due to any one of a dozen reasons. But the one thing truly, deeply on his mind now, was making sure he lived past today.
The guards stood watch over him in the hangar as he nervously worked, weapons trained on him at all times. He had been working twenty minutes when the lights went out. The guards turned on the flashlights on their rifles in confusion. He didn't move, almost too scared as the guards checked on comms with other sections of the estate. There was no response. The man the Biot had kidnapped involuntarily whimpered.
"No response..." one of the guards said, worried. "Something is jamming our communications...real close, too...
The hired killers began to move around the hangar, prepared to shoot anything out of place. The kidnapped man stopped working, retreated into the shuttle, shutting and locking the hatch, frantically looking for anything that could be used as a weapon. He found only a simple mining laser at twenty percent charge, shaped like a pistol. He did not move when the outside beyond the shuttle viewport went black and he saw something, flit across the port like a shadow. The down on his luck mining employee went still, like a mouse when it hears the nearby hiss of a snake. He heard a scream and flinched when he saw blood hit the cockpit viewport.
The man didn't have much time. But he had experience with tools, and plenty of fear to motivate him to improvise. That creature, whatever it was, would kill him. He hadn't even seen the creature. But he knew in his bones it wanted him dead, not for any actual reason, but simply because he was there.
He looked through the rest of the shuttle, finding a rebreather and an oxygen tank, a plasma torch, some sonic charges, and a crowbar.
There was another shriek of pain outside, then sounds of metal slashing into meat repeatedly. The mining pilot went pale when he saw and heard blaster fire, but kept frantically to his task, finding some wire and primer cord as he put on the rebreather, creating a booby-trap, the oxygen tank and the laser facing each other, linked by wire attached to the trigger just low enough to reach the ankle. It was very basic but it was all he had beyond the crowbar. He wasn't worried about whatever was killing the people outside being able to see using some enhanced vision mode...a lot of these shuttles had been made of a denser, more heat resistant alloy...that also happened to have the unexpected benefit of being highly resistant to surface penetrating enhanced visual scans...thermal or otherwise.
More blood splashed onto the cockpit viewport, followed by a piece of human vertebra. The Pilot, began frantically using the torch to cut through the cabinet doors down for any sort of armor whatsoever to shield himself. The blaster fire stopped outside. He heard tapping on the hatch. Then from the ceiling. Everything got darker suddenly. He trembled. There was knocking on the hull. It was toying with him.
The pilot wiped beads of sweat dirtied by mining dust off his face, carefully, slowly hefted the cut off durasteel cabinet doors over his body as quietly as he could. He saw a curved vibroknife punch into the hull, slowly drag down. He was shaking. The knife punched through the hatch seal next, cutting through the lock mechanism just above where the wire had been attached to. The hatch was yanked open, pulling the trigger of the mining laser, which fired at the oxygen tank.
He didn't hear anything because of the tank blowing, felt pain as he was slammed into the back of the shuttle, felt shrapnel hit his leg and he screamed, still momentarily deaf.
Adrenaline and the will to live made him rise. The doors were sturdy, had taken most of the fragments. Half the shuttle was smoking and he could not see as he limped, then fell out of the shuttle.
He crawled, finally spotting his would be killer, a scantily clad, pale skinned red head impaled through the torso by large fragments of metal from the burst tank., white blood leaking out anto a large puddle, one of her arms torn away by the blast. She was quite clearly dead, face shredded partly by the blast. He saw sparks from some of the open wounds.
The pilot rolled over, breathing.
"Android..." he hissed in pain, feeling with wet, bloody hand the needle of metal in his thigh. "It was a fething Android..."
He saw flashlights enter the hangar. He held up his hands as laser sights were trained on him.
"Don't shoot!" The Pilot screamed at the guards. "Please don't shoot!"
An hour later...
"And thats it..." The pilot breathed as he explained to Xurol and Wolfe why he sat tied to an elaborately carved wood chair "One minute they were evacuating everyone from the work site and I forgot my ID, next minute that monster..." he trailed, pointing to the inert, blood covered woman lying dead on the large dining table in the grand kitchen.
"Next minute sge sticks a knife against my spine to make me fly the shuttle...I swear to the Gods, I had no choice--"
"--and now thirty of my men are dead..." Xurol replied sighing as he turned away from him, still dressed in his dirty jumpsuit as he looked through gold framed windows to the sea of magma outside, the heat still getting slightly through the shield.
"Of all the days for this to happen it happens when part of the planet is deciding to drown in its own blood..." he complained, looking back at the corpse.
"Android, huh?" Xurol asked, going over to the body.
"Military grade, from the looks of it..." Wolfe remarked, relieved he had dodged a serious bullet. Sure Xurol was still alive and Wolfe wasn't getting paid, but at least the one person who could tie him to the crime was dead. He was not unhappy to not resort to the other option...
"What do we do with the body?" Wolfe asked.
Xurol turned back to it.
"I wanna know who tried to kill me. 'Someone' knows who this is. Stick it in the freezer. Turn the temperature down, we don't want it freezing and destroying evidence." Xurol answered. "I'll be in my suite, Wolfe. No other strange visitors requesting landing please."
"Of course sir..." Wolfe assured his employer. He gestured to some of the gaurds to move the corpse.
"Sir! What about this man?" one asked, gesturing to the tied up pilot.
Xurol shrugged. "What's your name, son?"
"Clyde." The Pilot answered. "Clyde Sphere."
"Well Clyde, for all I know, you could be in on it. A back up plan in case this more obvious threat failed." Xurol theorized, the shrugged. "You're going in the freezer too."
Clyde whimpered as the gaurds dragged him off with the corpse.
"Keep a guard on him at all times. Don't take your eyes off him..." Xurol ordered Wolfe.
Wolfe nodded, staring at Clyde, realizing Xurol had a very good point.
Perhaps he was not in the clear as he thought...
One hour, fifty-seven minutes later.
Clyde sat freezing, keeping a distance away from the corpse, a guard training a rifle on him. He was shaking, trembling from the cold, surrounded by meats and bags of other supplies when Wolfe entered the Freezer.
"Mr. Wolfe, Sir...everything is under control here..." the guard assured him.
"Of course it is. You're doing an excellent job..." Wolfe trailed, walking up to him...and producing a vibroknife, which he shoved into the shocked guard's chest grabbing his rifle as he fell dead in front of a shocked Clyde, who backed into a shelf of frozen cakes as Wolfe put on a pair of gloves and picked up the dead man's rifle, turning to Clyde with a look of regret, not noticing that the shrapnel that had been embedded in the corpse had fallen off, melted at their entry points by slow workin but utterly effective enzymes.
"Perhaps you are telling the truth. Maybe you really are innocent. If so, I'm sorry. I'd thought Belkren would be smart enough not to pay it all upfront. No one was supposed to get hurt except Xurol...and now its all belly up. If there is even the slightest chance he's right...I can't take the risk..."
He aimed the Rifle at Clyde's head.
"Ready to die?" Xurol asked.
Not wanting to go out like a total punk, Clyde responded defiantly, even as he was shaking from fear, by blurting out, "I was born ready, motherfether."
Wolfe snorted, about to pull the trigger, when the "corpse" shot up from the ground and sank bony fangs into the screaming Wolfe, tearing into his throat, getting blood everywhere as Wolfe struggled.
Clyde watched in horror as the flesh on the biot, including its arm regrew itself as she drank, his blaster firing into the ceiling, until she callously threw him to the ground, Wolfe having been dead before he hit it.
The blood soaked woman, clad seemingly only in strategically placed bandages turned to Clyde with a grin. She walked over to him, running her hands playfully through his hair. He shuddered.
"Would you like a job?" The Biot asked.
Clyde knew by the tone that depending on his answer, he would either be alive in the next few seconds or he wouldn't.
"S-s-sure. Yes..." Clyde answered him.
"Go to the hangar, then." The biot ordered. "As of now, you are my new familiar. If you flee...I'll chase you..."
Clyde didn't need to be told twice. He ran out of the freezer.
'Alice' smiled, picking up the knife in the guard.
"Now, for you, Xurol..." the biot hissed in delight, leaving the freezer to reach Xurol now that he wasn't expecting it...and 'maybe' go on a killing spree after...
