Trapped: Chaos Core Book 1 (9 page)

“Larken?” she
asked, turning around.

“Made it,” he said,
coughing wetly. “Inside and outside hatches are closed.”

He was slumped down
against the back wall, two holes the size of her fist through his
middle and one in the middle of his chest. The handgun the pilot used
was a shredder, it didn’t hit hard enough to damage most
electronics much, but it tore through flesh raggedly, savagely. “Oh,
no,” Aspen said, taking him into his arms. “I’m sorry, my love.
I’m so sorry.”

Her hand touched
something soft with jagged pieces sticking out when she tried to
cradle his head in it, and it came away covered in blood. He was
bleeding profusely everywhere. Aspen’s mind raced as she tried to
find a way to save him. There were emergency kits aboard, but there
was nothing that could help him there, and she knew for a fact that
there were no automatic medical treatment systems aboard. If they
were ever present, they were ripped out to make room for luxury
cabins.

He reached up and
caressed her face. “It’s okay,” he breathed, pain creasing his
forehead. “We were together. I can’t believe you got us out. I
did okay? I didn’t slow you down?”

“You were perfect,”
Aspen said, kissing his forehead and brushing his hair from his face.
“Rest, just rest. There must be an emergency kit here, maybe
something to slow this down.” She started to get out from under him
but he gripped her tunic. She let herself be dragged down to kiss
him, and tasted blood on his lips.

He looked to the
cockpit window and saw space. “I’m free,” he said. “I’m
free with you,” he struggled with another breath.

“You’re free,”
Aspen said. “I love you so much, Larken.”

“Love you too, always
loved you,” he said. “Find someone who-“ he struggled.

“Shh,” she said,
brushing her lips against his. She didn’t want to be told to move
on.

“-makes you laugh,”
he finished. “I always loved watching you laugh. And don’t let
her get you.” He breathed. “I…” His chest quaked, his hand
gripped hers hard, and he breathed rapidly, blood gurgling in his
chest and sputtering through his lips. There was panic in his eyes.

“Larken, I love you,
I’m so sorry I did this. I love you.”

His eyes finally lost
focus, he stopped breathing and he fell limp. Aspen stared at his
face. This would be how she would remember him, she knew from
experience. When the artificial intelligences took over and killed
most of the people in the Countess’s household she saw people she
grew up with die, and no matter how wonderful those people were, she
could only ever remember their faces as they were in the throes of
panic or fear.

Larken would forever
look like he was in pain and afraid. She wouldn’t remember holding
his hand in the garden when they were children, without recalling how
he clutched hers as his body failed him. Memories of staring
contests, and nose-to-nose closeness where they would look into each
other’s eyes would conjure up a memory of his dead gaze.

The navigational
computer beeped, indicating that the emergency jump coordinates were
calculated and the ship was in position. There were alerts on the
combat scanner’s screen – ships were coming to get them. Aspen
slowly got to her feet, crossed to the console and confirmed that she
wanted to make the jump and the ship began hyper-accelerating into a
wormhole of its own creation.

Aspen checked all the
security systems to make sure there was no one else aboard, cut power
to the transponder and curled up in the back corner of the cockpit.
“I got out,” she whispered to herself. “But I left half of me
behind.” Not for the first time, Aspen wished her tear ducts would
allow her to cry. Her sobs came anyway, so hard that her stomach and
ribs hurt by the time she felt numb.

Spin slowly realized
that she had to make sure she had full control of the ship, then get
rid of the pilot. Half numb to the world around her, she went through
the motions of adding herself into the system then crashing the
security software, taking the seconds it took for it to restart to
add herself as the new captain. If the main console weren’t already
unlocked, she wouldn’t have been able to do it, but the pilot was
busy getting the ship ready for take-off when she killed him.

“You’re going to
spin in space forever, asshole,” she said to him as she turned the
seat towards the door and pushed him face first onto the deck. “I’ll
have to write something on your forehead just in case someone finds
you out there.”

Looking past his corpse
she saw Larken and a pang of sadness struck her. It was followed by
something that burned just as deeply – anger. “I’m going to
make every one of them suffer.”

The console behind her
beeped twice quickly, indicating that they were close to coming out
of faster than light travel mode. Aspen set it to start calculating
the next jump, a longer stretch that took the Fleet Feather to a
charted world it had never been to before so she could lessen the
chances of pursuers guessing her destination. Kort would be the first
to come for her. He was legendary for cheating death, and she was
sure the damage she did – though significant – wasn’t enough to
put him down.

Using her new Captain’s
access, she deactivated the transponder and entered her personal
communication codes, so the ship wouldn’t contact anyone using its
own identity. Running with smugglers for a year had taught her many
tricks.

Sadly, it didn’t make
getting rid of one body and figuring out what to do with another one
that was much more treasured any easier. Aspen opened the armoured
cockpit door and heard voices coming up from below. After closing and
locking it quietly, she checked the internal security monitor and
discovered that there were four lower members of the Countess’s
court from the Rinnel company sitting together. She recognized two of
them right away – Tilly and Dexter Rinnel. They were children in a
growing empire and professional lobbyists who were partially
responsible for having laws against slavery repealed on dozens of
civilized worlds, and that was before the Basic Era started. Aspen
could only imagine how easy it must have been after artificial
intelligences went mad and began to fight each other for them to do
business as slavers. There were numerous worlds where the military
destroyed all the complex technology with electromagnetic pulse
bombs, leaving millions of people stranded.

As Aspen stared at them
on the screen she wondered how many dolls their company owned, and
how many they sold. It took her seconds to find the pilot’s sidearm
and check it for ammunition. He’d expended fourteen shots, there
were twenty-one left. She found two more clips in the drawer in his
console along with a few snack bars, a bag of dill rice puffs, a pair
of women’s underwear which she discarded without touching, and
control chips for devices across the ship. “Thank God you were a
stupid pervert. You may as well have left the whole ship unlocked.”

She searched him
rapidly, finding the data chip containing the ownership documents for
the ship in his boot and another snack bar. The ship emerged from
faster than light mode and Aspen checked the scans of the area. There
was an unmanned communication station, and a slow transit shuttle at
long range.

With a few button
presses she set the computer to jump as soon as anything with a
weapon arrived in the area. She had some cleaning to do before moving
on.

Gun in hand, Aspen
opened the hatch and walked down the stairs into the main passenger
area.

“Oh my God, what
happened, Aspen?” asked Tilly, her slender hand covering her mouth.

Spin almost forgot that
she was covered in Larken’s blood. “Stand up and get against that
bulkhead,” she said, raising the weapon and pointing it at Dexter
Rinnel. “All of you.”

“She’s gone insane,
I’ve heard of this happening to dolls,” Tilly said, clutching his
arm.

With nary a thought,
Aspen fired at the seat next to one of the servants. The round burst
apart in the air, sending spinning fragments forward in a shot seven
centimetres wide. Her soft target exploded in a puff of white
padding. “Do it! Now!” she shouted.

They rushed to the
bulkhead, hands raised, shrinking away from her. “Where were you
when the ship took off?”

“We were already
settling into our quarters,” Dexter explained. “We were the last
to move our things in and were almost on our way off.”

“You were going to
make the journey to Geist aboard the Fleet Feather? Don’t lie, I
can check the manifest.”

“Yes, we’re out of
favour with the Countess, so we don’t get to travel with her.”

That sounded right to
Aspen. “Is there anyone else on the ship?”

“No, just personal
luggage and a dog,” Tilly replied, curling up against her brother’s
side.

“All right, “Aspen
said. “There is a corpse up there; a fat man. I want your servants
to drag it to the starboard airlock right there. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”
Dexter said, his arm around his sister. “We’ll do anything you
ask us to if you’ll let us live.”

“Order them to move
the body, “Aspen said, carefully aiming the handgun at Tilly, who
whimpered and covered her eyes.

Dexter nodded at his
servants and the pair of them rushed up the stairs. “Is that
Larken?” one of them asked, shocked.

“Leave him alone!”
Aspen said, not taking her eyes off the the Rinnels leaning against
the bulkhead across the cabin. “Just the fat one. Drag him.”

They followed her
orders and dragged him to the airlock face down. “Good, now put him
in the airlock and get in there with him. Don’t worry, it’s safe,
the airlock won’t open while we’re under way.” Aspen said,
using her best reassuring tone.

“Listen, I don’t
know what happened, and I’m sorry if Larken is hurt up there. Maybe
we can help,” Dexter offered.

“Do you have anything
that can restore a human brain? Can you get it here in the next
hour?”

Dexter was silent.
Everyone there knew the answer already. Aspen glanced at the servants
and nodded towards the airlock. “Get in, don’t worry.” She
returned her focus to Dexter and his sister. “Order them to do it.”

“I won’t,” one of
the servants said, bursting into tears. “Not with him,” she
pointed at the corpse and wailed incoherently.

“Just push him into
it and sit down beside the airlock, then,” Aspen said. The wailing
servant, lovely in her own right but near panic, reminded her not to
spread her revenge too widely. They weren’t responsible for
anything, there was no need to space them with the pilot’s corpse,
especially since they pushed him into the airlock quickly, closing
the inner doors behind him. They also didn’t look like any
generation of doll Aspen had ever seen, so they probably weren’t
brainwashed into serving their masters like many she’d known. The
servants sat down as soon as they were finished, their backs against
the bulkhead beside the airlock. “Thank you,” Aspen said.

Spin looked back to
Dexter then, all emotions but anger draining from her. She touched
her wrist, starting a recording. “Now Dex, we’ve met before. You
remember?”

“I do,” he said. “A
long time ago. We got along.”

“No, I led you to
think we were getting along. Sure, you were kind, but I could tell
you were only trying to assess my value before making an offer to the
Countess. That’s what you and your sister do, you barter, you
trade, and you grow your little empire for your family.”

“You were too
precious to her,” Dexter said. “You should be proud.”

“You came to the
palace yesterday to see Larken and me, didn’t you?”

“No, we heard there
would be a big announcement, that our business would benefit, so we
attended. I didn’t regret it until now.”

“I wonder, were you
more interested in the new dolls from the New Skin Facility, or in
buying my babies?” Aspen waited for a response, but Dexter was too
smart to offer one and Tilly was terrified. “I want you to repeat
after me: Transfer seventy-seven million UCA credits…”

“Transfer
seventy-seven million UCA credits…” Dexter repeated.

“To the account
number provided…”

Dexter’s expression
darkened as he repeated; “To the account number provided…”

“And the location of
your children will be transmitted to you.”

“I’m not doing
this,” Dexter said. “There’s no way I’m going to get
ransomed.”

“All right,” Aspen
said, “then I’ll record my own message.” She cleared her
throat. “If you do not transmit seventy-seven million UCA credits
for each one of these captives to the account provided, you will
never know the location of your children’s bodies.”

Tilly screeched and hid
her face against her brother. For a grown woman, she did a good
impression of a frightened little girl. “All right!” Dexter said.
“You will receive the location of your children when the money is
received!” he shouted. “Good enough?”

“Good, get in the
hyper-pod, now.”

Dexter opened the
round, red and white hatch and helped his sister into the escape pod.
“You’re going to pay for this, there is no doubt, and we won’t
take money as reparation.” He growled.

“Get in the pod!”
Aspen shrieked, taking several steps forward with the gun levelled at
his head. Startled, he fell inside, tangling with his sister and her
frilly yellow dress.

Spin slammed the inner
hatch shut, followed by the outer hatch and locked it. She edited and
transmitted the ransom demand without launching the pod. It wasn’t
the place, the area was too busy, it was too close to the Countess’
estate. With the message sent, she used a small access console and
her new Captain’s code to initiate the Fleet Feather’s next
faster than light jump.

“What about us?”
asked the braver of the two servants. She had nice, big brown eyes
and long strawberry blonde hair.