Twinks in Space: Destination Unknown - Part One - 12. Chapter 12 - The Dagger

“The money’s in a ghost account!” Stawren declared with a laugh.

Fonith chuckled. “No one at the bank looked at me twice.”

“I’m glad they didn’t,” Jintrin replied to her.

The small group of rebels was back at Neffah and Lingkrati’s loft. They were all on the rooftop patio.

Around Tenki’s waist was wrapped a binding that held a thick bandage in place over the stab wound in his side. One of the protective cybernetic panels of his armor was malfunctioning from damage it sustained during the battle, and it would not stow back into its housing, but Tenki was alive. He laughed and winced. “Those pirates are so used to getting their way, but they didn’t see us coming, and I bet most of them don’t even realize yet what we’ve done!”

“How did Neptithia do it, exactly?” Lyoth asked Stawren. “Now that I’m not so focused on what we needed to do, and we have time to discuss what she accomplished, I’d love more details.”

“Oh, blast!” Stawren exclaimed. “I meant to message her to have a safe journey before she left. She’s probably in hyperspace already.”

“You can use my portable XG4,” Fonith offered.

Stawren looked surprised. “You’ve got a hyperspace communicator?”

Fonith smirked. “Of course I do.” She pulled it out of her satchel and placed the handheld device onto a tabletop.

“Wow, yeah, thanks, I’d love to use it to send her a message.” Stawren turned to Lyoth. “Something like 20 years ago, she was the communications security specialist for the Allthrin government. My aunt Thia actually wrote the base-level coding that was used to design the automated digital security programs that are used by a lot of companies, including the Bank of the Islands. When I came to her last night and told her what we wanted to do, she said she’d already written a shadow assault virus years ago, but she hasn’t had any way to get it into the bank’s mainframe.” Stawren stepped up to Phentrom. “And we decided to put you and my dad in charge of it.”

The mandroid was confused. “Me? Why did you put me in charge of this stolen money?”

Lyoth took Phentrom’s hand. “It’s not stolen. The money never belonged to those gangsters.”

Stawren continued. “Neptithia and I figured that you and my dad only have good intentions. The money needs to be given to the people of Boullia Bay who have been suffering, but there’s no way for them to receive it right now, so someone needs to safeguard it. Most of us locals don’t have bank accounts of any kind, so we’ll need to figure out some other way to distribute the money.”

“And it can’t happen immediately,” Lyoth added. “The pirates need to be removed before the people are given this aid. We don’t want there to be any link between what we’ve taken, and what the citizens receive.”

Phentrom turned his gaze to look out across the city toward the Dagger. “When do you suppose it’ll detonate?” Everyone else looked in the same direction.

“Not yet,” Jintrin replied.

Phentrom and Jintrin had spent the day with Neffah, protected in her and Lingkrati’s apartment. They were so worried about the violence that their loved ones were involved in that the pair of men ended up stress-cooking a particularly large feast from whatever was in the cupboards.

The group now snacked on baked oysters with handmade seed crackers, seafood gumbo that contained prawns and flowerfish, rice with spicy sausage, smoked and pickled megaminnows, a meat pie with pork and scallops, three different types of fruit tarts, and even a firm custard with caramel for dessert.

A blazing flash made them all look away from the food and back at the docking ports that housed the interstellar vessels. The Dagger had a geyser of flame erupting out of its back end. Then there was a void, as the secondary explosion of the negative matter bombs detonated. What once was a spaceship, imploded in on itself, collapsing to a twisted chunk of metal that crashed down on the charging port beneath it.

“There it goes,” Lyoth commented. “Those pirates shouldn’t have had access to negative matter bombs, and now they don’t.”

“Very satisfying,” Stawren said with a smile. “I wonder who set off our trigger.”

“Who knows,” Lyoth replied, “and now they don’t have their primary means to leave the planet.

“Other pirates will think twice before docking in Boullia Bay now!” Stawren added.

Phentrom spoke up in a nervous voice. “They already burned one building to the ground and attacked people at random. What are they going to do next?”

Lyoth took a deep breath. “They won’t be creative. They will think they’re being creative, but they’re so predictable, and they’ll do exactly what we’re expecting.” Lyoth sounded like he wished there was some other way. “They’ll strike out at the people again. This is what their kind always does. It’s terrible, but when they do it, they’ll inevitably reveal more of themselves. We are drawing them out like the poison they are.”

“And poison hurts,” Fonith added. “They’re going to hurt more people before we’re through with them.”

Stawren scoffed and the others looked at her. “Let’s be honest.” She frowned. “There’s nothing new about those assholes hurting people. Before we started what we’ve started, they were already going to hurt people in some way. They were going to keep taking advantage of the local like they’ve done for years. I’m done with them. There’s no redemption for these assholes!”

Lyoth, Tenki, Fonith, and Neffah were enthusiastic about Stawren’s words, but Phentrom and her father were concerned.

Then the disembodied voice of mouthless Lingkrati spoke. “None of us alone could have removed our enemies from their position of power, but we are a force to be reckoned with, and the pirates are not long for these isles. For too many years, the people of Boullia Bay have lived under their oppression. It is now a time of change.”

Lyoth waited a moment to make sure Lingkrati had finished speaking before he continued. “They will be looking for anyone who might know anything about us, or witnesses of our resistance.”

While Lyoth continued discussing things with Tenki and Stawren, Phentrom stepped up to Fonith and asked, “May I please use your communicator after Stawren?”

“Looks like she’s not going to use it for a while,” Fonith replied. “Go ahead.” She picked it up from the table and handed it to the mandroid.

Phentrom walked over to a quieter corner of the rooftop and punched the specific code into the device for the person he was trying to reach. There was a beep and the screen flashed with a familiar face.

“Hello, Suoki.”

Captain Suoki was aghast. “Phentrom!? You’re alive? I thought you were dead!”

“Lyoth and I survived the attack, but Drolpi, Konark, and Morzil were all killed. That wasn’t you, was it?”

“Of course not! And I hate to say it, but there was a mutiny aboard the Ulaa-Lah.”

“What?!” Phentrom squawked.

“I know.” The captain sighed. “I didn’t see it coming. Turns out, it was led by an advisor of mine, Penqui. I don’t know if you know him, but Lyoth does. I’ve been confined to my quarters and my communication devices have been taken, so I’ve had no way to get a hold of anyone. When this old trans-satellite receiver started beeping in my closet, I was totally surprised. I had completely forgotten about it. Why did you even think to call me on this?”

“I’m using an XG4.”

Captain Suoki furrowed his brow. “A hyperspace communicator? Huh, different digitalization, which must be why you look all pixilated on my screen. Phentrom, thank you for calling me,” he continued in a somber voice. “I’ve been locked in here for almost 48 hours, and I was beginning to feel hopeless. I don’t know who, if anyone, is still loyal to me. I haven’t been permitted to see anyone on the ship.”

“Where are you? Where is the Ulaa-Lah?” Phentrom asked.

“We could be anywhere,” Captain Suoki replied. “We were on our way to the inner sector of the Losinioth galaxy, where there are a few specialty upgrade companies that were going to make improvements to the Ulaa-Lah, but the exterior panels on my windows have been sealed. I have no idea where Penqui has brought us.”

“In 48 hours, the ship could have traveled to an entirely different sector,” Phentrom stated.

“I know. There’s no telling where we are.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

“Phentrom, is there some way for me to get ahold of you?”

“I don’t know,” the mandroid replied. “for the time being, we’re with a bounty hunter who owns this XG4, but I don’t know for how long. Everything is chaos down here.”

Captain Suoki gasped. “You’re with a bounty hunter?!”

“Yeah, and Lyoth has started a rebellion.”

“He what?”

Phentrom looked across the rooftop at his beloved. “We met up with some locals who have been living under the yoke of these vicious gangsters, and Lyoth rallied the people and attacked. He’s determined to get rid of these off-worlder pirates and restore the people’s freedom.”

Captain Suoki looked impressed. “All this sounds a lot like Lyoth,” he admitted. “He may seem like any other man, but he’s a liberator and a warrior underneath. Is he there? Can I talk to…”

The screen in Phentrom’s hand froze with the image of Captain Suoki in mid-speech. Then it flashed back to its digital landing page.

Oh, no, Phentrom thought, did the mutineers somehow realize Suoki and I were connected? Do they know he’s made contact and that Lyoth and I aren’t dead after all? Did this call just alert the people who we’re trying to hide from, that we are still out here?

He approached Fonith. “Excuse me, but the connection just went dead. Is there some way to find out what happened?”

She took the device and hit a few buttons. “No, sorry, I don’t know why you lost your call. Do you want to call them back?”

“No, thank you, though.”

Lyoth was still in the middle of making plans when Phentrom stepped up to him, so the mandroid did not tell his beloved anything he had learned from Captain Suoki.

“Tenki,” Lyoth continued, “what sort of armor-piercing or heat beam tech do you have in your cybernetics? I want to have multiple contingencies for the arrival of pirate reinforcements.”

“Reinforcements?” Phentrom asked.

“Yes,” Lyoth replied, “I want to have…” he paused as he looked for the right word, “traps in place to show future marauders that this is not a planet for them.”

Tenki looked intrigued. “I’ve got a single-use solar flare and several options of armor-piercing ammo. What do you have in mind?”

“We need something that can puncture metal from a distance. I want to take out the coming reinforcements in a way so that everyone in Boullia Bay can see it happen.”

“But what reinforcements are you talking about?” Phentrom asked.

Lyoth turned to Stawren’s father. “Jintrin, your fear of unlimited pirates was cultivated by the pirates themselves to keep the people here living in dread and under their thumb. There aren’t unlimited pirates, but others are already on their way, and I want us to be ready for them before they get here.”

Phentrom looked scared. “How do you know that other pirates are coming?”

“Because we’ve already shown those who are on-planet that they are being challenged,” Lyoth explained. “The moment we revealed their weakness, you can bet they called for more of their scum to come here and help. Weakness is an underlying trait of the power-hungry, but they hate when their weakness is exposed, and they’ll do anything to counter and hide their inherent vulnerabilities. We will turn their weakness into fear.”