Twinks in Space: Destination Unknown - Part One - 10. Chapter 10 - Retaliation

It was morning, and Phentrom was with Jintrin. They were standing in front of a café.

“This is the place?” Phentrom asked.

“It is,” Jintrin replied.

However, instead of entering the establishment, Jintrin stepped up to one side of the café’s entrance and opened a small door that revealed a narrow staircase hidden behind it. They entered, closed the door, and ascended to a hallway. Jintrin walked past a few side rooms without giving them a glance. At the end of the hall was another door and another flight of stairs that led to another hallway. At its end was a final door. Jintrin knocked on it three times.

Stawren and her father had described the couple who lived above the café to Phentrom in great detail, but the mandroid was still very surprised by the pair of individuals who opened the door.

“Hello, dear friends,” Jintrin said warmly. “Phentrom, this is Neffah and Lingkrati.” He indicated one and then the other.

Each woman was more unique than Phentrom could have imagined. Nothing Jintrin had told him about Neffah’s green and yellow skin, her red eyes, and what appeared to be tentacles extending out of her back, had prepared Phentrom for her appearance. Lingkrati looked like she was made of stone, and she was faceless.

“Welcome to our home,” said a voice, but Neffah’s mouth did not move, and Phentrom suspected Linkrati was speaking. “Please come inside,” she added.

“Thank you,” Phentrom replied, as Neffah pulled the door shut behind them.

“Tenki and Fonith are on the roof, and everyone else is in the kitchen,” Lingkrati’s voice added.

Phentron and Jintrin entered, and as Phentrom’s eyes landed on Lyoth, the mandroid burst into tears. He rushed over and embraced his beloved, kissing him many times before eventually whimpering, “I was so worried.”

“We’re okay,” Lyoth reassured him. “None of us was injured, and we accomplished what we set out to do, but this is only the beginning.”

Phentrom leaned back from Lyoth. “There’s more?”

“I know what will happen next,” Lyoth continued, squeezing the mandroid’s hands in his, “and we need to react immediately when it does. The pirates don’t know who attacked them, when they find out what happened, they will respond. That’s why Tenki and Fonith are on the roof; they’re on lookout. Just because we took out a few villains doesn’t mean we’ve freed the people. We need to make it so that other pirates do not want to keep coming here.” Lyoth turned to Jintrin. “Pirates are notoriously untrustworthy, so their inner friendships are often fickle.” He looked back at Phentrom. “In the end, we want them to consider this planet inhospitable to their kind of filth. We need to make it so that anyone else out there,” and he waved up at the ceiling and the grand vastness of the universe beyond, “thinks twice about venturing down here to cause trouble.”

Stawren spoke up, “We’re going to hit them where it hurts, and all we need to do now is wait.”

Their wait did not last.

Phentrom and Jintrin were given cups of coffee, but they each only took a single sip from their mugs before Tenki appeared at the top of the private stairs that led to the rooftop garden above Neffah and Lingkrati’s apartment.

“The Yunkdok Hotel is on fire!” He and tattooed Fonith rushed down.

“It’s time,” Stawren stated. “Phentrom, you and my dad are going to stay here with Neffah. There’s no safer place in the entire city,” she added.

“We need to go, now!” Tenki demanded, and without another word, the group was gone.

The streets below were in chaos as Lyoth, Stawren, Tenki, Fonith, and Lingkrati exited next door to the café. Tenki went one direction, Lyoth and Stawren went another, and Fonith went a third. Lingkrati remained in the street in front of the café.

Stawren led Lyoth into the panicked crowd fleeing the calamity at the Yunkdok Hotel. They joined the throngs running away from the burning building.

Pirates were marching through the streets, blasting anything and anyone who got in their way. Tenki was one of the only people running toward them. Before he could see the flash of their weapons, he initiated his cybernetic enhancement’s under siege protocol, and he was armored.

Tenki immediately became the focus of the pirates, but his shielding deflected, or absorbed and dissipated any blaster bolts that connected with him. Instead of rapid-fire weapons like he had used in the close quarters inside the Yunkdok Hotel, Tenki now fired single shots from weapons in both hands, and each discharge was devastating.

One of his blasters launched black hole grenades that created precision gravitational anomalies, sending the pirates flying through the air. His other weapon fired orbs of plasma that ripped through anything they hit. The pirates, many of whom were hungover at such an early hour, were no match to Tenki. They may have expected their retaliation to be a brutal retribution against an unknown group who had killed several of their number in the night, however the pirates never expected such resistance from a single individual.

Lyoth had been right, and to Tenki’s surprise, several bruised and bloody locals armed themselves with hunting rifles or small hand-blasters, and they began firing back alongside him. Their support only made Tenki more ferocious, and when a blaster bolt exploded against one of their chests and the man fell dead, Tenki became fury incarnate.

“Get behind something!” he yelled to the locals, and he advanced, firing his brutal weapons until he was mere feet from the nearest pirate. Tenki holstered both blasters in exchange for an electron radiation shield that flashed to life in one hand, and a club in the other. He swung his bludgeon with brutal force at the pirate, and that alone would have been enough to incapacitate most men, but Tenki’s weapon also unleashed an electric discharge at the instant of impact. It caused the pirate to go rigid, and made each of Tenki’s blows that much more brutal. One after another, villains crumpled under his devastating assault, but then someone grabbed him from behind.

“Contact!” Tenki shouted, and his cybernetics responded. A bolt of electricity shot from his club, traveling through the exterior of his armor and unleashing into the hand of the pirate who dared touch him.

Tenki shoved his way into the midst of the gang, swiping and pummeling with his brutal lightning club. Then a shock of pain exploded in his side, as one of the pirate’s daggers managed to slip between his prosthetic armor plating. Tenki screamed like a tornado and raged against his enemies.

Several streets away from the chaos, Stawren led Lyoth toward the center of the island. They rounded a corner and she pointed.

“That’s it?” Lyoth asked.

“That’s it, the Dagger.”

They ducked down an alleyway and came out on a wide flattened area. An omega-class interstellar cargo ship was moored to a charging port. Without a word, Lyoth stepped up to the exterior perimeter sensor’s housing unit, and he shorted out the entire system. He and Stawren breached the fence and approached the hovering shuttle’s coupling.

Stawren climbed up to the base of the ship, which floated no more than 10 feet above the charging station. She reached up to secure a magnetic hook to the outside of the hull, and attached to the Dagger’s exterior, she climbed up like a spider. She reached a control panel and disengaged the vehicle’s airlock. It hissed open and Stawren clambered inside. She lowered a hoist line down to Lyoth.

A moment later, both of them were in the Dagger. Stawren silently pointed at a digital display, and she managed to bring up a schematic of the starship and a map of its levels. Lyoth’s eyes widened when the word magazine blinked across the screen. He nodded to Stawren, and they began heading down a hall that ended in the ship’s stored weapons.

People in the streets were fleeing to all parts of the city, trying to get away from the violence and the flames that were spreading from the Yunkdok Hotel. On the far side of town, Fonith was approaching her target, the Bank of the Islands. The well-known establishment made a name for itself among many of the wealthiest people who lived in Boullia Bay, and since most of the local were impoverished, the bank tailored to the pirates.

Fonith stepped up to an automated terminal and inserted the dummy card that she had been given. Attacking the bank was Stawren’s idea, but Fonith offered to perform the task. She would be more forgettable to the people at the bank, because Fonith’s rich olive skin and dramatic geometric tattoos gave her the appearance of the elite off-worlders who owned the resorts on the far side of the islands. She was not one of them, but her peoples practiced similar body modification, and with the right clothes and an elevated attitude, Fonith would be easily mistaken for one of them.

This better work, she thought to herself.

A progress bar appeared on the screen, and it began to load.

“Come on,” Fonith growled in a whisper. “Come on!”

The screen blinked with the word ACTIVATED and she removed the card.

Fonith turned her back to the terminal, and she smiled at a bank attendant who bowed as she left. After rounding a corner, she paused and pulled out her communication device to check the status of the code she uploaded into the bank’s terminal. Fonnith snickered when she saw the result, and she headed back through the city streets.