Hornet's Nest

A Life for an Option

It was a Centauri warrior shuffling through drawers like he was searching for something.

The soldier drew a g*n on them a bit slower than Hannes drew on him, the consequence of which was losing his hand.

“Haaaa!”

“Oh my God!” Kyle yelled, frightened.

The clone yelled as well, but it wasn’t a moment’s yelp, but rather a long string of terrified and unintelligible words. He tried to run away from them and the room but Daigo grabbed him before he could get enough distance, and then violently flung him inside the room.

“Aiiee!!!”

While he did that, Hannes was already inside, spitting out profanity as he tackled the flinching combatant to the ground.

Daigo pushed Kyle inside and closed the door behind them, out of basic precaution. Then, he marched towards the warrior, gesturing Kyle to stand by the entrance. The Centauri warrior had that telling protruded forehead, which held a third eye, and it was already frowning in anger. The pain from the wound was apparently an absent thought.

“Warrior class fer sure, D,” Hannes stated, holding the man up and steady.

Centauri eyes had no white to them. They were perfect spheres with irises that featured patterns of much greater complexity than that of a human. Those patterns diffused into different shapes, but it wasn’t according to emotion or anything. No even the Centauri knew, for a scientific fact, what was behind those patterns.

It bothered Daigo a bit, to look straight into one, but that’s what he did.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Daigo asked.

“I should ask you the same thing, mammal!” They were also not mammals, which is why Daigo couldn’t just kick his testicles in for immediate answers.

Daigo punched him for effect, and then searched for any tracking tech he could be carrying on him.

Daigo noticed how the soldier’s wrist was still bleeding from having its hand shot off by Hannes’s cannon. The clone had meanwhile hidden under his bed. His screams had turn to whining whispers.

Daigo found a bug on the Centauri, same place John had had his.

“What’s going on?” Kyle asked.

Daigo’s thoughts raced, reflexively darting his prosthetic eyes around the room. He needed answers, but odds were very against them breaking a spy in the most lavish bedroom in the universe.

Does that say massaging pool? Daigo thought, distractedly. What’s a massaging pool?

He looked around some more for something he could use to break the spy as quickly as possible, but then again, how far would he go in front of Kyle? And would he go any distance at all? t*****e wasn’t really something Daigo was fond of, and time was much too short for someone inexperienced at it to break spy. After all, there might be more Centauri warriors about, and they might have heard their initial exchange. Time was already running out, most likely.

Daigo sighed, and then looked back at the Centauri.

“Okay. You’re not a fool, Mr. Spy. You know we’re here with a clone, and since you lost contact with your human spy while carrying a clone of Wichmond, I know you know what’s going on here. Meanwhile, I know I can’t make you tell me, but I also can’t just leave because you’ll contact your friends and then we’ll be dead. Meanwhile, if we take too long, someone will check up on you, and find us, and then we’ll be dead.”

“Just kill me already,” was roughly what the spy said, in his native language.

Kyle wouldn’t understand it but Daigo and Hannes could understand something like that in any language.

“That’s the thing,” Daigo pointed out, drawing his own pistol, “tell us what’s going on, and you go back to Centauri Prime with honors.” Centauri believed their true selves, spirits in human language, went back to the core of their birth planet. “Don’t, and I’ll just poke your eyes out and drop you in that pool over there.”

Unless they lost their eyes, in which case they wouldn’t be able to find their way.  They were also notoriously bad swimmers.

“What the--?! That-that’s horrible, captain!” Kyle exclaimed, shocked.

“Yes, I agree,” Daigo remarked, nodding slightly. “I won’t sleep well for a while, but hey, long as I get to sleep, right? So what’ll it be, spook?”

“No need for atrocities now… Captain.”

That was a new voice, but at the same time, not new at all. It was coming from next to the bed. Daigo found a panel that was, it turned out, an intercom.

“Go ahead and execute the man. I have a feeling we can help each other out of this… unfortunate situation.”

That was Wichmond. Most likely the one they were supposed to replace with the clone. The man was observing them somehow -- hearing them at the very least -- to know what Daigo had just said. Was he in hiding? How many more of these spies were in his fortress?

Daigo gestured at Hannes to shoot the spy and walked towards the intercom.

“No,” the voice called out, before Hannes could pull the trigger. “I want to see you do it, Captain. I need to know you’re capable of it.”

Daigo frowned and looked back at the spook. He shook his head with distaste and, for a lack of a better place to glare at, faced upward. “Why?”

“If you can’t, you can’t help me. If you can’t help me, I won’t help you.” The voice spoke very factually. Saddened but fatal.

Daigo could do it but ultimatums always made him angry and rebellious.

“That’s fine. Hannes, we’re leaving,” Daigo said.

“You should know, captain, that there are roughly two squads of his Centauri compatriots in my citadel. They have neutralized all my staff, and they became aware of your ship five minutes ago. They are now looking for you, and they have sent a few of their men to kill the rest of your crew.”

Daigo stopped and looked back. Kyle brought a hand to his mouth in helplessness, and Hannes’s face turned into a more real kind of angry.

“Your ship has remarkable defenses, cyber-wise,” the voice admitted, slightly impressed, “but it will not take the Centauri long to mechanically force their way into it. Brute force. It will not take them long to find you either, for that matter.”

Daigo’s lips cracked in thought.

Wichmond might be lying, but if he was, the man desperately needed their help. Daigo looked at Hannes who looked back at him, and they were thinking the same thing.

Worst case scenario, they just forced the bastard to give them their credits and bolted on their own.

Yet, despite what he had said to Kiyin, Daigo really doubted even Hannes could take on dozens of Centauri’s best. He wouldn’t be catching them one by one by surprise from behind.

“And you can help us how?” Daigo asked.  

“Kill him,” the voice reiterated, unflinchingly.

Daigo’s prosthetic eyes dropped in frustration. When they opened back again, they saw nothing, or rather, nothing that was being processed by his mind. In fast, frustrating steps, he marched next to the spy and shot him in the head to the sound of a squeak coming from Kyle.

There was also the clone, of course, who did not react well. Grabbing hold of his head, he screamed in horror.

“Good,” the voice acknowledged.

The clone crawled out from under the bed, towards the door, whimpering on the way. “Aiieee! Let me go! Please! This is a mistake!”

Hannes rushed and stepped in the way, cutting him off. He also silenced him with a growling.

The voice of Wichmond sighed. “Now come meet me. I will reveal to you how I can help us both out of this situation. Unfortunately, you should bring the clone.”

Daigo and Hannes traded glances again, and blew out in frustration.

“You killed him…” Kyle said, taken aback. “I’m sorry I… I really gotta get used to it, I guess.”

Daigo and Hannes both faced Kyle. They wanted to say that yes, he should, but at the same time, no decent person pushes the innocent to become jaded and cruel. And no matter what they did, Daigo still considered himself decent enough.

“It’s okay if you don’t,” Daigo said quickly, and in a low voice.

Kyle looked at him, pained.

Daigo turned away with a hard scoff. Clearing his throat, he holstered his weapon and looked up at the ceiling. “How do we get to you, Wichmond?”

There was a secret passageway inside the massaging pool. Hannes grabbed the clone by the collar of his white suit and brought him along.

Daigo almost had to do the same to Kyle. He was having second thoughts even as they got into the elevator to get to bottommost floor of Wichmond’s fortress.

“This is getting crazy, Captain,” Kyle complained, weakly and worried. “Too crazy.”

Daigo knew how to motivate both siblings, though.

“Kid. Did you pay attention to anything that was said? They’re going after your sister. Throwing a tantrum’s only going to delay us getting back to her.”

The kid was sweating and scared. Daigo was, as well, but the difference was that no one would be able to tell with him. Meanwhile, even people on the satellite could probably smell Kyle’s nerves.

The elevator was going fast, and yet, it was taking a long time.

“This is a mistake, this is a mistake, we need to run,” the clone mumbled on and on. It was almost background noise at that point. Daigo wasn’t even sure how the man’s voice was still working. “We need to run.”

“This clone’s really gettin’ on my nerves,” Hannes said.

“Really? The clone’s getting on your nerves?” Daigo asked.

“Clone’s makin’ it so everythin’s gettin’ on my nerves way worse’s what I mean,” Hannes complained, using a really odd, uncomfortable sentence. The soldier was certainly more on edge than usual.

Then again, so was Daigo.  “Phase him out,” he said, cringing, “we’ll get rid of him soon enough.”

“What? No, no no no, we agreed! We have an agreement, I can pay you, just please, please no no no.”

Daigo and Hannes took a heavy breath, and finally, the elevator stopped and opened its doors.

Walking out of the elevator, they met with one of the largest rooms Daigo had ever seen. It took a good amount of staring to work out that it was actually a huge cave, which Wichmond had apparently made into a lab. It was a disorganized mess of misshapen technology, none of which Daigo could recognize, but all of which looked dangerous.

“Do you know the source of my fortune, smuggler?”

The voice was not a transmission that time. They turned aside to find a different version of the clone they were dragging after them, standing in the distance. He was only a faint silhouette right then, standing against a big source of light that looked anything but natural. It was too diffused.

“C’mon,” Daigo said, leading them along. The clone was about to work his voice again, but Hannes raised his hand at him in a threat that kept him to the whimpers.

Cautiously, but showing as little hesitation as he could, Daigo led them to meet the real Wichmond face to face. It was time to get all the explanations that he was owed.