Hornet's Nest

Double Agent

Daigo jumped to the side and was shocked to feel the piece of plastic shooting past him, missing the mark.

Falling on the ground, he heard a heavy groan, but it didn't come from him. Daigo rolled and looked back to see Hannes tackling John down to the ground. He noticed John’s left knee was dislocated and figured Hannes must have kicked it. That was why he missed.

John brought the g*n to Hannes’s face, but he swiped it to the side with his right hand while striking at John’s head with his left, smashing it against the ground. Daigo winced at the sound of a breaking skull, which was clear despite the second gunshot which went way off the mark.

By the time Daigo stood up, Hannes was still punching.

“Hannes! Stop it, man!”

“He tried ta kill me!!!” Hannes bellowed with a rage that seemed to shake the corridor.

Daigo shook his head, telling himself that that was impossible, and rushed them both.

“Well look at it from his point of view,” Daigo yelled, violently pushing Hannes off of their client, “what do you think he thought we were doin--”

Daigo frowned. He had seen worse, and John wasn’t dead right that second, but he sure wasn’t going to survive what Hannes had done to him.

Daigo winced and glanced at Hannes disapprovingly. “Eesh…”

Standing up, Hannes rose his hands in protest. “’m sorry!” Then, he brought them back to his hips to look at what he had done, a bit regretful. “You know how I get, D.”

Daigo clicked his tongue and kept staring at the mercenary while swiftly shooting John in the head. Hopefully that would spare the soldier from the pain he had been lightly moaning about. “I’ve told you to get a better grip on these things, Hannes.”

“He tried ta kill me,” Hannes mumbled, aggressively. “Wha’d’m I supposed to do?!”

“Well, what would you do if someone gassed you in the middle of space?” Daigo asked.

Hannes didn’t say anything in reply. He’d most likely go with the g*n right off the bat, would be what he was realizing. He’d most likely have killed them before any punches were thrown.

“Crazy that he noticed it, though,” Daigo pointed out, “I wouldn’t have.”

“Yeah,” Hannes agreed, “he was good.”

Daigo then noticed that there was a call coming in on the intercom panel that was placed outside the room, next to the door. With an eyebrow raised, he went and pressed the button.

“Hello?”

“You better clean up that mess,” Sará’s voice requested, bored. “I don’t want Kyle seeing that.”

Daigo paused. He suddenly recalled what her task had been.

“Wait, you could see inside! Why didn’t you tell us he was up?”

“I tried,” Sará simply said, and then shut the call.

Daigo just glared at the thing, speechless.

“Hey, why didn’t she warn us?” Hannes asked, coming to Daigo’s conclusion.

“Apparently she tried,” Daigo said, dumbfounded. “I guess we just didn’t notice the intercom was flashing?”

Hannes growled in protest. “I keep tellin’ ya to fix this junk, D. I keep sayin’ it’ll get us killed, but no.”

“Let’s just check on the damn box,” Daigo argued, walking into the room. He was angry that it had all gone so wrong. He really hoped the box would have something to justify murder, he didn’t like going to sleep with a heavy conscience.

Alas, they soon found out that the box had a security system that used finger prints, and that meant that they had to drag John’s body back into the room and use his hand.

“This guy’s freakin’ heavy, let’s just cut his hand off,” Hannes proposed.

“Shut up and pull, Hannes,” Daigo said, his patience at an end.

When they finally unlocked the box, it didn’t simply open. It ominously whispered, first, exhaling some mysterious vapor. Then, it opened very slowly, and the cold gas gently expanded against them, blowing in their faces like short, weak breeze.

Obviously, they didn’t breathe it.

Hannes was waving his hand to clear it, but Daigo was already beset with a bad feeling.

“The hell kind’a package is this?” Hannes asked.   

“You know what it looks like,” Daigo said, forebodingly.

Hannes looked at Daigo with a tinge of hesitation.

“Well,” he paused, conflicted. “It isn’t.”

Daigo looked up at Hannes, meaningfully. “Knowing our luck?”

Hannes’s face contorted, his teeth showing through his scar. He spat and cursed his way out of the room. Daigo took a deep breath and steeled himself, looking on at the dissipating vapor, waiting to be proven right.

And he was.

Daigo closed his eyes -- the eyelids still worked fine over the prosthetics -- and massaged his forehead. How was he going to explain all that to Kiyin?

“Okay, so. Hear me out until the end, okay?”

“Oh gods.” Kiyin sat up on her bed, distraught and disheveled. She covered her face with her hands, and her tentacles came around to hug her head. “We’re going to Muena, aren’t we?”

“No!” Daigo shook his head and his hands and his voice, “definitely not! It’s not that bad.”

Cautiously, Kiyin peeked at him with a sleepy gaze. “Okay… What is it, then?”  

“First off. John? Turns out he’s a spook,” Daigo stated. “Or was.”

All of Kiyin’s members released her head and she glared him. “What? As in a spy?”

“For Centauri,” Daigo clarified, scratching his head. “This all… got really complicated really fast. He caught on to the gas, he had this kind of tiny breathing apparatus in his cape, and he was expecting us when we went into his room. He tried to fight so Hannes killed him.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Kiyin yelled as her tentacles shot forth and threw a pillow at Daigo. He caught it off the air and placed it back on the bed. He would’ve taken the hit, usually, but he wasn’t in a playful mood.

“I know, I know,” Daigo said, confessing to his mistakes.

“I keep telling you! Take Sará, take me, take Spinz! Not Hannes!”

“Just – it’s done, Kiyin, I asked you to let me finish. Now, we found a tracer on him, so we already ejected him off the ship. That means we need to change courses, and we need to do it right now. So come on, get ready and let’s go, I’ll tell you the rest on the way.”

Kiyin groaned and took off her covers, revealing that she was wearing little else than a thin-layered t-shirt. That made Daigo react with a leer of delight which in turn alerted her.

“Wait outside, if you will,” she said, snidely.  

“Oh come on, Kiyin. We’re married, aren’t we?”

Kiyin gaped for a second. He wasn’t usually so open about it since he knew she didn’t like it, but he was a bit out of sorts at that moment. Remarkably, she didn’t overreact. Kiyin simply squinted and glanced way.

“Well, you’re certainly the only one who’s happy about it.” She pointed at the door. “Go.”

Daigo smiled warmly at her and left the room.

While he waited, Daigo couldn’t help but think back to his wedding day. Why she had agreed to follow tradition, even against the wishes of her father, was something he had not understood at the time. However, he had gotten to know her pretty well in the meantime. He now knew that it had been for the ship. She wouldn’t part with it, and if that meant marrying a stranger…

Kiyin left the room dressed in her usual uniform, a jumpsuit with padded shoulders that served as sleeves for her tentacles. It sported some tears but was otherwise intact from the first time she had worn it when they first left her planet. In some ways, it felt like her real bridal gown since she wore it every time she had to step into the cockpit.

Blowing on her bangs, ever flustered by them, Kiyin walked off. As always, she was oblivious to how much he liked that twitch of hers.

“Ok, so what else?” Kiyin asked

“Well, turns out the package he was carrying was a cryo-pod,” Daigo said heavily. “It has a guy inside. I’ve put Kyle and Hannes on waiting for him to wake up but we already identified the face.”

“Alright, time for the big reveal, then. Hit me,” Kiyin said, and Daigo chuckled.

Only she could make him chuckle at a time like that. Shaking it off, Daigo resumed his serious tone.  “A human Centauri spy was carrying the frozen body of one of the richest men in the known galaxy,” Daigo bluntly put. “Man’s Wichmond Wallace. He owns a moon where he built a small citadel to live in lavish isolation.”

Daigo felt her eyes on him.

“Such big words,” Kiyin complimented in surprise. “Have you actually been reading lately?”

Daigo chuckled away, again. Smartass… She knew very well that his prosthetic eyes could temporarily hold an after-image, which simulated photographic memory. He was obviously citing it from the source message Sará had left him.

“Funny,” Daigo said, acting hurt. He pulled the lever to open the door to the cockpit for Kiyin so she didn’t have to break her stride. “You’re funny.”

“So we rescued a very rich guy? That seems beneficial,” Kiyin said.

“Well the thing is, he’s bald and has a bar code on the head,” Daigo said, following her inside.

Kiyin sat down and paused, thinking for a few seconds.

“Isn’t that a clone thing?”

“Yes,” Daigo confirmed, not sitting down.

“But that’s illegal,” Kiyin pointed out.

“Okay, Kyle?” Daigo jested, and Kiyin turned towards her controllers, embarassed. “What’s illegal mean to someone who owns a moon?” He raised his brow and she nodded in agreement. “Anyways, put us on a course towards there. I imagine we’ll be delivering a clone back to its owner.”

“That also sounds beneficial,” Kiyin confided, switching on the holographics and engaging navigation. A second later, the ship shuddered out of auto-pilot.

“A whole lot more than going into lizard space, that’s for sure,” Daigo said with a sigh. “System Trifecta, that’s where we’re heading.”

“Oh, figures he’d be close to one of the best resorts in the galaxy,” Kiyin noted with a shrug, “and why are you waking him up again?”

“The guy was getting dragged around by a Centauri spy. A human one,” Daigo remarked, still finding it hard to believe himself.

“Right, that is extremely odd,” Kiyin had to agree.  

Daigo massaged the back of his neck, swallowing dryness. “I need to know what’s going on. Far as I know, maybe the guy has a bomb in him that will explode if our spook doesn’t report back. We need to know.”

Looking out the window, Daigo noticed that his vision was a bit unfocused. It was probably because of the fight with John. He adjusted his eyes and caught sight of a comet crossing their path, far out in the distance. It was a gigantic piece of rock eternally traveling the cosmos, with such an overwhelming presence that it left a trail made of itself, marking space.  

The smile lasted Daigo all the way back to the mess hall, where he grabbed an apple before heading back to the guest room. It wasn’t that clear, but the safe thing to do would be to eject the clone and run for the hills. Just talking to the clone was a risk worth of an apple. Daigo wasn’t happy about that, but they really had to get paid.

Spinz was there, in the mess hall. He was reading his book.

“I thought you were sleeping, Spinz,” Daigo greeted.

“No one else sleeps,” he pointed out.

“Not everyone’s awake. Sará’s asleep, isn’t she?”

“She is not,” Spinz said.

“How could you possibly know that? You’re not in her room,” Daigo pointed out.

“Kyle not there,” he said, his ears shrugging instead of his shoulders, “that how I know.”

Daigo groaned, waving his half-eaten apple in a fit. “I’m sending him back! You get some sleep, Spinz, I’ll need you wide awake.”

Even though that was true, nobody needed to have her sleep in order more than Sará. She was so much slower and inefficient when she was sleepy.

Daigo went back to Hannes and Kyle and sent Kyle back to the room so he could catch some sleep. The kid was excited to meet the clone, of course, he was excited about anything. That included telling her sister about everything.

After he had left, Daigo leaned against the wall, eating his apple.

It was waiting time, again