Oh Carlos, I'm Home!
Tim Gallagher stared at the janitor’s hindquarters longer than a good sense of propriety would allow. She was bent over, checking the wheel on her janitor cart by the garbage can in the middle of the thoroughfare in front of him. She stood, shook her head, then looked directly at him.
Oh, damn she’s tall! He looked away, jerking his head: left, right, up—something interesting way up on the next level. Would you look at that.
Something was off about that janitor though—Tim’s instincts screamed at him to keep an eye on her—and it wasn’t just his libido talking. Alerts were all over the station; security guards—such as himself—were supposed to be on the lookout. But the fugitive they were looking for was a fifth that woman’s size, so why were his spidey-senses tingling?
Tim snapped a glance at his smartcomm: forty-two minutes left on duty. If he was lucky he wouldn’t get wrapped up in the Ledas family drama; he had seventy-two hours before his next shift and all he wanted to do was grab his favorite beer, some cellophane wrapped dinner, and spend the next three days in his tiny apartment lost in VR escapism. If he wasn’t laying siege to the Dragon Lord’s keep in the next two hours, he was going to be one cross sonofabitch.
He whistled a cheerful rendition of “If I Only Had a Heart” from The Wizard of Oz as he scanned the thoroughfare. It was his favorite movie as a kid—the early 20th century original, of course, not the infinite number of remakes. After two and a half centuries, it still hit just right. Everything else was either auto-generated or amateur hour, so the archives were his go-to source of entertainment—when he wasn’t losing himself in VR.
If I only had some ass, a parody echoed in his head as the pilates gym ejected two ladies and one well-wrapped gentleman across his gaze. Not every VR credit would go to the Dragon Lord that weekend.
When he looked up, the janitor was pushing the cart again slowly. Very slowly—too slowly. She hunched over it with her ball cap pulled down over her eyes. And she was heading straight for him.
He’d been posted at the main entrance to the docking slips. His instructions: stop any suspicious individuals from accessing space docks. So he hitched up his coil-rifle, drew back his shoulders, and stuck out his hand like they taught him in his criminal justice correspondence course.
“Howdy!” He started with a smile—he liked to be helpful, even though congeniality wasn’t encouraged.
But this was a red alert situation, so he cleared his throat and dropped his voice into the gruff register his supervisor preferred. “Can I ask what your business is in the slips?”
Her voice was hoarse and rough. “Slip 82 ordered a deck cleanup. Some sort of spill. Probably vomit. Damned party wagons, ya know?”
She sounded tougher than Tim. So he resorted to charm, chuckling when he said, “Oh, yeah! I’m glad it’s you and not me then. I can’t handle puke, makes me retch, blech!” He mimed puking onto the floor, hands fluttering, mouth wide, eyes crazy—nervous, not charming at all.
He cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure, but she didn’t respond. She just kept pushing the cart. Tim watched her go, eyes trapped on that sweet pack of buns as they swayed with each step.
He tore his eyes away. “Well, good luck then!”, he called after her.
That was smooth. He really should have asked for identification. But that was what the Master AGI was for. Anyway, that lady just looked determined to do her job; good on her.
He glanced back once, then twice—three times—before the janitor turned right on the corner. He turned back again. “If I only had some ass.” He hummed under his breath.
Crash! He spun. Clatter. Curse. Shuffle. A whisper in one voice, hiss in another.
Tim lifted his rifle and marched into the slips.
“Hey, you alright?” He called out. He wanted to help, but he had to be cautious—no matter how much the cute janitor inspired his good-Samaritan to lend a hand.
More clatters and hisses. When he turned the corner, the janitor cart was on its side and the janitor was trying to put the wheel back in place. The black can liner had spilled to the floor and torn where a spindly pair of arms and legs scrambled out of it. Then a face, pale, short black hair, one glowing implant—purple. Simonee Saran—the fugitive. Shit. So much for my weekend.
“Hey!”
They scrambled. He ran after them.
“Stop right there!”
The Janitor was peeling off the coveralls.
“Hey, come on! Hands up! Please?”
The janitor spun around in front of him.
His eyes popped. “Sweet Jeezus!”
And then he tripped.
Thwump-thwump, thwump-thwump, thwump-thwump, the janitor-cart rolled down the corridor towards slip 81, wheels thumping over regularly spaced expansion joints in the deck. Mariem wished there weren’t so many.
“Please-please-please, just a few dozen meters”, she begged fate, but the violent shudder in the broken wheel up front gave her little to hope for.
The cart was ancient. Mottled grey plastic suffocated under a thick blanket of dust and cobwebs cluttered the frame. If Theseus had been a janitor, this would’ve been his trusty vessel with polymer patches up and down its frame, every wheel mismatched.
Mariem stalked stiffly in the blue coveralls she’d taken from the maintenance closet along with the cart. They were too small and the damned zipper didn’t want to stay put at her neckline.
Simonee was curled up in the waste bin, tied inside a black can liner with just enough ventilation to breathe. The going had been slow. But nobody paid them much attention, least of all the security AI. Something about the uniform blended them into the background of awareness—only of interest when needed. This is some serious Lucy-and-Ethel shit.
For a moment, Mariem thought the guard was going to stop them. He smiled too much, too big, those bright white teeth between mahogany cheeks almost chattering from nerves. That made Mariem wary. Even so, he had kind eyes—rings of shimmering amber, crinkling in the corners with his smile. Mariem didn’t trust him one bit. So she’d lowered her voice, affected a hunch, and passed right on by as if she had every right to be there. She didn’t dare stop; they were so close.
She could see the Fénix now, the starboard scramjet jutting out just around the next column. This was a welcome sight after hours of sneaking, hiding—her legs cramping in these damn tight coveralls. If they could get inside the Fénix, everything would be fine. Maybe she would hide Simonee on the orlop deck at the bottom of the ship; Carlos never went down there. They’d figure out some other way to warn Dalia Ledas and then they’d leave.
But Mariem lost her step. As she leaned on the handle to take weight off the broken wheel, her toe caught on a jammed expansion joint. She stumbled into the cart and the wheel gave way. The cart lurched, tipped, crashed. Simonee rolled out and the trash bag tore wide.
The officer from the entrance called out behind them.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Mariem hissed. “Get back in the can quick!”
“I’m trying, but my legs are wrapped up,” Simonee whispered.
The tip-tap of the officer’s steps grew louder and her heart pumped faster. Then he was running, shouting. Mariem reached out to help, but the zipper on the coveralls fell and her arms stuck. She wiggled and yanked, pulling free of the coveralls.
“Hey, come on! Hands up! Please?” he called out from a dozen paces behind.
She had to take him out, but he was armed. She needed a distraction. She looked down.
Hands up it is. She shimmied clear of the coveralls, yanked off her shirt, let the girls loose, and spun to face the oncoming guard.
His eyes popped. “Sweet Jeezus!”
And then he tripped on the same expansion joint. Wheeling forward, he crashed face first into Mariem’s sternum. They both went down, rolling. He mumbled in her cleavage and she shoved him away. His head smacked the wall and he crumpled into a heap, his nose broken with blood streaming out of it.
“Oh shit, what did you do?” Simonee yelped as she stood, kicking the bag away from her boots.
Mariem stuffed herself back inside her shirt and hauled the guard into the waste bin.
“Shh, I bought us some time. Now, put your hood up, get low in front of me and stay there!”
Simonee obeyed. Mariem tossed the broken wheel into the bin and yanked the cart behind her, dragging it as fast as she could between her fortress of crates in slip 81. Fortunately, the cargo bay was already open.
But that meant... Shit! A forklift waited inside.
Mariem burst up the ramp with the cart in tow, pushing Simonee ahead of her.
Carlos hollered from the back, “there you are!” He stepped out, shielding his eyes.
Mariem stopped.
Carlos looked at Mariem. “Where have you been?”
Then at Simonee. “Who’s this?”
Then he eyed the cart. “Did you spill something?”
Mariem just stood there, panting and formulating a story, any story. But there was no story that would work for this.
Carlos squinted and stepped closer. “You’ve got… blood?” A finger gestured a lazy circle over her chest. “On your tetas?”
The three-wheeled cart lost balance and tumbled the bloody security guard onto the bay deck in front of Carlos. The guard snorted, his eyes fluttered and he cried “Boobs!” before passing out again.
“Oh.” Carlos muttered. “Shit.”
He turned his head slowly and regarded Mariem with wide eyes. He splayed his arms, gesturing at everything. “Dios mío! I was only gone a couple of hours!”