It had been Bert’s intent to knock both men to the ground and quickly disable their breathing apparatus. As it happened, one of them was able to side step enough to escape a direct hit. Bert landed fully on top of the other man. Despite the very low gravity, the speed of his mass was enough to smash the man to the ground. The man who had only been brushed, fumbled with his nerve disrupter only to have his partner, scream, “Don’t shoot! You’ll kill my life support.” Taking advantage of the hesitation, Bert swiftly reached behind the man and mangled the air regulator on his pack. The man gasped more out of fright than a sudden loss of oxygen. There would still be plenty in the suit for a run back to the airlock. Bert then turned and punched the other man in the groin. The man let out a woof, dropping his weapon in surprise while grasping his crotch. Bert quickly disabled that man’s air regulator as well, then grabbed the dropped nerve disrupter, dialed it to knock them out, and fired twice, making sure he wasn’t touching them and thus knocking out his own electronics. He might have the ability now to injure people, but he was very hesitant to kill them. He quickly dragged them over to the airlock and pulled them inside. The moment the lock was filled with atmosphere, he yanked off their helmets. The groggy men’s bodies automatically gulped the fresh air as Bert dragged them inside the suit changing chamber.
Now what to do with you.
As the men gasped and tried to reorient themselves, Bert could find no obvious place in which to lock them. Raising the power on the nerve disruptors would likely kill them. Frustrating.
What to do, what to do?
He scanned his medical knowledge database, discarding various acts that logically would incapacitate a human, until he found what should be a fairly good compromise between a stunning shot from a disrupter and a fatal blow to the head or heart. He said, “My apologies, gentlemen,” while firmly grabbing the genitals of one. As the man screamed in surprise, Bert bent low and delivered a hammer blow to the man’s jaw beneath his left ear, knocking him unconscious, and from the crunching sound, likely breaking bone. The second man tried to feebly kick him away as Bert reached down and grabbed that fellow’s genitals as well. A repeat of the jaw punch had the same desired effect.
A thin smile plastered itself across Bert’s face.
This is extraordinary indeed.
Bert had no choice but to drag the men with him. With the low gravity, it cost him little energy use, but there was the issue of surveillance. Bert carefully aimed a disrupter at the one camera that was trained on the room, firing a jolt of invisible energy, then nodding with appreciation for the weapon as the LED on the camera died out. If someone had been watching, he’d know soon enough.
All of the operations on this level of the moon were handled by robots, none of which were programed to notice nor care about another robot dragging two humans down a hall. Bert found a unisex toilet and calculated the chances of there being a human at work on this level and actually using it. Finding the odds to be in his favor, he squeezed both men into the cramped space, broke off the handle on the inside of the door and shut it firmly, breaking the exterior handle off to boot. A time stamp on the door indicated that he had 6.9 hours until a maintenance bot would note the inaccessibility and call in a repair order. Who could guess how long a repair would take, but worst case, the men inside had plenty of toilet water to drink.
Henry Lo Wang looked at his captives and noted the phantom flavor of ginger on his tongue. It was a mildly disturbing sensation in that it always correlated with events like this; events that involved hurting people. He had long ago chalked it up to some forgotten childhood trauma. Raw ginger had been a staple in his household, something that his Chinese father tolerated, along with his Korean mother’s kimchi with everything. The ginger sense memory grew to an overwhelming level as he removed his shirt to get busy. Zheng, knowing the drill, had a piece of cinnamon gum ready for his boss before the man could even ask for it. Always cinnamon gum with events like these.
Henry Lo glanced once more at his surroundings and was annoyed by the anticlimactic trappings of the storage space. His preference was to always work in a space with a view; something about the juxtaposition of a majestic setting for acts of barbarity. Ah well, he had had to pay dearly for the use of the place. The hotel had not wanted anything to do with it. Only the mutual strength of their relationships with Amazon Security had overcome the manager’s distress over such goings-on. Not even a portal to show off the magnificence that lay beyond the moon’s surface.
Shame. Anyway, on to business.
The moment he opened his eyes, Caleb felt deep shooting pain traveling up from the middle of his spine and over his head into his sinuses. It took a moment for his eyes to focus, and when they did, the first thing they settled on were Henry Lo’s fingers as they worked the buttons on his own shirt. As Caleb’s eyes traveled up to the man’s large oval face, he immediately felt his testicles suck up into his abdomen followed quickly by the tightening of his sphincter.
“Welcome to Pan, Mr. Day,” said Henry Lo. “To my mild dismay, I cannot now wave my arm at the spectacular view of the rings outside, but imagine if you will, your final resting place among the ice crystals and dust.” Henry Lo waved his arm at a blank wall for effect.
Caleb noted that he was on his knees, slumped with his back against a pallet of raw food stock. His arms were tied painfully behind his back with his biceps pulled together so that they nearly touched. He noted that his legs were free. That was sporting of them. He slightly turned his head left and right to both stretch out his aching neck muscles and let his peripheral vision fill in the picture. Jennifer was to his right, with Spruck, Natalie, and Saanvi to his left, all of them in the same state of involuntary paralysis. The now shirtless Henry Lo wasn’t alone. His sidekick was there to receive the shirt and carefully fold it. Further back to the left and right were a dozen Wang Fat shock troops all done up in armor. Caleb couldn’t quite make out the fear in his friends’ faces, but he could feel it, or thought he could. He worked some saliva into his dry mouth and said, “What can we do for you?”
“You can die screaming for mercy that will not be offered.”
Zheng sighed with an eye roll while his lips mirrored in silent mockery his boss’s cliché riddled threat. Wang glanced at him and Zheng looked down quickly, opening a black case the size of an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. The case had inner panels, which he expertly unfolded to reveal an assortment of gleaming stainless steel surgical tools. That’s when Caleb noted that he and his friends were sitting on a large plastic tarp. Several of the shock troops were already averting their gaze. Spruck let out a weak sniffle.
Caleb said, “Yeah, but what do you really want? This is all very dramatic and what not, but it’s totally unnecessary. There is nothing that keeps us from giving you whatever you may need from us.”
Henry Lo removed his pants, which Zheng expertly folded, revealing tighty-whities and evidence of a diminutive lifelong issue. Zheng then assisted his boss with tying a heavy poly-vinyl apron across his front.
Henry Lo purred, “This is not a show, Mr. Day. I truly want nothing from you people other than the pleasure of dissecting you one by one. You have cost me a great deal in time, money, and face. I have a reputation to uphold.”
Jennifer blurted, “Where’re your cop friends? Don’t they help out with this stuff as well?”
Henry Lo smiled. “To each their own code.”
“And yours that of a mass murdering psychopath,” Jennifer stated with uncharacteristic defeat in her voice.
“On the whole, that is correct. You’ll forgive me for knowing myself. However, first and foremost, I am a businessman, and you people are unfinished business.” Henry Lo lifted a pair of pliers from the case and looked at Jennifer with a wolfish grin. He snapped his gum and said, “If it’s all right with you, I’d like you to be the first volunteer. I get a particular lift from rearranging the features of a beautiful woman.”
Spruck grumbled, “Brother, you don’t have to do this. We’re business people, too.”
Jennifer said, “It’s okay, Spruck. I’ve been thinking of getting some work done. I don’t like how low gravity makes my face look puffy.”
Henry Lo giggled in a girlish way. “Puffy. I admire your bravery, my dear.” He chose a delicate looking scalpel and took three steps toward her. He paused, looking at her feet, then turned to Zheng. “I’ve changed my mind. Strap the other’s legs for now. I can access their genitals later.” He paused midstep and waived at the various packing materials and whatnot around the room. “And come to think of it, have two of the men improvise something to replace my misplaced workout table. That still pisses me off by the way.” He turned back and took a last step, straddling Jennifer’s splayed out legs. In a blink, she kicked out and swept Henry’s legs from under him. Despite the low gravity, the slippery plastic tarp sped up his flip and the man fell hard on his back, his head hitting the concrete even harder. Wang’s eyes bulged with shock and surprise as a whoosh of air shot from his mouth . . . then he was out cold . . . for less than a second, until Jennifer’s other heel came down on his windpipe, crushing it to gristle.
Everyone just stared.
The shock troops barely had their guns up.
The captives all tightened up their muscles with the assurance that guns would be blazing any second.
After a long silence, Zheng finally knelt down, keeping his distance from Jennifer, and took Henry Lo’s pulse. He felt around the man’s neck in several places, then put his ear to Henry’s chest. After a moment, he sat crosslegged on the floor looking at his dead boss and then let his eyes slowly drift up to take in the captives. He said to Jennifer, “You killed him. He’s dead.”
Jennifer raised an eyebrow. “I hope you’re not expecting an apology.”
Zheng stood and paced with his hands behind his back, his eyes on the floor. “Give me a moment, would you?”
The troops remained at the ready, but with guns in check.
After a full minute of pacing, Zheng stopped and looked at the captives. “First, I want to apologize. None of us agreed with what Henry Lo had planned for you. To say that he was capable of overkill is an understatement. Second, I am to understand that you are purveyors of some very fine Japanese brew?”
Caleb stuttered, “Uh, uh, yes.”
“Then I would like to propose a solution to our problem. Wang Fat will purchase all available stock of your brew with an added commission for yourselves of one hundred percent on top of your retail price. We would also like to create a contract for the ongoing purchase of your product for, let’s say, the next ten Earth years. We would also like to offer all of you a month’s accommodations either here or in any hotel of your choice on Hanson or Soul. Suites with views and unlimited spa treatments, of course. I know that if you choose to stay on Pan that we can also provide meal vouchers for any of the restaurants, with the exception of the Sky Room, which as you may know is booked out for at least the next year. In exchange, we would like to let bygones be bygones in regard to any and all claims that you might feel you have against Wang Fat. Or we could just shoot you and blow you out of an airlock.”
Caleb glanced at his friends and said, “We’ll take offer number one.”
“A fine choice.”
Natalie said, “So can you untie us now?”
“Of course.” Zheng nodded to the lead trooper who flicked a finger at two men to get with the untying.
Just then, the door crashed open. Bert stood tall in the doorway, guns pointed. “Nobody moves! I won’t hesitate to kill you all!”
Again the room was brought to stunned silence. Caleb cocked his head at the impossibility of a robot holding weapons.
Bert waved at the two troopers who had kneeled to release his friends. “You two, untie them.”
The troopers remained still, unsure of what to do.
Caleb said, “Uh, bot, we got this. It’s all good.”
Jennifer said, “Bert, where did you get those disruptors?”
Zheng held up a hand. “Now hold on a minute. Robots are not even allowed to touch a gun, much less threaten someone with it. This one is clearly deeply malfunctioning.” He turned to the shock troop leader. “Destroy this thing.”
The trooper lifted his laser to fire, then hesitated. “Won’t work on a bot. Only shoots flesh.”
Zheng scowled. “Your nerve disrupter. Use your brain, man.”
Spruck said, “Stop!. It’s OK.” He struggled against his bindings with the reflex to hold up his hands. “Stand down, Bert.”
Bert pointed one of his guns straight at the trooper who only had his disrupter halfway out of its holster. “No, you don’t. This is your last warning.”
Jennifer said, “Bert, what’s gotten into you?”
“Funny, you should ask.” Bert continued to surprise himself. He had never used sarcasm. Wasn’t programed to use sarcasm. Or so he knew himself to be.
Zheng sighed with exasperation at his troops. “What do we pay you people for? Well, now, what do I pay you people for? Everyone destroy that robot. The thing is clearly a menace!”
All of the troopers moved to pull out their nerve disrupters. At the same moment, Bert moved with the speed of a leaping flea toward Zheng and stood behind the man. The concentrated fire of a dozen (a few late) disrupter blasts had Zheng dancing like an electrocuted marionette. As the man collapsed dead at Bert’s feet, the robot returned fire with deadly accuracy, hitting each guard in the only vulnerable spot, the small gap where the face plate met the neck armor, wiping out all of the Wang Fat men before they could get off another shot. Bert expertly spun both guns on his fingers and pretended to blow smoke off the barrels. “There. I rescued you.”
The survivors sat agape.
“From a month of luxurious living,” said Natalie.
“What the fuck, Bert?” said Caleb.
Bert let his hands fall to his waist. “You appear upset. Did you not wish to be rescued?” He noted the open case of stainless steel torture tools. “Because I can deduce that your circumstances were of a dire nature.”