Reading with Rasta: The Order of the Banshee
The Order of the Banshee by Robyn Singer. Chapter 1: Yael.
For the bulk of my career as a thief, I’d been a solo operator. I’d had engineers to keep me flying and Jellz to arrange jobs for me, but I’d done all the stealing on my own. Now, however, I had a crack team of experts working alongside me.
Or at least, I would have, if I hadn’t ended up responsible for a bunch of kids.
“Dr. Gor’Nx, so nice to finally meet you,” a bespectacled scientist greeted me as he shook my hand.
The facial prosthetics I was wearing to impersonate Ralack Gor’Nx, disgusting eugenicist, had taken me forever to put on right. Fortunately, the stuff was far easier to take off.
“You as well, Dr. Horowitz,” I replied. “These are my assistant and bodyguard.”
Layla and Shun, standing right behind me, nodded. They were both only seventeen, and they certainly looked it out of costume, but the prosthetics made them appear double their true ages. Both of them taller than me, Layla had light skin and short, straight, dark hair, while Shun was closer to Aarif in skin tone, had two braids running down her back, and was even more muscular than me.
Dr. Horowitz nodded back at them. “Shall we get straight to business?”
I smirked like the real-life supervillain I was impersonating. “Lead the way.”
Dr. Horowitz turned around, and we followed him through the halls of the Cykebian Center for Genetic Development. “Ralack” was here to aid in their ongoing quest to make all Cykebian babies be born with enhancements. Of course, said process would also kill any fetuses that lacked enhancements.
That wasn’t why we were here though. The work these people did was awful, but normally it wouldn’t be any of my business. A client wanted a flash drive with information that wasn’t kept on any computer, though, so here we were.
Surrounding us were humanoid robots with weapons. Along with the developments in genetic enhancements over the last five years, cybernetics had also come a long way. That meant not only was everyone who worked here about as strong as me, if not stronger, but they were guarded by even stronger machines.
We took an elevator up to the top floor of the complex and arrived in a black and silver office with Cykebian flags and an ornately framed picture of the emperor who’d legalized genetic enhancements hung up on the wall. Seated at the desk was the man in charge of the facility, Nathaniel Horn. The duke of Siswiol, he was fat as a pig and dressed in an aqua jumpsuit with white gloves, black boots, and a cravat, with a monocle on his face.
Nathaniel was as bad as Cykebian nobles got. On top of the work he did here, he was also known for beating his wife and was a proud advocate for the reinstatement of slavery. There was no question he spent his weekends torturing commoners.
He sort of reminded me of General Galopire of the Sunrisers. They were both bastards who were as ugly on the outside as they were on the inside, and yet they thought they were the gods’ gift to the universe. Credit where it was due to Moli’s dad, he’d at least tried to kick Galopire out of the Sunrisers when he’d been caught extorting the people living on his land, but, of course, the rest of the generals stood by the bastard. The only major difference I could think of was, from what I’d heard, Galopire was actually against the R&D of genetic engineering. He saw it as a waste of money.
“Yael, I’m in their systems,” Marcos said to me over my com device, bringing me back to reality. “Plan “My Wife’s Boobs are the Best” is ready to go on your call.”
“Yes, yes, that’s all well and good,” Griffin groaned. “Now can you please tell me what my role in this mission is? Surely you can’t expect me to just wait in the ship and do nothing for the third time in a row. I deserve some action!”
“Marcos, please shut him up,” Shun said under her breath. “You don’t have the authority to tell them what to—”
Griffin was cut off as he was tazed by Marcos. I respected his desire to not be a traditional noble and instead become “a gentleman thief,” but he could be as annoying as any other of his people. If not for Moli’s built-up tolerance and ability to handle guys like him, I probably would have shot him into space years ago.
“You okay, Griff?” Layla asked softly. “I’m… gonna kill you… Platyperson.” Marcos snickered. “You can try, Posh Boy.”
I forced myself to smile and nod as Nathaniel stood up, and he and Dr. Horowitz continued to speak, pretending to pay attention. I’d barely been able to listen to other, boring people when it was just Aarif in my ear. With a whole school chatting around me, it was basically impossible.
“So, what do you think?” Nathaniel asked.
“Umm,” I hummed. I’d heard only about five or six words total, so I turned to Layla. “I’m interested in my assistant’s opinion on the matter.”
“Me?” Layla bounced on her feat. “Oh, okay. Well, um, I think that the recent tests seem to have exceeded our expectations, and that we’re ready to move on to experimenting on organic subject matter. However, Dr. Gor’Nx will need to overlook all the primary data herself to be sure.”
I nodded. “I couldn’t have expressed my thoughts on the matter better.”
Layla may not have wanted to be here, but she was as sharp as her great-grandma, and far better than me at dealing with others. Apart from her lack of a desire to be a thief, she reminded me a lot of when P’Ken was a kid.
Nathaniel led us all downstairs to one of their numerous cold and sterile laboratories. In the presence of the duke, the scientists at work lowered their heads. He approached a safe and opened it with a 35-digit pin, followed by a finger scan and a retinal scan. Looking inside, the sole contents of the safe were what we were here for.
“Thank you, your lordship,” I said, reaching out my hand. “I’ll review the data and return the drive to you at my soonest convenience.”
Nathaniel sneered. “Doctor, you know as well as I do I can’t allow this data to leave this facility. You must review it here.”
I smirked. “I was really hoping you’d say that.”
Making a fitting sound effect with my mouth, I kicked the drive out of Nathaniel’s hand, leaped into the air, and caught it.
The duke and Dr. Horowitz scoffed. “What is the meaning of this?” I licked my lips. “Ladies… faces off.”
Shun, Layla, and I stuck our fingers in our ears and twisted them around. Moments later, the prosthetics we were wearing disintegrated. Upon seeing who they were dealing with, the duke and Horowitz backed up in horror as other scientists shrieked.
“Super Soldier, Shun Segisteel. Bounty: 82,000,000 gidgits.”
“The Prodigal Daughter, Layla N’Gwa. Bounty: 100,000,000 gidgits.”
“And the second most wanted thief in the universe. Evil Incarnate, Yael Pavnick. Bounty: 290,000,000 gidgits.”
“You know, I think the emperor may have been thinking with a little bit of bias when she named me that,” I laughed. “So how’s this gonna go?”
Nathaniel’s face warped, his fear morphing into a wide grin. “You’ve made a big mistake coming here. But I must thank you for giving me the opportunity to be the one to lead your capture.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “All the geniuses and generals and armies I’ve beaten without breaking a sweat, and you think you’re the one that’s got my number? You and the other losers that work here?”
Nathaniel breathed heavily as he nodded. “Everyone who works in this building has been genetically enhanced by proper, Cykebian science, as opposed to the grimy criminals who worked on you.” He turned his head to Shun. “You may be stronger than all of us, but you still can’t compete with our numbers.” His eyes turned to Layla. “And you even brought a weak link.”
“Of course I did,” I cheered. “If you knew how much Madame N’gwa was paying me to teach her, you’d get it.” I cracked my fingers. “But seriously, I’m supposed to be scared of a bunch of scientists and secretaries? Come on, man. I may not be able to take you all down in one punch, but I’m still feeling pretty good about my odds.”
The duke took a step back, grinding his teeth. “Your lordship?” Dr. Horowitz whimpered.
“BWAHAHAHAHA!” Nathaniel’s eyes bulged from his head. “I think someone is overestimating herself. I know all about you. You play tricks on people to get them to do what you want.”
I shrugged. “Not my fault most people are dummies.”
“Well alas for you, I’m not like most people. You knew coming here how strongly I believed in the superiority of those enhanced by the empire, and you’re trying to goad me into proving it by taking you on directly, instead of calling our proper security. Well, that’s not going to work.” Nathaniel put his fingers to his ear. “All Cykerdroids to Laboratory ZX-Alpha. Voice command: Lasagna.”
Dr. Horowitz pointed at us, his hand shaking. “You see. You have no chance of escaping.
Su…surrender now!”
I clicked my tongue. “Cykerdroids. I’ve read a lot about them. As intelligent and disciplined as a seasoned soldier, and virtually indestructible. They’re impressive. Layla, Shun, do you think you could take more than maybe one of them?”
“Of course not,” Layla answered. “No,” Shun followed, succinctly.
“And I agree! Those things would kick my ass.”
Nathaniel laughed again. “So you admit it then? This is checkmate?”
“Oh. I never said that.”
The doors to the lab slid open, and in rushed over a dozen Cykerdroids. Mostly black with bits of silver, they were each over a head taller than me, and their blasters, which were capable of taking out entire armies, were pointed at my head.
“Drop the bravado. It’s over. Emperor Kaybell will make your execution the most grand in history, and I will be rewarded most handsomely.”
I raised a finger. “Ooooooooor, and hear me out… voice override: Moli’s boobs.”
In an instant, the Cykerdroids all turned their blasters away from me, and onto Nathaniel, Horowitz, and the other scientists.
“Cykerdroids! What are you doing?!” Veins popped out of Nathaniel’s forehead and his head shook in place. “How? How did you do this?!”
I covered half my face with my hand as I laughed hysterically. “Too easy.” I lowered my hand and rolled my shoulders back. “Okay, so you clearly know a thing or two about me. This should include the fact that I know my way around writing code. And, with some help, it wasn’t too difficult to hack into the network the Cykerdroids are all linked up to. Of course, you have security measures in place for such an occurrence, but those can also be temporarily disabled without notice. And with my dude on the outside, we were able to line up the timing perfectly.” I took a few steps toward the duke. “You were right. I do trick people into doing what I want. But you thought I wanted a fight? No! Shun and I are awesome, but we could have still easily lost. I had to make sure that you gathered all the Cykerdroids here, so that they could escort us out, and we wouldn’t have to deal with any others on the way.”
Nathaniel screamed at the top of his lungs, his rage palpable, as he fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
“Cykerdroids, let’s move out!” I ordered. “Protect myself and the two women next to me at all costs.”
Guided by the killer robots, with the flash drive still in my possession, we made our way out of the building I’d only momentarily considered setting ablaze.
“You really are as scary as my g-gma,” Layla commented.
“Please, without me, this plan wouldn’t have worked at all,” Marcos replied.
“I’d still like to know why I wasn’t included!” Griffin shouted. “Shun didn’t even do anything!”
“She was back up,” I said. “In case we did have to fight, she’s the only one who can keep up with me. Plus, her face is already known. It’s best we keep you a secret until the time is right.”
“Hmph! I deserve a bounty and a cool nickname.”
“Permission to taze him again?”
“Please,” Shun said.
“No!” Layla followed.
I shook my head, giggling. “We’ll be back at Ricochet in a few minutes. Let’s go home.”