Starbase Human Read Free

exactly what they were. She’d bought this stupid ship for a song six years ago, and the weapons were only mentioned in passing.
    She couldn’t find anything, so she gambled.
    “Blow a damn hole through the closed exit,” she said, not knowing if she could do that, if the ship even allowed that. Weren’t there supposed to be failsafes so that no one could blow a hole through something on this base?
    That will leave us with only one remaining laser shot, the ship said.
    “I don’t give a good goddamn!” she screamed. “Fire!”
    And it did. Or something happened. Because the ship heated, and rocked and she heard a bang like nothing she’d ever heard before, and the sound of things falling on the ship.
    “Get us out of here!” she shouted.
    And the ship went upwards, fast, faster than ever.
    So fast she could hear the engines screaming—
    Which meant she didn’t have to.

 
     
     
     
    TWO
     
     
    AS THE SHIP screamed its way out of the base, Takara tumbled backwards. The attitude controls were screwed or the gravity or something, but she didn’t care.
    “Visuals,” she said, and floating on the screens that appeared in front of her was the hole that the ship had blown through the exit, and debris heading out with them, and bits of ship—and then she realized that there were bits of more than ship. Bits of the starbase and other ships and son of a bitch, more bodies and—
    “Make sure you don’t hit anything,” she said, not knowing how to give the correct command.
    I will evade large debris , the ship said as if this were an everyday occurrence. However, I do need a destination .
    “Far away from here,” Takara said.
    How far?
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Out of danger.”
    She was pressed against what she usually thought of as the side wall, with blankets and smelly sheets and musty pillows against her.
    “And fix the attitude controls and the gravity, would you?” she snapped.
    The interior of the ship seemed to right itself. She flopped on her stomach again, only this time, it didn’t hurt.
    She stood, her mouth wet and tasting of blood. She put a hand to her face, realized her nose was bleeding, and grabbed a sheet, stuffing it against her skin.
    She dragged the sheet with her to the controls. The images had disappeared (had she ordered that? She didn’t remember ordering that) and so she called them up again, saw more body parts, and globules of stuff (blood? Intestines?) and shut it all off—consciously this time.
    God, she was lucky. She had administration codes. She had a sense that things were going bad. She had her ship ready. And, most important of all, she had been close enough to the docking ring to get out of there before anyone knew she even existed.
    She sank into the chair and closed her eyes, wondering what in the bloody hell was going on.
    She’d met those men, the creepy older ones, and asked her boss what they wanted with ships, and he’d said, Better not to ask, hon .
    He always called her hon, and she finally realized it was because he couldn’t remember her name. And now he was dead or would be dead or was dying or something awful like that. He’d been inside the administration area when the twenty clones had come in—or the forty clones—or the sixty clones, God, she had no idea how many.
    It was her boss’s boss who’d answered her, later, when she mentioned that the men looked alike.
    Don’t ask about it, Takara , he’d said quietly. They’re creatures of someone else. Designer criminal clones. They need a ship for nefarious doings.
    They’re not in charge? she’d asked.
    He’d shaken his head. Someone made them for a job .
    Her eyes opened, saw the mess that her cockpit had become. A job. They’d had to find fast ships for a job.
    But if the creepy older ones were made for a job, so were the younger versions.
    She called up the screens, asked for images of the starbase. It was a small base, far away from anything, important only to malcontents and