Since the panels weren’t secured, the party members readily left their hiding places, and replaced the floor pieces beneath them. As she pulled herself out, Rhea noticed how light she felt: Mars was roughly half the size of Earth, and much less dense, putting the gravity at 0.38 G, or roughly a third that of her home planet.
“The atmosphere is pressurized,” Horatio transmitted. “We can remove our suits.”
“Is that really a good idea?” Renaldo asked. “If security catches us, who’s to say they won’t open the hangar bay doors and space us?”
“That’s quite illegal,” Horatio replied.
“Sure, but you never know with the Martians…” Renaldo said.
“It’ll look kind of odd if we walk the streets clad in spacesuits,” Rhea said.
“We’ll certainly attract attention…” Will said. “From the police.”
She took a moment to survey the interior of the Molly Dook. The exit hatch on the aft quarter was still open, and a ramp led down: she could see the gray wall of the hangar outside. To her right, the door to the cargo bay was also ajar. She took a few steps toward it. While gravity was one-third that of Earth, she didn’t quite bound-walk like on Ganymede, though her constituent parts did feel significantly lighter, as did the spacesuit. She’d certainly be able to jump a lot farther and higher than on Earth in this environment.
She reached the hold and tentatively peered past. She was ready to duck from view if the robot arms were still at work, but the mechanical limbs were nowhere in sight, and no crates remained in the hold. On the far side the doors were still open, and another gray wall awaited beyond.
“It’s clear,” she said.
The Wardenites spread out in the hall and cargo hold to remove their suits. When Rhea had doffed the bulky thing, she donned the gray uniform she’d picked out, which covered up her metallic body. She slid her brown cloak overtop and raised the hood, pulling the fringe low about her face.
Beneath the cloak she strapped on a utility belt, which had holsters for both the CommNixer pistols and ordinary blasters. Then she went back into the hall and removed the deck panel near the cockpit, revealing the special crate Targon had set aside. Inside were blasters, CommNixer pistols, and ammo bags containing spare disks for the latter weapons. She took one of each, sliding the pistols into her holsters, and securing a small bag to her belt. The others likewise geared up.
She returned to the hold, went to the opening, and unsheathed the CommNixer pistol. She overlaid the locations of the city’s security cameras onto her overhead map, using the data DragonHunter had provided, and sent those positions to the pistol to prime its aim. Then she leaned out from the cargo hold and aimed in the general direction of the closest cameras. She squeezed the trigger, and the smart pistol micro-adjusted the aim of three of the five muzzles, rotating them into place before releasing one disk for each of the three cameras in that direction.
The disks shot across the room and attached within one meter of each camera. That was good enough to block their signals.
She repeated the action on the left side of the hold, and this time four disks released. She leaped up, grabbing onto the upper rim of the opening, and slid the pistol past the dorsal portion of the craft. She squeezed the trigger without looking, and two disks released.
She let go of the rim and leaped down, landing softly on the hangar floor. She couldn’t help but smile at how light she felt.
This is the perfect planet to engage in a fight.
She held the pistol out past the starboard side of the Molly Dook and fired without looking. One more CommNixer launched.
She glanced at her overhead map, which indicated the cameras she’d tagged.
“That’s the last of them,” she said. “Let’s go before security gets here.” According to DragonHunter, that would be in another forty seconds, courtesy of airborne drones.
The others began to leap down behind her.
“That’s too high,” Renaldo said from the upper edge of the cargo hold.
“Dude,” Will said. “You weight three times less.” He shoved Renaldo forward.
Renaldo waved his arms for balance, then plunged. He fell at a bad angle, so Rhea caught him out of the air and set him down.
“Thank you, Warden,” he said breathlessly.
She nodded and leading the way, hurried between the other merchant vessels parked in the hangar bay. She kept the CommNixer pistol in hand for the cameras that awaited in the maintenance tunnel.
“Let Horatio go first,” Will said, coming up behind her.
“No,” she said. “I have the Ban’Shar.”
For once Will didn’t argue with her.
She reached the maintenance door with ten seconds to spare. The tunnel beyond would allow her and the others to bypass customs entirely.
The door was locked, so she stepped aside while Will fired at the handle with his plasma pistol. The handle, and part of the door melted away, leaving a gaping hole surrounded by orange hot edges.
She immediately stepped in front of Will and kicked open the door.
She found herself standing face-to-face with eight robot shock troops. Their forearm-mounted rifles were all aimed at her.
The clanging of feet behind her alerted her to the approach of more soldiers. Glancing over her shoulder, she spotted several combat robots emerging from one of the parked merchant vessels, where they had been lying in wait.
Security drones swooped into the hangar bay from the main exit and took up positions in the air around the surrounded party.
9
Rhea turned her attention back to the fore, and the eight shock troops waiting there.
“Get down!” she shouted.
She dropped the CommNixer pistol and deployed both Ban’Shar.
The robots on both sides opened fire. She crouched, and redirected one Ban’Shar toward the troops behind her, and kept the other in front. Plasma bolts bounced off the blue disks that were her shields. She deflected some of the bolts into
