Unnamed Sci-Fi book...

This is the opening I'm working on for a Sci-Fi book, as yet untitled. But the story is coming along...This is part of the first chapter. Enjoy!

The last security channel went down with a small crackle, and the status lights on the door went dead. Kemmah smiled slightly.

There just weren’t any thrills anymore.

He popped the outer hatch and slipped the small box between the cracks, activating it on entry. The room was flooded with ultrasonics, and the disruptor sent their waves back into the emitters. Ten seconds later, the eardrum-bursting soundwave alarm was disabled. The smile grew to a toothy grin, and his motions became relaxed. It was really getting too easy. Kemmah slipped the E.A.R. into his rucksack and turned the grips on the late 82nd-century-model palm safe with a satisfying “Ka-Chack”. The security beam disarmed itself as the door swung open. He had rascaled the door alarm to give him a 10 minute delay. This game was about subtlety; shutting it off entirely would be as telling as claxons ringing too soon. The room had all manner of defense gizmos, but most of them operated on heat or motion detection. Once you got past that, it was a cakewalk.

Looking around, Kemmah suppressed a sigh…The resident of this suite was pretty stupid to leave non-sentient guardians to watch over his goods. Anything made by man could be jiggered by man, as the saying went. Ah well, some people refused to learn unless it was the hard way. Kemmah reached in to claim his hard-won prize, his fingers stretching out just far enough to encircle the Martian Fire Ruby.

And pass right through it to close on nothingness.

For a second, Kemmah didn’t want to believe it, and his fingers curled again on empty air. Nothing. There was no Martian Fire Ruby. It was a hologram.

Oh shit.

A sim activated on the wall as the ambient lighting went deep red, and a humiliating message flashed at Kemmah in midair:

Thought We Were Pretty Stupid, Didn’t You?

Kemmah’s eyes widened, and his heart sank as the realization hit him; It was too easy. They knew he was coming all along, they expected this! He lurched away from the safe in anticipation of the telling skin-dye that should be blasted at him any second now…And swung around directly into a drop-down field of microcompressors that painted his body with a pigment-altering chemical. Sputtering, Kemmah stumbled to the window and yanked the peep blinds down.

It was a goddam wall.

His shoulders dropped as he heard the lagbolts slam home in the hatchway, sealing him in like a moth in a jar. Defeated, Kemmah sank into the sofa and waited, the alarms deafening him and the IMPrint beginning to change his skin color from white to a rich purple. Great, he thought, Not only am I hoist, but I’m gonna clash with everything in my wardrobe. Goddamit all anyway.

##################

“You got greedy, didn’t you?” Maalik, the tall ‘Salim, was standing over Kemmah. It was his room Kemmah had tried to sneak.

“How long is this shit gonna to be on me?” Kemmah had gone from annoyed to perturbed, and his irritability was growing.

“Waalp, honestly, I figured you would take pride in your score” he grinned at the seething Kemmah “if you had pulled it off, that is. So I have taken equal pride in your failure, and set the IMPrint for a moderate penetration level.”

“Moderate?” Kemmah had a niggling suspicion that he wasn’t going to like this.

“About two weeks.”

“TWO WEEKS?!?” Kemmah was practically squeaking “How the hell am I supposed to show my face in public looking like this?”

“Aside from scrubbing your epidermal layers down to a bright, angry red? I’d suggest you find a room with a good solid lock, curl up with a really good ‘net reader and live off room service for a while.”

Kemmah was ready to explode, and Maalik decided to give his friend’s fragile ego one final nudge. “Hey, look on the bright side, infidel” he said “If you have to hide on the surface or Jupiter, you’ll blend right in!”

Kemmah launched himself from the couch, his fist on a collision course with Maalik’s jaw. Maalik, who was easily three times Kemmah’s size, stopped him in mid-air with a face palm that stopped Kemmah’s head immediately, while his body continued forward in a pendulum. He chuckled as Kemmah hit the floor with a “hoofh” and rolled onto his side. “Besides,” he continued, as if nothing had happened, “It’ll take at least that long to get the Hooligan refitted.”

Kemmah groaned once, sat up and tried to shake his head clear. No dice. “What…what? Why would hoorigarr…” he took a couple of deep breaths “Why would the Hooligan need refitting?”

“Oh…Didn’t I tell you?” Maalik’s face was pure innocence “We got a nibble. Some guy in the Beltline wants us to deliver a breather across ‘Salim territory, into Confed space. Pays 50 Quah, plus expenses.”

“Why so much, for a breather? Never make 50 Quah on a flesh run, that’s why we don’t do them. Payout doesn’t equal the risks, no matter which quadrant you fly.” Maalik raised an eyebrow “I asked him that as well. It’s the Surlat’s daughter.”

Kemmah’s jaw dropped.

“The princess.”

His head tilted.

“And she’s to be married to a member of the Confed.”

Kemmah’s face lit up, and Maalik grinned as well. “Score!” they shouted.

Kemmah went to the bathroom, regarded his face in a mirror & grimaced.

“Hey…Maalik?”

“Yes, you duck fornicating unbeliever, who is going to burn in the lowest level of hell while I’m sipping on cool, iced lemonade?”

“Do you even have a Martian Fire Ruby?”

The innocent eyes again. “Why, my dear Captain” he said “where in the nine million beautiful names of Allah would I get such a thing? Do you have any idea how much those things cost? And the risk of theft alone…Why, I hear that thieves might even have pervaded the sanctity of our solitude, on this very planet! Could you just imagine it?”

“Fuck off, Maalik. Go pray to that God of yours, who never answers back.”

“Allah’s beauty is all around us. Can you not hear him in your life?”

Kemmah cocked an eyebrow “Can he not speakee engrish? Is that why he has to use babies being born and flowers blooming?” Maalik stepped to the entrance & paused in the opening to consider his captain. The pigmentation had set in, and Kemmah looked like a large eggplant in a bathrobe. “Maybe you could just wear a bag over your head-“ He ducked as the metallic ‘caster came whizzing past him, and dashed out the entrance. Kemmah could hear his laughter all the way down the hall.

Well, fuck him anyway. He pulled a credit tab from his bathrobe, and considered taking it all. Nah. No need to make him suffer that much. Just half of what was on it.

It wouldn’t take Maalik long to realize his pocket had been picked in midair by the galaxy’s greatest smuggler. And Maalik hadn’t felt a thing. Kemmah smiled as he ordered a very large, very expensive breakfast. On a very stolen credit tab.