The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 35 - SYDNEY

Every good battle plan begins with a pot of tea. Sydney was glad that her companions agreed on that much at least.

Roger lifted the pot. "Sydney, would you like another cup?"

"Yes please," both women answered in unison.

He looked from one woman to the other. "This entire situation is devilishly confusing. Perhaps we should assign numbers to you." He filled both their cups in turn.

"How about you just call me Melbourne," fragment Sydney answered.

"You can't be serious," the other Sydney responded. "I always hated that nickname." She turned to Roger. "This jerky Australian exchange student called me that for an entire semester, got all his friends to do it too. Said I wasn't good enough for the name Sydney." She turned back to her twin. "I can't believe you would choose that."

"It doesn't really bother me anymore."

"We really are different people. How about I just call you Mel."

"Sure, that works. Can I call you Sid?"

"Please don't."

Roger poured himself another tea. "So henceforth your names are Mel and Sydney. Wonderful. As long as you don't start dressing the same, I think I can manage that."

Mel reached into her robe and pulled out a few black feathers. She tucked them artfully in her hair. "I'll always wear a few of these. That should help."

"With that settled, we should get back to the matter at hand. Are we really serious about venturing back into the lion's den?"

"What choice do we have?" Mel replied. "They're abducting people from our planet, experimenting on them, and God only knows what else. We can't just ignore that."

Sydney nodded. "She's right. These bastards have to be stopped. They've obviously been at it a long time. We have to assume we're not the only people they've been screwing with. Who knows what they're doing back on Earth."

"Very well then, you have my support." He took a sip of tea and carefully set his cup down. "But how do you propose the three of us take on this empire of demonic space creatures?"

Mel and Sydney looked at each other.

"Do you think they'd fall for the same trick twice," Mel asked.

Sydney seemed to consider it. "You mean get captured again, then hack them from the inside? I wouldn't want to risk it. They're not stupid. By now they must have patched all the vulnerabilities we exploited last time. What about a frontal assault? You've obviously got weapons on your ship."

"Barely. I cobbled together a microwave beam from an active sensor array, but it wouldn't do jack against a hardened target. What have you got on your ship?"

"Probably less than you. Lots of sensors, extra processing power, and that grapple thing I tried to ram you with. I'm guessing it's meant for taking samples from comets or asteroids or something. Oh, and twelve terabytes of data downloaded from the Internet."

Mel sat upright at that. "The USB drives. They let you keep those?"

"Yes. They mostly stuck to the contract, believe it or not. All except that part where the ship was wired to blow up."

Mel's expression became wistful. "You can't imagine how much I wished I had that archive over the years."

"I'll give you a copy. It was really helpful when I was making the Wonderland. It would have taken me ten times as long without it."

"The wonderland?"

"Oh that's right, you haven't seen it yet. I'm surprised you didn't rummage through my stuff while we were fighting mechanical spiders and oversized crabs."