35

As they made their way down to the docking port, Demi noticed something. Several somethings. In fact, as they passed numerous small holes in Lodka's walls, leading to those tubes and mini-corridors that looked suspiciously like veins and arteries, she saw hundreds of those somethings rushing about and looking very worried. Very worried, as far as white circles that floated around could look. They were very similar to the red blood cell thing that had escorted Demi to the bridge the first time she had arrived on Lodka.

"Anti-bodies." Friss answered her unasked question without turning around. He couldn't turn well, or fast, as he carried a large number of pistols, rifles and wicked looking spikes that Demi didn't need to know what they were. "Which is odd, because there aren't any bodies around, other than us, that needing anti-ing."

"Anti-bodies? Like when a body fights off infection?" She watched as a few dozen anti-bodies rushed past her from one vein to another. If they had faces, Demi would have expected them to scowl at her for being in the way. "An infection like, say, introducing a foreign organic element to a system? Like the compensator thing? Does that mean Lodka is trying to get rid of the thing that allows us to travel inside a black hole?"

Friss stopped, turned, almost smashing the thick barrel of a rifle, that looked like it could destroy a small city, into Demi's face. He looked thoughtful and his face seemed at pains to have something so incongruous upon his face. Thoughtful was not one of Friss' few talents. After a second, or two, possibly half-a-minute, he grinned, shrugging his shoulders.

"Probably." He shrugged again, but this time to adjust the large number of weapons back into comfortable carrying positions. "Best get this over and done with pretty quick before we become spaghettified and torn apart by gravitational tides then, eh?"

He seemed to take the news in his stride, even though he had actually stopped striding to consider it. Then he started striding again, faster this time, to catch up to Lap and Briyun. Neither Lap or Briyun had weapons. They didn't need them to cause stomach churning slaughter, as Demi knew well. For her part, she had found a small stun pistol in the armoury and hoped she didn't have to use it.

The docking procedure finished, inside and outside pressures were equalised, Briyun crouched on all fours, readying herself to rush in and begin the killing and Friss cycled every single weapon, ready to fire at everything at the first opportunity. Lap yawned. They hadn't slept for a few hours. With all this preparation, Demi felt she should prepare, also. She checked the charge on her stun pistol, saw that it was full and tried to look determined, hoping that she didn't look as terrified as she felt.

With a hiss, a puckered hole appeared in the flesh wall. It grew wider and wider until Demi could see the docking port on the other side. It looked a little different than she expected. From her own experiences, she knew docking ports came in all shapes and sizes, levels of cleanliness and sterility. Some had decontamination chambers. Others had devices to acclimate people to environments different than those travellers were used to. She had never, however, seen a docking port that looked like a dentist's waiting room.

Briyun stopped crouching, looked out into the docking port and then sighed in disappointment, strolling to an almost-comfortable chair, sitting and taking a wrinkled, well-read magazine from the low table. Lap found a corner, curled until they looked like rolled-up sheet of paper and began snoring. Friss tapped the bell on the desk.

Uncertain what to do, Demi edged into the docking area, stun pistol held out before her, sweeping it around in long arcs, making certain that if anyone jumped out to get them, they would get a good stunning for their troubles. No-one jumped out at them and that left Demi a little disappointed.

"Hello? Shop?" The bell tinged several times as Friss hammered it with his fingers. "I swear, no-one understands good customer service anymore. Shop!"

A hole opened in the roof and a being that resembled a bee in a very well-tailored morning suit buzzed down to stand before Friss at the other side of the counter. An appendage reached out and laid upon Friss' hand, stopping him from hitting the bell and, when Friss made one last, poignant ting, removed the bell from the desk.

"How may I help you?" The bee-being's wings fluttered furiously as the bee-being spoke with them, the sound irritating Demi's ears. "Robberies are usually held on Tuesdays. I trust there is an explanation for not attending to scheduled robbery dates?"

"Yes. There is. A very good explanation in fact." With great ceremony, Friss dropped the barrel of his most wicked looking rifle on the surface of the reception desk, pointing at the bee-being. "We don't care about no stinking schedules. We're here for ..."

"Sir, we know very well what you are here for. You were scanned the moment you set foot in the bank." With a grace and nobility borne of not caring, whatsoever, about the rifle currently pointing at them, the bee-being pushed the barrel aside. "You have the remainder of the artefact in question. And I must inform you, sir, that that rifle fires an irritant gas that does not affect those of the Apistakker race, such as myself."

Friss looked a little embarrassed, lifting a hand in apology, mouthing 'sorry', before sorting through the myriad weapons strapped to his person, rattling and tinkling, until he found one that looked far less wicked than the first one, but almost certainly fired something deadly. He laid that barrel on the surface of the desk, pointing at the Apistakker, grinning. The Apistakker looked a great deal less impressed than even Demi expected them to look. Not that she could tell Apistakker expressions very well. The bee-being just gave off the air of deeply unimpressed weariness.

After a good few seconds, where the Apistakker gave Friss the coldest, most withering, patient look that could have fuelled a machine powered with loathing for centuries, Friss appeared to remember something the Apistakker had said. He held up his apologetic hand once more, mouthed 'oh' and 'sorry' again, before rummaging inside his many ammo pouches until his hand reappeared holding the Matryoshka doll. He placed it on the desk, beside the barrel of the rifle.

"Wait! Robberies are held on Tuesdays? You have scheduled robberies." Demi felt a little stupid standing with the stun pistol pointing at nothing, so she pointed it at the Apistakker instead. "I thought this was the most secure bank in the galaxy? Do you know what we've had to go through to get here? A lot. I mean, a lot! And you're telling me it's as easy as making a bloody appointment to rob the place? Unbelievable."

"No, madam, it was, in the common parlance, a joke. Ha ha." Never had a joke fallen so flat. It fell so flat it made Lap look three-dimensional. Still, that didn't stop the Apistakker continuing. "No, the truth is, no-one robs this bank because it's impossible. Oh, some very, very few will make it this far, but they never get away with it. DWAIt Corps have already been informed and are probably sending the entire Galactic Navy fleet as we speak, but we get a little bored around here, so we see such occurrences as this as a way to relieve the simple ennui of our dull, dreary lives. Ha ha."

"Whatever." Friss lifted the rifle barrel, pointing it the Apistakker's compound eyes. "Take me to it, now, or we blast our way to it. Well, I blast our way to it, my buddies over there rip things apart and she'd probably miss if she tried to stun anything, but you get the picture."

"That, sir, is a pump-action water rifle." The Apistakker's appendage touched the end of the barrel. It came away wet. "May I suggest the Killtromatic Five-Alpha. It has a wonderful penetration and the explosive bolts do make a spectacular ... No, sir, not that one. Or that. No. No. It's ... no. That's the one, sir. Now, please, follow me."

The Apistakker turned away from Friss and headed toward a set of doors that Demi hadn't even noticed. Friss, after adjusting the straps and the hang of all the weapons he had moved through to find the one the Apistakker had recommended, moved to follow. Demi looked toward Lap, who showed no signs of unrolling themselves, and Briyun, who looked absorbed in the latest (five years old) goings on in the reality holo-series, "I'm a nobody, get me out of here! Please!".

It appeared only she and Friss had any interest in following the Apistakker and, as the bee-being flew across to the doors, opened them both wide and then flew inside, Demi knew, for certain, that Lap and Briyun probably had the better idea. They were in a bank. That was it. Nothing exciting. No security. Only lines of, what she could only call, cashiers on either side of the room. All bee-beings, all buzzing away as they did banking things that Demi had no intention of finding out what those banking things actually were.

"Well, at least it's not filled with wildly racist stereotypes, eh?" None of the Apistakker cashiers gave Demi or Friss the slightest attention as Demi whispered to Friss. "There is that, I suppose."

"Not wildly racist? These are bees, Demi. Bees!" Friss scowled at her, almost tripping up over one of his rifles that looked suspiciously like a toy gun that fired soft, pliable rubber batons. "Bees are inherent workers, right? They have to work because that's what they are. This is as close to slavery as you can get in our post-war, enlightened but grungy and, sometimes, horribly violent utopia."

"Actually, sir, we are very well paid." The Apistakker gave a very still, undeniably annoyed nod and continued to fly to the other end of the room. "I, personally, own the entirety of the Slhvhrv system. I intend retiring there."

"Oh." The change in attitude from Friss was so abrupt, it could have been an ancient grandma disapproving of someone's life choices. Loudly. "Well, that's alright then."

Demi had no time to catch up to Friss' twists of attitude. The Apistakker had opened the doors at the far end of the room of Apistakker cashiers and, for the first time since arriving at the bank, she saw something that impressed her.

Not much, but she had low expectations.