Free Rocketship Patrol by J.I. Greco

mid-sentence, her face screwing up in pain. She convulsed, her arms flailing, her legs failing. After a moment, she dropped unconscious to the deck.
    Igon stood in the open airlock hatchway behind her, sparking stunstick in his claw.
    While Hackenthrush and Rikki stared dumbfounded, Igon hopped over Loy’s prone body and shoved his way between them. “Where’s the mess?”
    “Ummm….” Hackenthrush stammered.
    The robot pranced up the corridor. “Never mind, I’ll find it myself.”
    Hackenthrush and Rikki looked at each other, then back at the unconscious Loy, and then back at Igon, disappearing around the curve of the corridor. Rikki gave Hackenthrush a questioning look and Hackenthrush shrugged, then started up the corridor after Igon.
    “Um, excuse me,” Hackenthrush called after the robot, “you’re under arrest?”
     

     
    Cortez whistled.
    Atop the pile of inverters and shielding panels, the holoflat on her robomechanical forearm’s palm lit up.
    EMERGENCY SIGNAL ACKNOWLEDGED. INITIATING LIMITED BATTERY-POWERED AUTONOMOUS MODE.
    The forearm shook itself awake, the wrist flexing, the fingers stretching, and  jauntily hopped down the pile, using its fingers to jump from inverter to panel to inverter and down to the deck next to her.
    Crouched a few feet away, Dag scratched idly at the mold growing over his crotch. He watched as Cortez twisted around to wag her stump at the robomechanical forearm. The forearm swung around and offered its plug end to Cortez. Cortez slipped her stump inside. A click, and the forearm locked itself in place, its holoflat flashing: BIO-INTERFACE RE-ESTABLISHED. AUTONOMOUS MODE CANCELED. SWITCHING TO HOST BIOMETRIC POWER FEED.
    Dag lifted the autorifle, pointing its bent barrel at Cortez. “I don’t think I should have let you do that.”
    Cortez flexed her robomechanical fingers in front of her face. “Tell you what, you don’t tell anybody you did, I won’t tell anybody that gun couldn’t fire if you set a match to it.”
    “Agreed.” Dag set the autorifle aside. He pointed at Cortez’s robomechanical arm. “That’s a useful tool.”
    “Comes in handy, yeah.” She pressed both sides of her robomechanical wrist simultaneously and a centimeter-long laser scalpel popped out of its index finger. She began carefully slicing the short red laser through the wires holding her right arm snug against her torso.
    Dag fitfully scratched away at another tuft of mold under his arm. “How’d you lose the original?”
    “Didn’t. It’s in a freezer back home.” The wires fell around her waist and Cortez plucked them off, then she set to work slicing through the wires around her knees. “That’s some pretty nasty shell rot you got going there.”
    “It’s too dry out here,” Dag said. “Rather be home. Cold swamps, warm family, but have to make a living, you know?”
    Cortez tapped an inquiry into the underside of her robomechanical arm. “That how you hooked up with Igon? Scavenging?”
    “We found him in a debris field,” Dag said. “Inside a computer core. Should have left it alone.”
    ROCKETSHIP CONTROL (PARTIAL) RELAY: BOOTY ONE DATA PACKAGE INTACT IN SHIP’S BRAIN SECONDARY MEMORY; 100 % DATA INTEGRITY.
    “You have no idea.” Cortez smiled at her palm holoflat as she read the report. She tapped a key to clear the display and looked over at Dag. “He make you some kind of deal?”
    “We somehow sell the data you’re carrying, we get two percent – four, now, for taking on the cops. That and we get your life boat to salvage.”
    “Life boat’s from a rental ship,” Cortez said. “Insurance company has salvage rights.”
    Dag bleated. “Damn him.”
    “You still have the data core you found Igon in?”
    “Of course. ”
    “Good,” Cortez said, standing up. She rubbed her hands together and stretched the kinks out of her neck and shoulders. “Now, what you say to ten percent and a year’s supply of shell-rot cream?”
    “Feh! Vei!” Dag