The pilot eased them up to the moon, synchronizing their path with the rotation.
“Take us over the crevice.”
The ship moved slightly, the view of the moon in the clear windows above them changing. And there it was, the long, dark gouge in the surface. At the near end, scorch marks covered the trench, small specks of littered canisters and deep furrows outlined their trail.
She followed it, craning her neck. Her teeth ground together anxiously as the grooves grew deeper where the ship had ground into the grey soil. And there at the end, at what should have been the final resting place of the freightship Ishash’tor, was a hole, unsettled dust still floating above the surface.
She gripped the console so hard it cracked. A growl escaped her throat. They had been fooled, bested by a ship full of filthy Augments.
She could feel the eyes of the others on her. Pathetic underlings. She didn’t bother looking at the officer who suggested there was no way the freightship could have survived. They obviously did. She gestured once in his direction, heard his pathetic squeak and the rustle as two Tactical officers took him away. At least he had the good sense to be quiet, preserve some dignity before they sent a laz-beam through his skull.
“Take us to the surface,” she said after he had gone. “We must consult with Dr. Guitteriez.”
“Ma’am?” asked the pilot, his annoying voice shaking slightly.
“Take the ship down.”
The pilot swallowed audibly, but he did comply. The warship was capable of landing, but it was so large it had been built in space and it was meant to stay in space. However, a visit of this importance to the good doctor deserved some fanfare.
Her head ached. A great tear of emptiness had opened in her. Certainly it was the stress of the disappeared freightship containing two-dozen, still living Augments. It had nothing to do with the absence of the mind tether which left an ache in her soul. Nothing to do with her concern for the passengers on the freightship.
She shook her head. The very thought was preposterous.
But Sarrin DeGazo had impacted her more than she was willing to admit, even in the brief few weeks they had been connected via Dr. Guitteriez’s chip.
The ship groaned as it entered the gravity field of the planet. The pilot frowned, but kept her hand on the controls steady as the ship descended.
Perhaps the doctor could remove these last fleeting thoughts of the Augment that still swam around her head, nearly making her nauseous with contradictions.
She felt the lieutenant’s apprehension before he started to speak. “Uh, Ma’am.”
She lifted her eyes, heavily hooded by her throbbing brow. Her tongue, she pressed against her teeth in annoyance.
He gulped audibly and gestured to the screen.
She turned her gaze, feeling him relax.
The compound was scorched. Razed to the ground.
“No,” she gasped, slapping her hand on the console. Where was Guitteriez? He needed to help her. Her heart thudded erratically as her eyes searched the screen. “What happened to the facility?”
No one would answer.
“What happened? Where did the warship go? Where is the Augment? Where is Guitteriez?”
Her first officer stepped up behind her, his demeanour annoying placid. “It appears the warship fooled us and escaped. My guess is they attacked the facility.”
She slammed the console again, widening the crack with a loud split. “I want a team down there immediately. Retrieve the databases. We must find out what happened.”
Two officers left the bridge quickly.
“Scan the area for any trace. We need to find that freightship.”
* * *
Kieran slapped a hand up to his face reflexively, falling immediately back into the rabbit hole of sleep. But an instant later, another ping landed on his cheek, and he rolled over heavily. His eyes creaked open in the half-illumination.
A shape hovered over him, and Sarrin’s face, worried, came into focus.
He sat up, dizzy at the sudden movement. “What is it?”
She shook her head and turned, pulling a panel off the wall.
“Sarrin?”
She motioned at the new access hole, expecting him to get in. “Something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean ‘something’s wrong’?”
She gestured again at the opening in the wall.
“Sarrin, I won’t fit in there.”
The space between her eyebrows creased, and she scanned him, measuring. “Collapse your shoulder.” She demonstrated, tilting her one shoulder down and in.
“What? No. What’s going on?”
She shook her head, eyes staring into the unknown. “Something strange, but familiar.”
“Familiar?”
“Something I’ve felt before, but I don’t remember.” She sent him a pointed look. “Something that’s not the same.”
“Like what?”
“We have to go.” She pointed again at the wall.
He pointed at the door.
“There are five Augments stationed outside your quarters.”
“Oh. And we can’t just —?”
“We need to get to Engineering.”
“You can go.” He shrugged, settling back into the bed. “I’ve had it. If they want my help, they can ask. Besides, I’m only here to observe. I shouldn’t be helping this much in the first place.”
She pressed her lips together, looking down at the open panel, suddenly looking very small. “I can’t,” she said. “There’s no sedative. I need….”
“Sarrin?” He leapt to his feet, a sudden knot of worry propelling him to her side. “What do you think is going on?”
She shook her head again, blinking rapidly, then crawled into the wall.
Kieran swore as her feet disappeared. He poked his head in — tight spaces didn’t bother him, but even with his shoulder collapsed into his chest, he had to push with his legs to squeeze his torso through the tight space. It opened up a little when they reached the horizontal plane between decks, and he caught Sarrin half-sitting up, watching for him. She scrambled away, and he crawled on his elbows to catch up.
Engineering wasn’t far when they travelled this way, but it was slow. “Sarrin, what’s going on?” he tried again, but she refused to answer, darting up a connecting bulkhead.
The panel fell out where she pushed it, filling the dark space with light. She crawled out, and he scrambled after her into the empty and throughly wrecked engine room.
“Oh my God,” he gasped. “What have they done?” His feet carried him to his beloved engine, now entirely stripped. If it was broken before, it was irreparable now.
Behind him, Sarrin muttered, “I don’t understand.”
“They must really think I’ve got it in for the ship, to pull apart everything.”
But Sarrin was focussed on one of the screens built into the wall, tapping the sensor controls. Her hand came up and rested on her temple, over the same spot she had pulled the tracking chip from, the same spot that had ached every time the warship arrived.
“Sarrin?”
She shuffled forwards slowly to the main engineering bay and into it. The bay was busy, but she ignored the commotion as she made her way to the large central console. Kieran followed, one eye open for Rami. Pulling up the 3D display on the console, an image of the freightship and its surroundings flickered to life. The display zoomed out, showing Junk and it’s moons and the thick band of scrap parts spread out like orbital rings.
Kieran stooped, aware that there were now multiple sets of eyeballs turning his way, and they weren’t friendly. “Sarrin,” he whispered, “I shouldn’t be here.”
Ignoring him, she peered deeper into the display.
“What’s happening?” he said. But she never answered, a blip flashing on the display, a hulking starship materializing on the far side of Junk.
Sarrin jumped back, her eyes wide.
“Shit,” Kieran spat. Then — reg
ardless of who saw him — he yelled, “Warship!”
“They haven’t seen us,” said Sarrin.
“How do you know?”
A sharp shake of her head.
Kieran blinked. It didn’t matter how she knew the warship was about to arrive before it did, or how she knew they hadn’t seen them. What mattered was there might still be time. He turned, dodging Augments as he ran to the engine room. “We’re gonna have to hot-wire the engines if we want a chance to escape.”
A cold voice stopped him in his tracks. “What are you doing here?” Rami stalked towards them, face red and fists clenched so that every massive muscle stood menacing. Kieran found himself surrounded by a wall of Augments. “Space him,” Rami ordered, and a pair of hands wrapped around each arm.
Eyes wide, he looked at Sarrin, but she turned her head, her eyes distant. “They’ve seen us.”
* * *
Gal fell from his bed, crashing on the grey floor in a tangle of sheets as everything shook underneath him.
“Johnny?” Aaron sat up abruptly from his casual seat by the desk.
The ship shook around them. It could mean only one thing. Gal tripped over the tangled bedclothes, blinking away the pall of deep sleep. “They’ve found me.” He stumbled into the door, barely catching himself. He pounded on the mechanism, but it wouldn’t open. “What’s going on?”
“They found you in the engine room,” answered Aaron. “They were afraid. They locked you in here.”
His head whipped around. “How do you know that?”
“Because you know it. You saw it, even if you don’t want to remember. I’m not really here.”
The walls around him were grey — a pleasant tan-grey that did not belong on a starship — and sunlight streamed through the open window. A photo stood above the mantle of an old stone fireplace — he and Rayne, standing on the planet Yates. With a gulp, he recognized his old apartments on Etar.
They would destroy him. They would destroy everything he ever loved.
He looked to the standard issue desk, at the cabinets with their false bottoms and fake doors. “Destroy everything,” he told Aaron. Years of records — paper records that were completely untraceable, unhackable — went into the fireplace. Pocketbooks and diaries, manifests and lists, hastily copied blueprints and oaths sworn on napkins. All of it had to go.
“Send a feed out. They’re coming for me.”
Aaron shook his head. “None of this is real.”
“They have to know!”
“This isn’t happening. I’m dead, Gal.”
It couldn’t be. Gal shook his head.
He ripped the panel off the door controls. He switched the wires around until, satisfied, he pushed the switch again and the door opened, the panel lighting up in a mini explosion of fire.
A guard let out a shout of surprise and turned.
They were already here. UECs. Hap’s men.
He threw his fist into the man’s genitals as hard as he could and ran. The demons chased after him, shrieking down the never-ending grey corridors.
* * *
Sarrin steadied herself against the wall, pushing away the dark clouds at the edge of her vision. Her heart raced fast, even as she sped up.
Kieran lifted himself up off the floor, loosed from his captors when the warship’s first shot raked across their bow. “Rami, listen. You need my help to repair the engine if you want half a chance of surviving this.”
“Get out,” Rami shouted, darting over and stomping a boot into Kieran’s side. “I don’t want you anywhere near these engines. You’ll probably hand us straight over to the UECs.”
Clouds condensed again, Sarrin’s hand shaking as she shut her eyes and forced herself to inhale slowly.
Kieran shuffled back on his knees, away from Rami. “I don’t care what you think I did, but no matter what my motives are, I need the ship to stay in one piece to stay alive, just like the rest of you. There’s a warship out there — they thought they’d killed us once and I bet they’re none too impressed that we’re still floating.”
“That’s who you’re working for, isn’t it?” sneered Rami, his wide frame dwarfing Kieran. “Why you’ve been wasting all our time with these ridiculous modifications? You just wanted us stranded here until your friends on the warship could return.”
The ship shook under them again. Sarrin gasped, grabbing onto the nearest bulkhead. The clouds, and the strangely familiar feeling, warred with her senses.
“That’s insane,” shouted Kieran. “I’m trying to survive this, same as you.” He was far away to Sarrin’s ears.
“You want us to get caught,” Rami accused.
“We don’t have time for this. We need the FTL working now.”
Rami reached for Kieran. The weight of the fog pushed down around Sarrin. She felt herself lunge forward, grab Rami by the collar, and throw him to the ground, twisting so his one good arm bent awkwardly across his back and he landed under her knees. Rage poured through her hands, both hers and his coming together in a violent clash. The monster purred in her mind, and in her rage, she encouraged it right back.
Two green eyes blinked at her, making her pause. A hand grabbed the back of her clothes and sent her flying. She landed against the engine block with a thud — enough to clear her senses.
Kieran flashed her a worried look.
Rami, his face nearly purple, scrambled to his feet.
“Stop.” Thomas appeared, his deep voice booming across the engineering bay. He was flanked by the same Augments who had shown up at her quarters and begged her to be alpha.
“Get rid of her,” Rami screamed.
But Thomas stepped in front of her. “You put us all under the Rule of War, but you’re not the alpha, Rami. You never were.”
Sarrin blinked, a different monster washing over her: dread.
“You can’t be serious,” said Rami. “She’s insane. She tried to attack me.”
Thomas shrugged. “If she hadn’t, I would have. We need to make a jump away from here, we need the FTL. You’ve spent the last day pulling it apart. Now, Kieran is probably the only one who can put it back together.”
The girl, Adrienne, stepped forward too. “I’ve seen her marks.”
“We won’t follow you, Rami,” said the boy she had saved when they were children. “Twenty-seven has saved us before, and if she says you’re dangerous, then I want you nowhere near any of this, especially not with the warship already firing on us.”
As if for emphasis, the ship rocked under them again. Sarrin reached for her head, for the intense pressure that built there, something tearing wide apart. She had never wanted to be in charge, never wanted to be alpha or for anyone to know how many procedural marks had been etched on her skin or how she had earned them. She only wanted to be normal. Her vision turned nearly black.
A hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her to her feet. She twisted, but the arm held, and she stared into Kieran’s green eyes. She caught a glimpse of a memory: a young girl brushing the hair of an even younger girl. Then they were running, Kieran pulling her into the engine room.
“This is bad,” he said, letting her go.
She gasped and pulled away, he had come too close.
Kieran pushed a hand through his hair, but he wasn’t talking to her or anyone else, he was talking to himself as he studied the massive, ruined engine block. “All we need is a gravity pulse, it doesn’t even have to be a big one. The grav-generator is functional, checked it first thing, but with the engine in pieces we’ll never get enough energy to make a jump.”
She watched him closely, his every feature outlined in extreme detail as she watched him think. Her mind was speeding up.
Another hit rocked the ship, and all but the emergency lighting went out, leaving engineering in a pale red glow.
“The pulse frequency,” she said. The weapon she had designed to tear the warship apart, it would save them now.
Kieran pressed his lips together. “Sarrin�
�.”
Her eyes caught on the wrecked engine room. “It’s our only option.”
He stared at her for a minute, long enough for her to shift under his gaze, but he gave her a grim nod and turned away. “I’ll check the torpedo launcher.”
A desperate yearning welled up inside Sarrin as he left her, but her gift, and her mission now, was to kill. She followed him into the main engineering bay, past the collection of worried looking Augments, to the torpedo tubes. A memory flashed: this was where she had first met Kieran, the first time they had escaped form the warship.
She pulled the cap off one of the weapons, adjusting the frequency output on the electro-torpedo by feel. Her head swam. The warship held a crew of one-hundred-fifty-six. How much of a monster would she be when it was destroyed?
Dark clouds obscured everything in front of her, the engineering bay falling far away as the monster took hold. From somewhere nearby, Kieran called out her name.
She blinked and she was on the pristine white bridge of the warship Comrade.
An instant later, screaming pain ripped through her bones.
* * *
“We can’t trace gravity-wells.”
“I don’t care.”
There was silence as the ensign started the scan. She stared at the smoking rubble on the screen.
“Oh,” gasped the ensign.
She whipped around to face him.
“They’re here.”
She whipped back to the view screen where he pointed. Floating serenely in the black of space was the freightship. Its hull torn apart, transmission lights blinking painfully slow — they were injured. “Hit them with everything we have.”
Amelia gripped the console with renewed intensity, a snarl on her face. The tacticians fired multiple volleys of laz-cannon fire at the pathetic freightship. She should have felt pleased, the familiar adrenaline of the hunt slid through her easily. But another part was apprehensive, her stomach fluttering.
Computerized flashes lit up on the display marking each hit. Though there weren’t as many as she liked. There were more than she liked — half of her cringing, warring with the other half.
The Augments were abominations, direct insults to the Gods. With a growl, she ordered, “Activate the negative pulse beam.” No doubt it was an Augment pilot dodging their cannons — Amelia silently cursed the ineptitude of her own pilot and tacticians — but the Augments could be subdued.
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