by C. Gockel
Her bullet slammed into Spider’s forehead, and his head flew back, striking the earth and sending a puff of dust into the air. His arm fell limp, landing in the flames. He didn’t move it, and the smell of burning clothing and flesh soon scented the air along with the acrid taint of the smoke. Alisa grimaced. The war had taught her to kill, but she would never find it anything but horrifying.
Mica and the big man had disappeared, only her toolbox remaining, along with a dark smudge in the dust next to it. Alisa hopped over the conveyer belt to investigate, aware of shouts coming from all parts of the cavern. Most were inarticulate, a few in languages she couldn’t understand, but an enthusiastic call of, “Fresh meat!” made her shudder.
She couldn’t stay around here, but she couldn’t leave Mica, either. She was cursing herself for not seeing which direction they had gone when she glimpsed the remains of a warped casing on the ground. She picked it up, sniffed it, and dropped it immediately, the pungent scent familiar. Her fingers tingled from the brief contact.
A shuffling came from piles of scrap, and Mica walked into view, rubbing her neck and grimacing. “Animal.”
“Was that a rust bang?” Alisa asked, remembering the explosives the ground troops had often led with when assaulting imperial ships and fortifications. The acidic smoke could corrode even state-of-the-art combat armor. It was not as deadly to skin, but she’d seen people horribly disfigured and even killed from close contact.
“Sort of a homemade version.”
“That you kept in your pocket?”
“I keep lots of useful things in my pockets.” Mica picked up her toolbox, and they moved away from the body and the still-burning fire starter. “Don’t you?”
“I have half a chocolate bar and three tindarks in mine.”
“How’d you get chocolate in this hole?”
“I traded the painkillers the hospital gave me before kicking me out.” The medicine was highly coveted out in the lawless streets of the backwater planet, and Alisa had gotten her Etcher and a multitool out of the deal too.
“You didn’t need the painkillers?” Mica asked.
“Not as much as I needed the chocolate.”
“You’re an odd woman.”
“Says the engineer who carries rust bangs in her pockets. How did you manage to use one of those on that big brute without being hurt yourself?” As they walked, Alisa waved at Mica’s rumpled overalls, as faded and stained as hers—it hadn’t been an easy five months for either of them. Those overalls weren’t any more damaged, however, than they had been when they’d headed into the cavern. “You appear remarkably un-corroded.”
“The rust bang was insulated.”
“How?”
“It went off in his pants.”
“Ah. How did it get in there?”
“Must have fallen in.” Mica’s typically dour expression faded for a moment as she winked. “You rolling around in the dust and shooting people was a suitable distraction for it to do so.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Alisa managed a brief smile, amused that she had been worried her ally couldn’t take care of herself.
Lights flashed on the rocky ceiling far overhead, and the sounds of excited shouts grew closer. Shoes pounded in the dust nearby, reminding Alisa that they had made a lot of noise.
She turned her walk into a run, veering toward an aisle choked with piles of parts and some kind of vine that had no trouble growing in the dark. Though she worried that the half-starved brutes who called this place home would catch up with them, she felt more sure of her route now. The aisle had been a road the last time she’d been in here, with the place slightly more organized back then, and with fewer corpses along the way.
A gun fired behind them, and the sounds of a squabble broke out. Alisa hoped the scavengers would be satisfied that they could search—or eat—Spider’s corpse and wouldn’t look further, but she didn’t slow down. She couldn’t count on that, nor could she count on safety once she reached the Star Nomad. It had been inches from derelict status when she’d seen it last; the Suns Trinity only knew what condition it was in now. She was probably delusional to believe that Mica and her toolbox could fix it.
As they neared the back of the massive cavern, the shouts growing distant behind them, Alisa finally slowed down. Her lungs forced her to, even if her brain didn’t want to acknowledge the need. It was just as well. They ought to return to proceeding with caution.
“Is that it?” Mica whispered, pointing past Alisa’s shoulder.
They had reached another clearing, this one with a slender beam of daylight slashing down from a hole in the cavern ceiling. It provided just enough illumination to make out the hulls of four ships parked around the area. Grease and oil stains smeared the dusty ground in the open space, suggesting a fifth ship had rested there once. If one craft had flown out of here, Alisa hoped that meant another one could.
She stopped to stare at the familiar shape on the far side of the clearing, a tangle of emotions and memories washing over her. This ship had been responsible for her mother’s death, and six years hadn’t changed Alisa’s feeling of aversion toward it. Aversion and resentment. The clunky old freighter was even less impressive than she’d remembered.
The Nomad hadn’t been a beauty even in her heyday, and now dust dulled it further, coating every inch of the boxy hull while cobwebs draped the twin thrusters. Shadows hid the top and the front of the craft from her view, but she knew they would be equally neglected. She and Mica would have to assess the hull carefully, see if it was possible to make the craft spaceworthy again. Alisa ought to be able to advise her engineer on that. She certainly knew the Nomad well enough. Long before her mother’s death, Alisa had grown up on the ship, learning to fly and helping her mother run cargo from planet to moon to space station throughout the system. Under the empire’s rule, her mother had been forced to pay taxes and tolls at each port and had barely eked out enough of a profit to keep her ship in the sky and her daughter fed. But through sheer determination, she had kept Alisa fed. She had been a good mother—a good person—and emotion thickened Alisa’s throat as the years seemed to slip away, and she missed her anew. And she once again resented that the old ship had given out without warning, life support disappearing, her mother unable to—
“Captain?” Mica asked.
Alisa stirred, pushing aside the memories. “Yes. That’s it.”
She took a deep breath and walked through the dust toward the craft. She went slowly, looking left and right as she crossed near the light of the sunbeam. Just because they had left the other scavengers behind didn’t mean there couldn’t be more back here. The hatch was closed on the old freighter, the wide cargo-loading ramp folded away inside.
A bronze plaque had been bolted to the hull next to the hatch. It was too dusty to read, but she knew what it said: Property of Finnegan’s Scrap and Holding Company.
She had been there the day old Finnegan had affixed it, the day she sold the ship to him. Even if she had been grossly underpaid by the unscrupulous businessman, Alisa hadn’t been in the mood to argue back then, not with her mother’s death fresh in her mind. Still, she knew she couldn’t use that for justification of what she meant to do now. Steal it.
But Finnegan had died in the bombings of Dustor’s nearby capital—she’d researched that when formulating this plan—and nobody had come out to claim this junkyard in the year that had passed since then. People had likely been stealing from it for months, ever since the security guards had quit patrolling and the lowlifes had moved in.
As she neared the hatch, a growl came from under one of the other ships. As she turned to look, something furry with a spiky ridge along its back burst out of the shadows. A sand badger. Forty pounds of fangs, fur, and bad temperament. It sprinted straight at her, snarling.
Alisa whipped her Etcher toward it and was an instant from shooting when she remembered the need to be quiet. If she fired, the noise would only draw more scavengers, an
d she couldn’t simply run and hide now. They had to stay here long enough to fix the Nomad and get it flying.
Jerking the gun up, Alisa met the giant badger’s charge with a side kick instead of a bullet. She pivoted on her left foot, launching her right toward the thing’s bristly snout, glad the hospital had returned her sturdy boots to her upon release. The sole crunched into the badger’s face, halting its charge but not its ferocity. It twisted its neck, snapping at her leg as she retracted it. She launched a second kick without setting down her foot. This time, it saw the attack coming and scuttled to the side more quickly than something with such short legs should have been able to.
As she danced away from another charge, Alisa yanked her multitool off her belt, flicking it to extend the laser knife. Mica ran in behind the creature, an oversized wrench in hand. When Alisa kicked the badger in the snout again, Mica lunged in and clubbed it in the back. The blow probably didn’t do much harm, but it made the sand badger spin around, its spiked tail nearly whipping Alisa in the leg. The creature snarled and charged toward Mica, who scrambled back as she waved the wrench back and forth like a fencer’s foil.
Alisa sprang after the badger, slashing with the laser knife. It cut through the spiked tail, lopping it off and eliciting a squeal of pain from the animal.
She winced at the noise and darted in, hoping to finish it off, but the badger was done fighting. It scurried back into the shadows, leaving a trail of blood in the dust.
Alisa let it go, doubting she could have caught it anyway. As she stood, gun in one hand and multitool in the other, she tried to slow her breathing so she could listen and hear if anyone was coming. All that filled her ears was the sound of her own ragged breaths. She hadn’t recovered her stamina yet, and it annoyed her how long it took for her breathing to return to normal.
Mica returned her wrench to her toolbox and joined her. “Remember how skeptical I was when you told me that if I joined you, we’d find a ship that could take us back to civilization?”
“Yes.” Alisa flicked the multitool again, retracting the laser blade and sticking it back in her belt sheath.
“I wasn’t skeptical enough.” Mica curled a lip at the bloody stump of badger tail lying in the dust, then looked at the freighter and curled her lip even further. “A Nebula Rambler 880? They stopped making those fifty years ago.”
“That just means it’s a classic,” Alisa said, though she couldn’t help but remember how her mother had died and shudder. The ship had gone from feeling like home to a cemetery overnight for her.
But it was the only ship she was going to find that nobody else had a claim on and that might still be spaceworthy. Assuming they could fix it. And assuming it had enough juice left in the battery to open the hatch so they could get in. She wondered if it would still recognize her as an authorized entrant.
“Yeah?” Mica asked. “Does it have shag carpet?”
“Just in the rec room.”
Mica snorted.
Alisa reached for the sensor panel beside the hatch.
A shadow dropped from the sky.
She sprang back, jerking her gun toward the figure that landed beside her. A hand, an impossibly strong hand, clamped onto her wrist, squeezing until she gasped, her fingers loosening. Her gun was torn from her grip, and she was thrust backward before she could contemplate a kick or a punch.
The force of the thrust stole her balance, and she tumbled to the ground. Though she managed to turn the fall into a roll and come up in a crouch a few feet away, it didn’t matter. She’d lost her Etcher, and she was too far away to use the laser knife. Not that it would have mattered. Dread filled her as she recognized her opponent—and the fact that he was pointing her own gun at her.
2
He was a cyborg.
Oh, he looked fully human, with icy blue eyes, a strong jaw in need of shaving, and black hair even more in need of cutting, but humans didn’t jump thirty feet from the top of a spaceship, land on their feet next to a person, and proceed to attack so quickly that an Alliance officer with combat training didn’t have time to react. If there had been any question about his enhanced capabilities, the dusty black imperial fleet uniform jacket that he wore would have eliminated them. The rank pins had been removed from the collar, but the front of it was covered with patches that denoted a deluge of training, everything from atmo-parachuting to weapons and demolitions expertise. There was also a round patch with a fist over a sword and a shield. The symbol for the Cyborg Corps.
Alisa had lost colleagues to the Cyborg Corps during the war, and like all Alliance soldiers, she had heard the rumors that they had been responsible for the assassinations of many of their top brass and several political leaders. This cyborg wasn’t young—he had a few gray hairs at his temples—so he had probably been a senior sergeant. He might even have led some of those assassination teams.
There was no warmth in the eyes that stared relentlessly into hers, and they were uncomfortably knowing, as if he could read her mind. Not likely—she had never heard of a cyborg with Starseer capabilities—but that didn’t make her feel any better.
“You’ll have to get him to turn around,” Mica said.
She stood several feet away, her toolbox still in hand. The cyborg hadn’t pointed a weapon at her. Yet.
“What?” Alisa asked, never taking her gaze from her enemy.
She didn’t know what she could do if he decided to shoot—his reflexes and aim would be a lot better than those of the wiry thug they had left burning—but she would face him, regardless, keep her chin high. Whatever skills and abilities he possessed, his side had lost the war. Her people, comprised only of full-blooded humans, had won.
“You know,” Mica said, “so I can club him in the back like I did the badger.”
“Ah,” Alisa said, watching the cyborg’s face, looking for some hint that he might appreciate their humor—or at least that he wasn’t contemplating killing them.
She rose slowly from her crouch, not liking the way he could look down at her. Unfortunately, he still looked down at her. She wasn’t a short woman, standing a couple of inches shy of six feet, but he still had six or eight inches on her. The breadth of his shoulders and solidness of his limbs made her sure he would have been an intimidating man even without the cyborg implants. The imperial fleet doctors had probably loved getting their hands on him.
He tracked her movement, his gaze flicking downward briefly, taking in her uniform jacket, she suspected, not checking out her boobs. He wasn’t the only one wearing signs of his last career. Though her worn trousers and shirt weren’t anything remarkable, she wore the same jacket she had worn throughout the war, a mottled blue and gray Alliance military jacket. She didn’t have as many patches as he did, but the one on her left breast proclaimed her a combat pilot. He might even now be wondering if she’d blown up some of his buddies. She wouldn’t be surprised if she had, but it would have been from the cockpit of her Striker-18, not from the ground.
“Go away,” the cyborg said, his voice as hard as his eyes.
Mica looked at her, her brows rising in surprise. She wore civilian clothes, and the cyborg had barely glanced at her, but she must have noticed him checking out Alisa’s uniform jacket. Maybe she’d expected him to shoot her.
Honestly, Alisa had expected it too. In the brief weeks she had been out of the hospital, she’d noticed that the end of the war hadn’t meant an end in hostilities, not here on a planet that housed both former Alliance and former imperial soldiers, many squabbling over what was no longer claimed or defendable by law.
“Go away?” Alisa asked, not because she hadn’t understood him but because she couldn’t go away. She had come for the ship he was standing in front of, and she wouldn’t leave without it. Would it be better to admit that and try to bargain with him, or to hide in the shadows and watch from a distance, hoping he would leave eventually? “We just got here. We’re interested in…”
She trailed off because the cyborg had turned
away from her. He waved his hand at the sensor she had been angling toward earlier, and a hiss-clunk sounded as the hatch opened, and the ramp inside unfolded in three stages, the end coming to rest on the ground.
She didn’t know whether she was more indignant that he’d dismissed her as a non-threat by turning his back or because he’d somehow gained access to the ship. The latter wasn’t all that hard, but it did suggest computer knowledge she wouldn’t have expected from a ground soldier, cyborg or not. They were usually combat specialists and not much more.
He tossed her gun at her feet and stepped onto the ramp, clearly intending to go inside and shut the hatch on them.
“Wait,” Alisa blurted. She ran and picked up her gun and started toward the ramp. “We came to—”
She halted mid-sentence again, this time because he’d paused, turning back toward her, another weapon in hand. His weapon, this time. A single-barreled destroyer, a handgun that had the nickname “hand cannon” for a reason. It was the first thing in the cavern she had seen that wasn’t dusty and neglected, and it was pointing between her eyes.
“I said, go away,” the cyborg said, his tone and his narrowed eyes promising that he would shoot if she lifted her gun toward him or tried to follow him.
“I can’t,” Alisa said, though she probably should have opted for her earlier thought of hiding and simply waiting for him to leave. But it would take days for Mica to fix the ship, if not weeks, and if he was squatting here, they would have to deal with him one way or another. “We need this ship.” She waved to the Star Nomad, careful to use the hand that wasn’t holding the Etcher. That she kept pointed toward the ground.
“It’s mine,” he said.
“Technically, it’s Finnegan’s,” Alisa said, wondering if he knew anything about the junkyard or the history of the place.
“He’s not here. I am.”