Test Subjects

by R S Penney

  “Ensign Kellin,” Anna said softly, turning to a young man who stood at the edge of the group, nervously checking his rifle. He looked up as if surprised to hear his name.

  “Yes…Ma'am?”

  Lifting her chin, Anna held the man's gaze, then nodded. “Your job will be to stay behind,” she said. “Use the manual override and get the airlocks open. I'm thinking we'll need to make a hasty retreat, and we won't have time to climb through the hole.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  Kellin set about his task, and the rest of them huddled together in a tight cluster. Anna joined hands with Cassi and reached out to Seth. She could already sense the other woman manipulating space-time, and with Seth's help, she amplified Cassi's Bending, countering the artificial gravity field in a small area around the group. Some of the Tac officers gasped.

  “Now.”

  They jumped and shot upward through the hole in the ceiling. It was large enough for all of them to pass through easily. Once they were out, Anna simply allowed gravity to reassert a tiny fraction of its strength, adding a slight pull toward the front end of the shuttle. Cassi sensed the change and immediately adjusted her Bending to mirror Anna's.

  They landed on the shuttle's roof with a very slight thump of boots on metal. Anna's training kicked in, and she took in the sight of everything around her, adding that to what she already knew through spatial awareness.

  The hangar bay was enormous, a large rectangular room at least three stories high, and Jack's shuttle was parked in one corner, its port-side wing pointing at the exit. There were marked spaces on the main floor where small, one-man fighters could land; most of them were vacant. The ship must have launched its fighters when the Endeavour arrived.

  Catwalks ran along three of the four walls on the second and third levels. Only the massive space door, to her right, had no fixtures. The fact that this room was oxygenated suggested that when that door opened, semipermeable force-fields would prevent the air from escaping, allowing the crew to keep working while spacecraft flew in and out of the hangar bay.

  Less than five seconds after they into place atop Jack's shuttle, the alarms started wailing. Flashing red lights on the walls began to blink, and the hangar bay's maintenance crew sprang into action. She saw technicians in orange jumpsuits scrambling for safety.

  “They know we're here,” Anna said. “Let's move!”

  Telixa grunted as she was nearly thrown out of her chair. The lights flickered, and her officers tensed up at their stations. That last bit of incoming fire had hit harder than she would have expected. Grudgingly, she admitted that she had to give these Leyrians a little credit. Yes, they had a reputation for pacifism, but they could fight if pushed.

  Gritting her teeth, Telixa winced. “Status report!” she snarled at the bridge crew. “Now!”

  One young man in gray turned his chair to face her, sweat glistening on his pale face. “Two dorsal cannons are offline,” he replied. “One of those Leyrian ships did some damage to the ventral shield emitters.”

  “The Hydra received our distress call.” That came from Lieutenant Hadarial, a dark-skinned woman with buzzed hair under her gray cap. “They estimate a rendezvous in five minutes.”

  “We'll just have to hold out until then.”

  Telixa forced anger down into the pit of her stomach. This was no time for emotion. With a few taps at her left-side panel, she brought up a holographic image of the Leyrian ships. They were quite a marvel, these Phoenix-Class cruisers: sleek, slim and incredibly maneuverable. Those curved wings indicated that the Leyrians had designed them for atmospheric flight as well.

  “Admiral!” one man shouted.

  Telixa narrowed her eyes as she studied the holographic image. “Yes, Lieutenant?” she said. “What is it?”

  “I'm detecting SlipGate activity.”

  “What?”

  She was out of her chair and rounding on the man in seconds, striding across the length of the bridge to his station. Short and stocky, with olive skin and thick eyebrows, Lieutenant Graydon looked up at her with fear in his eyes. “Sensors detected an energy spike in SlipSpace that would normally indicate an incoming traveler. But…But all of our Gates are locked.”

  “Can you pinpoint the traveler's destination?”

  “It's difficult to be certain.” Graydon turned back to his console, his fingers dancing over the controls as he checked the screen. “Tracking an object through SlipSpace is very difficult, but I would say Deck 7. Near the hangar bay.”

  Telixa felt her face redden. How could she have been so unforgivably stupid? “The Justice Keeper,” she spat. “I should have known.”

  “Ma'am?”

  “The Justice Keeper had a SlipGate on his shuttle!” she yelled. “It wasn't connected to our computers and didn't show up on our screens when we performed a battle readiness assessment!”

  Initial scans of Jack Hunter's shuttle had revealed that his Gate was locked. And of course, it was! Anyone who left a SlipGate open was just inviting a raiding party. Once they brought him on board, however, they just assumed that his shuttle was too damaged to access the Gate's systems.

  But that bloody pocket computer of his…Her engineers were only just beginning to discover its capabilities. It was far more advanced than the hand-held devices her people used. He must have opened the Gate before coming out to meet them. “Intruder alert!”

  Alarms began screeching in response to her order.

  “How many are we dealing with?”

  Flinching at the venom in her tone, Lieutenant Graydon switched his monitor to a security-camera feed. Telixa counted seven people atop of the Justice Keeper's damaged shuttle. But there might be more inside. Her sensors couldn't penetrate the shuttle's hull.

  Turning on her heel, Telixa marched back to her chair. The crew reacted as if she might start breathing fire in their general direction. Good. “Send a squad of thirty down there.” That was nearly a third of her security force, but the Leyrians could bring more troops through the SlipGate. “tell them to shoot anything they find.”

  Anna hopped down onto the shuttle's port-side wing, lifting her pistol in both hands. “Stun-rounds,” she ordered, lining up her first shot. When she squeezed the trigger, she felt a small jolt of recoil.

  A charged bullet pierced the fabric of one man's jumpsuit, delivering an electric jolt directly to his body. He spasmed, arms flailing, and then fell flat on his face.

  All around her, Anna saw technicians falling to stun-rounds loosed by her team. A young woman who carried a case of tools got hit in the shoulder. She made it another two steps before passing out.

  Up on the catwalk, one man convulsed frantically, backing away from the railing and slumping against the wall. He dropped out of sight.

  In seconds, the bay was clear.

  “Get down here,” Anna said, jumping out of the way. “We need to move.”

  Her people sprang into action.

  Some slid down the shuttle's cockpit window, dropping to the floor. Others hopped onto the wing and ran the length of it before jumping off. In seconds, they were clustered together and making their way toward the hangar-bay door.

  They moved at a quick pace with assault rifles leveled at the door. Everything was quiet, but Anna couldn't stop scanning the catwalks for some enterprising technician who might be thinking about firing on them from above. She saw no one, but there was a door on the second level, on the wall to her left.

  Joal Stamon had taken point, moving with extreme caution as he stepped over the orange-clad body of an unconscious technician. He was flanked on either side by Triala Sakeen and Rayse Dalthane, both of whom kept their weapons pointed at the door as if they expected Death itself to come rushing through at any moment.

  Anna was behind them with her pistol in both hands, its muzzle aimed down at the floor. She frowned and turned her head to inspect their surroundings. “Our first priority is to disable main power on this deck,” she said.

  Her mind painte
d an image of Cassi right behind her and two more tactical officers bringing up the rear – all misty silhouettes. The other woman grunted. “Any guesses as to what kind of resistance we can expect?”

  As if in answer to Cassi's question, the large metal door began to slide open with a whooshing sound. “Scatter!” Anna shouted. “Suppressing fire!” Before those words were out of her mouth, the tactical officers were spreading out to avoid being directly in front of the door. Anna did so as well.

  When the opening was clear, she saw three men in armoured vests and dark gray helmets standing in the entryway with assault rifles raised. Stamon and his team pelted them with stun-rounds.

  Anna ran to her right.

  When she had a clear shot at an oblique angle, she lifted her pistol and squinted as she took aim. She fired once, twice, again.

  One of her bullets hit the exposed neck of a Ragnosian security officer, delivering a shock that made him drop his weapon and fall to his knees before passing out. The next man fell when Triala's bullet strung his arm.

  Of course, one of the Ragnosians did manage to endure the pelting long enough to get his weapon up and fire on Commander Stamon. The shot hit his centre of mass, throwing Joal to the floor. Thankfully, his heavy armour could stop a rifle round.

  Lieutenant Sakeen was moving sideways, toward the wall underneath the catwalk. There was nothing for her to use as cover; so she just kept firing and hoping that none of her enemies could get a clean shot.

  Dalthane was moving in the opposite direction.

  Anna nodded to Cassi.

  The other woman gave her a wink that made it clear she knew what to do. Raising both hands, Cassi put up a Bending, a patch of warped space-time large enough to cover her entire body. She stepped in front of the door, blocking any incoming fire. Bullets that should have chewed through her light armour instead curved upward to hit the ceiling.

  This gave Ensigns Helliar and Rin a chance to position themselves directly behind Cassi. They both dropped to one knee, activating portable force-field generators on their gauntlets.

  Cassi twirled out of the way.

  Ragnosian ammunition pounded two overlapping screens of flickering white static. Those force-fields sped forward like a strong wind blowing away debris, passing through the door and flattening enemy security officers against the corridor wall.

  When it was over, only one Ragnosian man peeked around the corner, aimed his rifle into the hangar bay and fired. Anna's team had already scattered in that moment of distraction; even Stamon had rolled out of the way. The bullet hit Jack's shuttle with a loud ping.

  So far so good. If they could bottleneck the Ragnosians in the doorway, keep them contained in the corridor, then they might just be able to-

  Anna gasped when she heard a whoosh.

  She remembered how Rajel's keen ears had saved her life during their raid on Leo's castle. Ever since then, she had made it a point to rely on more than eyesight and spatial awareness. That sound came from somewhere on her left…from the second-level door.

  Anna felt her eyes widen.

  Crouching down, she thrust her arm out and fired on the first-floor entrance. The young man who had been poking his head around the corner ducked out of sight, and her bullet hit the wall. “Helliar, Rin.” she yelled, holstering her weapon. “Fire on the second-level catwalk. I need a distraction. The rest of you, cover me!”

  Two of her tactical officers spun to face the catwalk, backing away with their rifles pointed upward. They spat bullets at anyone who might be up there.

  Whirling around, Anna raced back to the shuttle. She hopped onto the wing and ran across its surface, jumping to land crouched upon the roof. From there, it wasn't much of a leap to the catwalk.

  Bent Gravity propelled her upward, over the railing, and she landed in the corner with a thump. A line of seven Ragnosian security officers was firing down on her people. The nearest two looked over their shoulders and flinched when they saw her.

  Anna spun to face them.

  She thrust her hand out, crafting a Bending as she ran forward. The very air seemed to pulsate, distorting the image of a uniformed man who swung his rifle around to fire on her. Bullets curved off to her right and zipped across the hangar bay to hit the space door. Her enemy recoiled in fear. That was all she needed.

  Releasing the Bending, Anna dove and somersaulted along the catwalk. She came up on one knee right in front of the nearest man, then drove her fist into his belly, forcing him to bend double.

  Lacing her fingers, Anna brought her hands up to strike his face with enough force to crack his visor. That left him dazed, and he stumbled backward into his comrades. Best of all, the catwalk was so narrow that none of them could shoot Anna without hitting him.

  She got up and charged forward, crashing into the armoured guard and pushing him backward into his friends. One by one, they fell like dominoes until she reached a point where even Keeper strength wasn't enough to move all those bodies.

  So, despite the mild tingle in her skin, she twisted gravity.

  The guard she held flew backward at incredible speed, over his fallen companions and into the ones who were still standing, knocking them all down. In seconds, she had seven armoured men lying stretched out on the catwalk.

  Of course, they wouldn't stay down.

  Anna jumped onto the railing and ran along it with her pistol in her left hand, firing down at every man she passed. Each one of them convulsed when a charged bullet hit his arm or his leg. The last man in line was rising, picking up his rifle.

  Anna dropped off the railing, twisting around to grab the ledge of the catwalk with her free hand, dangling about twenty feet above the hangar bay floor. The final guard got up on shaky legs, looking around for whoever had incapacitated his men.

  He stepped up to the railing.

  Anna smiled up at him.

  She fired one last bullet that hit the underside of his chin – possibly bruising his jaw – and released a jolt that made his whole body flail. The poor guy fell back against the wall and passed out.

  Discarding her pistol – it could survive the fall – Anna grabbed the ledge with both hands and swung her body like a pendulum. She let go and flew under the catwalk with her feet pointed forward.

  When her shoes hit the wall, she pushed off and back-flipped. She turned upright and fell to the floor, landing with impeccable grace.

  The instant her feet hit the tiles, Anna heard a metallic thumping noise. Bleakness take her, she had been afraid of this! She turned around to find something that looked like the Ragnosian equivalent of a battle drone coming through the door.

  This robot was shorter and thinner than some of the drones Anna had seen, its body composed of some light-weight blue polymer. But just like its Leyrian counterparts, this bot lifted one hand to point an arm-mounted cannon at her people.

  Anna was about to react.

  Cassi was faster.

  With one hand outstretched, the other woman spun into the robot's path. A Bending coalesced at her fingertips, light refracting so that the drone seemed to be a blurry smear of blue.

  Bullets that converged on Cassi curved upward and looped back around to pummel the drone with its own gunfire. Damaged by the impact, the robot backed away with the whirring sound of mechanized joints.

  Cassi let her Bending vanish.

  “EMP!” she growled, lifting her pistol to fire three glowing white tracers into the robot's exposed chest. That produced the sizzle and the acrid stench of burnt electronics. The drone slumped over, blocking the doorway.

  Anna had a brief glimpse of Ragnosian security officers in the hallway, men in gray uniforms who ducked out of sight and scampered away. The heavy thump of their footsteps lingered for a few seconds.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Anna shook her head. “Damn it,” she said, striding toward the rest of her team. “They'll be back.”

  Cassi was standing with her back turned, inspecting the broken drone. She whirled around with an impish
smile. “You are one crazy bitch,” she said. “Remind me never to play chicken against you.”

  “Status.”

  “All hostiles have retreated up the corridor,” Cassi explained. Her mouth twisted in distaste. “We have to use high-impact rounds to hold them off. Two Ragnosians are dead; several more are unconscious.”

  “I understand.”

  Joal Stamon came up with a grunt and a grimace. The man was obviously in pain, but he managed it well. “What should we do with the ones we've stunned?” he asked. “I would rather not leave potential enemies behind.”

  “They should be out for at least an hour,” Anna replied. You could never be totally certain with stun-rounds. Though highly unlikely, it was possible for someone to wake up in a few minutes. However, most people were too disoriented to be much of a threat for another hour after regaining consciousness. “I'm not inclined to shoot helpless men, and we don't have the time for that anyway. I say leave them where they are.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “No, don't 'yes ma'am' me.” Anna set her jaw and did everything she could to seem resolute as she gazed into his eyes. “There's a time to follow orders and a time to voice your opinion. This is the latter. Speak up, Commander.”

  Stamon shut his eyes, tilting his head back and breathing slowly. “As I said, I don't like the thought that those men might wake up and cause us more trouble. But the odds of that are low, and as you said, we don't have time to do anything more.”

  Anna nodded.

  A group of four tactical officers was clustered around one of their fallen comrades. When Anna got close, she recognized the young woman who was lying on her back and moaning.

  Ensing Rin, a slim man with hollow cheeks and dark, chocolate-brown skin, looked up to meet her eyes. “Helliar got hit in the arm,” he said. “She needs medical attention or she's going to bleed out.”