BOOTY HUNTER

by Huss, JA

  It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

  No one missed Corla once she escaped. No one cared that one queen got away, not really. She is just a weapon. Just as valuable out there in space alone as she is at home. They were probably hoping she’d get to Angel Station so they could wipe the place out, I’m sure. There’s no way to know that because I was not a part of her mission.

  But she was separated from her detonator, just like Nyleena and I were. They can’t blow her up if they don’t have her sister to initiate—unless they get a hold of Corla’s cryopod. Then they could rearm her with a new sister detonator. And the old detonator—if she is still alive—would blow up with them. Three targets. Three explosions.

  No higher-order princesses, let alone a queen, ever escape from Cygnia. We just prolong our time and get to choose our target instead of them.

  Where is that other princess? The one who was escorting Corla? We need to know that. We need to find her.

  And why didn’t I just fly Nyleena back into Cygnian space and detonate her there?

  I laugh a little in my suit, then make myself stop. I only have so much oxygen and this suit can’t make more. So laughing is wasteful. But wouldn’t that be something? To take them out with their own weapon?

  I know why I didn’t fly back to the Cygnians. I hate to admit it, but it was because I was afraid. And I was maybe just a little bit hopeful. That we could get away. That we could get to Angel Station. That we could really, and for once in our lives, be free.

  It was a stupid dream. I know that now. I should’ve blown us both up before we even left. Taken out those generals, and those doctors, and the fucking king himself. Because he was there.

  I don’t know why I’m bothering with this little puzzle. This battle will be over in a matter of minutes and then all this becomes someone else’s problem.

  But Nyleena’s pod, though I can see it, still seems very far away. So what else can I do with the final moments of my life but ponder all my mistakes? Think up a better way to do things?

  “Intercept in thirty seconds,” Booty says through my helmet.

  I don’t say anything back. There’s nothing to say so talking is just as wasteful as laughing ironically.

  “But don’t detonate,” Booty adds.

  “What?” I whisper, the question out before I can stop myself.

  “ALCOR is on his way to the Cygnian warship on Beauty. He’s going to infiltrate and take them out.”

  I can hear the torment in her voice. The emotion and anguish. And this is the moment I realize… ships are people. She loves ALCOR. She wanted to do this mission to save him and now look. He’s gonna kill himself to save us.

  I crash into Nyleena’s pod, making mad grabs for something, anything to hold on to. The side of the pod is sleek and smooth. Sealed tight so no air, not even a single molecule, can enter without permission. But I grab onto a handle meant for lifting, and my body jerks hard, pulling the cryopod with me through space. Hurling us even faster and farther away from Booty.

  I swing myself around just in time to see her release more torpedoes. They are locked onto incoming fire, and just explode them in silence as I watch.

  I don’t know how many she has left, but it’s not enough.

  “Initiating the detonation sequence,” I whisper, placing my fingertips over the pad on the outside of the pod.

  “No,” Booty says into my helmet. “Hold fast, Lyra. We still have a chance.”

  “I’m down to sixteen percent total oxygen, Booty. If I don’t do it now I might black out and not be able to do it at all.”

  “Hold,” she commands.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - SERPINT

  “ALCOR and Beauty intercept in thirty seconds,” Xyla says.

  On one of the air screens Booty releases torpedoes, taking out incoming fire. On the other screen, the warship grows bigger and bigger by the second, the tractor beam pulling us in faster now that we have momentum.

  “Tell her,” I say, placing a gloved hand on Xyla’s shoulder. “Tell Booty to use the SEAR cannon.”

  “Not yet,” Xyla says.

  Jimmy swings his body past mine and into the co-pilot’s seat next to Xyla. “ALCOR, report.”

  “I’m on the hull,” ALCOR says. “But we need a way in.”

  “Lyra is almost out of oxygen,” Xyla says.

  “I can’t just stand here and watch this,” I say. “Give me one of your salvage units, Luck.”

  “You’ll never make it in time,” Valor says.

  “I don’t give a fuck,” I yell. “Give me one of your salvage units now!”

  Luck grabs my arm and pulls himself along the corridor. We unhook our suit tethers as we pass like pros, and he drags me to the hatch that leads to the lower level of the ship where they keep their equipment.

  “I’m in,” ALCOR says in my helmet.

  “Lyra is down to fourteen percent total oxygen,” Xyla adds. “She needs to start entering the sequence now or she will not be able to do it at all.” Half of that was meant for me, the other for Booty.

  I wish I could hear Booty’s voice right now and not have to get information second-hand from Xyla.

  “I’m coming with you,” Valor says, bumping into me from behind. “This ship is done. Jimmy, Xyla, come with us. We have two salvage units, we can—”

  “Fuck that,” Jimmy says. “If my ship dies out here, so do I.”

  “Jimmy,” I say, looking back down the corridor. “Don’t be stupid. If we can get back to Harem…” The cockpit isn’t in view anymore because we’re down on the lower level now, so I only see Valor’s face through his helmet.

  I don’t know what we’ll do if we get back to Harem, so I don’t bother finishing my sentence. ALCOR is gone. Whether he succeeds or not, he’s going down with that warship. And if we stay on Dicker, we’ll explode with it if Nyleena detonates. We’re too close now.

  “Booty has a tether on us,” Xyla says.

  I wait for the jerk. The signal that we’re being pulled away from the warship. But there’s nothing. No tether of Booty’s could out pull a Cygnian warship tractor.

  Luck opens the airlock manually without cycling through the procedures. There’s no atmosphere left on the Dicker, so it doesn’t protest with warnings about hard vacuum. We’re already in dead space. The ship’s hull is just an illusion of protection now.

  “Here,” Valor says. “Get in.”

  I float over to his salvage unit and climb in.

  It’s big enough that the warship will pick it up on radar. Blow it up in seconds, maybe.

  But maybe, just maybe… ALCOR has their attention in other places now.

  Luck powers it on.

  And seconds later we’re floating out through the airlock towards Lyra.

  “I’m coming,” I say. “Tell Lyra I’m coming and she’s not going to die today.”

  It’s a lie.

  We’re already dead.

  I’m just trying to make sure she doesn’t have to die alone.

  Because that’s what soulmates do.

  They go out together.

  CHAPTER FORTY - LYRA

  I have less than ten percent oxygen in my suit now. I’m basically breathing my own exhales. Suffocating myself with my own carbon dioxide. My vision is spotty and flashes in and out. Blackness. Light. Blackness. Light.

  Like those bugs in long-ago myths that glow in the night to find mates.

  It’s only then that I realize it’s me… I’m glowing like the bugs in the night. Flashing in the darkness of space. Begging someone to help me, I realize.

  Nausea overtakes me and I have to concentrate hard not to vomit in my suit as I try to press the detonation sequence onto Nyleena’s cryopod.

  I fuck it up. Twice. The oxygen monitor lit up on the inside of my suit counts down the oxygen content inside my suit and I know I have seconds left before I black out forever.

  I try again, forcing every last bit of concentration left inside my compromised brain, to do
it right this time.

  Three.

  Seven.

  Nine.

  One.

  Zero.

  Zero.

  I black out.

  Come to.

  Black out again.

  Then come to surrounded by pink light.

  This is it.

  This is how I die. My flux capacitor releasing every bit of luminous flux I have left.

  Because I won’t be needing it anymore.

  Something grabs my arm. And if I had any breath left, I’d scream.

  But I don’t.

  I just place my gloved finger on the key pad one more time… one more zero…

  And press down as hard as I can.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - SERPINT

  The universe implodes.

  It’s a brilliant mixture of pink and gold and my heart sinks as the reality of what just happened hits my brain. I turn away from the exploding warship as the screen on my suit automatically blacks out to save my vision should I survive.

  But I have her. I have clipped my suit tether to Lyra’s suit and Luck has tethered his salvage unit to Nyleena’s pod.

  Because it wasn’t Nyleena and Lyra who blew up.

  It was ALCOR and Beauty.

  And even though I know it’s wrong, there’s relief in my heart and my head too. Relief that Lyra is still alive. That it wasn’t her.

  “Hang on, Lyra,” I whisper, placing my helmet up to hers so she might hear my voice via sound wave transduction. “I’ve got you, princess. I’ve got you.”

  Her light, which was just flashing like a SOS signal in the darkness of space, is gone.

  But I hook the extra oxygen tank up anyway. I can’t not keep up hope. We didn’t go through all this to lose her now. ALCOR and Beauty didn’t kill themselves on a suicide mission just so she could die.

  We are soulmates. She must live.

  I press the influx button on the side of the canister, forcing the lifesaving gas into her suit. It fills up until she looks like a balloon. But her light does not return.

  I do that over and over and over, until Luck and Valor are pulling us both, and Prince too, into the lifesaving salvage unit.

  I take her helmet off once we pressurize the interior compartment, and kiss her. Blowing my breath into her body over, and over, and over again until she takes a breath.

  Just one breath.

  “There you are,” I say, pushing her pink hair away from her face. “There you are.”

  She doesn’t wake up, but she does keep breathing. And that’s the best I could hope for.

  I wait with her like that. My lips up to hers. Hoping each time she exhales, she will inhale again.

  “One more,” I tell her. “One more breath.”

  And even though Princess Lyra doesn’t like to take orders from anyone, not even me, she obeys this one time.

  Booty tugs the incapacitated Dicker away from the debris field left over from the explosion ALCOR and Beauty initiated, and we wait our turn out in the darkness of space.

  Once Lyra’s breathing stabilizes we place her into a cryopod to receive automated medical attention until we can make our way back to Harem.

  It might be hours, or maybe even days, before we are picked up and safely inside Booty again. We had to leave the salvage units behind because there’s no room on Booty to dock them, but no one cares about equipment.

  ALCOR and Beauty are dead. Harem Station will never be the same after this and there will be yet another memorial service for the lost.

  But Lyra is alive. And we have her sister, Nyleena. So those Cygnian bastards will never be able to use her as a weapon again.

  Never again.

  We won this battle but the war has just started.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO - LYRA

  Serpint tells me I was in the medical cryopod for months. Because that’s how long it took to return to Harem station with the Dicker in tow since we had to use special gates that allow for unstable ship configurations.

  Months that Harem Station waited for our return, the ALCOR copy doing its best to run things. People died. The copy isn’t nearly as efficient as the original. Whole neighborhoods lost power, some even lost atmosphere. But an AI can learn quickly and by the time they woke me up in the harem medical center, that stupid cyborg master peering down at me saying, “Lyra, can you hear me?” as he flashed a pen light over my newly-opened eyes, things were almost stable.

  And maybe I do still hate that guy, but he is certified in eleventy-billion medical procedures for untold numbers of species, so I let him do his stupid exam.

  Well, most of it. He wanted to test out my flux capacitor, see if it was still working since my glow didn’t come back when they opened my pod, but that’s Serpint’s job now and I made that clear by punching the master in the face.

  Reflex, I guess.

  I still glow. One touch of Serpint’s fingers across my bare cheek as he leaned down to kiss me fully awake was all it took.

  Today is the memorial service for ALCOR and Beauty. The guys put it on hold until I was up for the ceremony and because, to everyone’s surprise, the Prime Navy sent word that they wanted representatives there for the service.

  Everyone was a little bit perplexed at that and more than a little bit suspicious. But even though the original ALCOR is gone, the security measures at the gate are self-contained, separate copies of him. Which was a nice surprise for the boys and each one of them has spent lots of hours out at the security beacons visiting with them. They aren’t stations, just small floating spheres large enough to hold a person or two at a time. But the ALCOR copies inside are old. Very old. They are not him anymore, but their own separate personalities. So Serpint said it wasn’t the same. They are different people. But it was still nice to talk with them and reminisce about their mutual friend.

  It has made this transition a little easier. The new copy is doing OK. It was never meant to take over the station for long periods of time, so there’s a learning curve. But we’re alive.

  Anyway, the Prime Navy had some secret deal with ALCOR and we think they’re worried that the new copy won’t honor it. They worry about baby AIs. They are unpredictable and have been known to throw tantrums, and when that AI is connected to a security array like the one Harem Station has, well… one must make friends, I suppose.

  We are, after all, at war with the entire Cygnian System after what we did to their warship at Bull Station. So if the Prime Navy is interested in forming an alliance, Crux is on board with that.

  We all agreed it’s better to have close friends in high places if they have an entire galactic navy at their disposal.

  “You about ready?” Serpint says, watching me fuss with my collar in the mirror as he stands in the doorway to the bedroom.

  He took off my bracelets and anklets when we got back from Bull Station, but I kept the jewel-encrusted collar with his name on it even though I’m not in servitude to him anymore. I like it. It’s beautiful and the idea that I still belong to him makes me happy. Why not let everyone know that?

  “Yes,” I say, taking one final look at my ceremonial gown in the mirror. We match, again. Black and pink. And while it’s sad that we are in these special outfits twice in the span of just a few months, I love that the memorial service is so formal and all the ribbons and medals pinned to us represent my brand-new relationships with these outlaw men and their station.

  I have new medals over my heart now. One for each of the boys and their partners. And special ones for ALCOR and Beauty.

  Valor and Luck took the loss of their bot hard. Harder than anyone expected. And they haven’t replaced her yet. But one day they will. One day they will be ready to leave the station again and go about their jobs hunting down ancient components to keep the AI functioning.

  Booty made sure the broken hull of the Big Dicker was brought into the medical bays. They’ve been working on her ever since and while she’s not quite ready for prime time again, she will be soon.

>   The station chimes the warning bells that everyone should be now on their way to the ceremony. Serpint takes my hand and leads me through our quarters to the elevator. It’s a long walk down to the waiting lift-bot that will take us down to the lowest level. We don’t talk. Just stand on the lift, holding hands. Letting everyone see us as we descend.

  And by everyone, I do mean everyone. There have been a lot of memorial services since ALCOR died. So many dead from the baby ALCOR’s inability to master all the networks and systems that keep this station running. So we figured most people would be sick of the service and not many would show up today.

  We were wrong. People have been lining up since last night to get a front-row space at the edge of the levels. There are millions of people on this station, so not everyone will be able to see. But the new AI put up large screens along the city for those who couldn’t reach the actual ceremony space.

  They are all dressed in the special ceremonial garb. The new ALCOR has been printing custom outfits and ribbons for weeks. And everyone has at least two medals over their hearts. One for real ALCOR and one for Beauty.

  It’s never been done before, but Crux said, “Hell, if we can’t all unite for this one occasion, then we’re not the family I thought we were.” And we agreed. Even though it cost every single person on the station at least a week’s pay in donation to get all the materials together, and the operators had to pull double shifts to keep the printers going spin in and spin out to have everything ready, no one objected.

  Everyone is silent as we descend. No one says a word. The loss of ALCOR runs deep in this place. Every person on this station has had a personal conversation with the AI dozens of times. That was his job. To take care of us. And he did that to the very end.

  When we reach the bottom we step off the lift and stand, facing outward, on the platform, then begin the long ride up in silence.

  It’s sad. And I’m crying before we even lift a few meters up from the floor. But Serpint squeezes one hand, while Xyla squeezes the other, and I squeeze them both back.