Rebel Sword

by Peter Bostrom

  “ENGAGING DEFENSES IN 2 SEC.”

  Grabbing Hiller’s arm by the wrist, I placed his surface suit-covered right hand against the control panel.

  Nothing happened.

  “ENGAGING DEFENSES IN 1 SEC.”

  I swore inside my suit as I dropped Hiller’s right hand, grabbed his left, and slapped it against the panel. The screen turned solid yellow, then changed to green. The plasma cannon retracted into the wall, the gray blast door shot back up, and the door to the airlock quickly slid open.

  I exhaled loudly, not knowing I’d been holding my breath. And, by the way my crew’s visors were fogged up, they’d done the same. We quickly piled inside the small airlock, which wasn’t an easy process for five people, one of whom was a giant, another of whom was unconscious, plus a large duffel bag, and a rolling crate.

  After we had awkwardly passed Hiller’s body between us to yet another control panel, the interior door slid open and we spilled out into the hallway of Charon station. But instead of the dimly lit, narrow hallways I was used to on Nix, we had emerged into a wide hallway so bright that I reflexively brought my hand up to shield my eyes. The first detail I really noticed was that the walls here were bright silver and had been polished so well that I could make out each of my surface suit’s fingers. So this was why so many soldiers on Nix were itching to transfer to Charon.

  We pulled back our face masks and let them dangle behind our necks like bulky hoods, but kept the rest of our suits on. The coast was clear, but there was a good chance we’d need to get back outside at a moment’s notice.

  Lopez found a brightly lit terminal and quickly tapped and swiped at it. “Armory’s this way,” she said and nodded toward the far end of the hallway. “Follow me.”

  After just a couple of minutes, we came across our first dead Peacekeeper on the impossibly shiny floor, and the farther we went, the more bodies were scattered along the wide hallways.

  “Wait,” Rand paused next to a fallen soldier in faded navy blue fatigues. “Erwin?”

  “We don’t have time for high school reunions,” Lopez said.

  Rand bent down and carefully took a fist-sized cylinder from the hands of the dead mechanic. “But what use could he have had for a Faraday capacitor?”

  “Come on,” I said to Rand.

  “Just a moment,” Rand said as he opened the lid of his equipment crate and carefully placed the item inside.

  “Come on,” Lopez echoed loudly, and Rand hurried to secure the crate.

  It was another couple of minutes before we came across the first fallen Egghead soldier. A crossbow lay by his side, so I bent to pick it up. My eyes widened. Its handle had three crosses on it. If one cross meant simply energizing the arrow, and two crosses meant an energized arrow exploded on impact, what could three crosses mean? It took every ounce of willpower I had left to not fire it immediately.

  “It’s just around this corner,” Lopez whispered.

  Now I had a crossbow in each hand, which must’ve looked awesome. We crept along the next hallway—as much as you can creep while carrying a bunch of human and electrical baggage—and just as we were about to reach a bend, several troopers barreled around the corner.

  Lopez sighed, rolled her eyes, and opened fire—forcing them into a defensive position. That’s when I finally had a chance to play with my new toy. I fired a glowing red arrow from the three-crossed crossbow—a “cross” bow! Oh my God!—and it sailed through the air until it stuck into one of their shields. No fireworks, no nothing. Well, that was disappointing.

  But then, the arrow started glowing brighter and let out a high-pitched whine. The trooper frantically pulled at his shield to unhook it from his arm, but then there was a bright flash of red, followed by an explosion. It knocked the other troopers hard against the walls and sent parts of the unlucky trooper’s body flying across the hallway.

  That was awesome.

  I swung around to my crew, ready for the applause.

  “Did you see that?!”

  Lopez wrinkled her nose as she wiped pieces of trooper from her suit. She turned to glare at me, but all I could do was shrug and try to suppress a huge grin. I looked to the others.

  Kovac was busy earnestly checking Hiller’s pulse again. Rand was staring intensely at the new crossbow, and I could practically see the gears turning inside his head.

  “Come on,” Lopez said and she tugged at Rand’s suit.

  I decided to accept their applause later. I forged ahead, leading the way.

  Needless to say, the hallway wasn’t quite so shiny as it had been before. We avoided bits of the exploded trooper and stepped over his fallen comrades before turning the corner. Then, in front of us stood the large, sleek double doors of the armory. But as we approached, we heard the clicking of boots on the floor from the other end of the corridor, and were suddenly face-to-face with ten or more armed troopers.

  I leveled both of my crossbows—one in each hand—and began firing, Lopez doing the same next to me with her plasma gun. As soon as I let loose a volley of low-level arrows, the front line of troopers took a knee and held up their shields to deflect the shots. The troopers behind pressed against them for cover.

  Which is exactly what I wanted them to do.

  With the other crossbow, I fired one shot at every other shield—three in total. There were three quick flashes of red, followed by three separate high-pitched whining noises that filled the hallway. A moment later, there were three very loud explosions and then, the troopers were gone.

  Actually, parts of the troopers were still there, but they were scattered across the floor.

  “And that’s how it’s done!” I shouted, triumphant, and turned to catch Lopez’s reaction before she could change it, because she had to be impressed this time.

  But she wasn’t there. I whipped around. She was sprawled on her back about a meter behind me, groaning and clutching her side, just above her hip. An arrow was sticking grotesquely out, thin and silver, with a ghost of a red glow.

  “Open . . . the damn . . . door,” Lopez said through gritted teeth.

  In three long strides, Kovac was at the control panel. I helped Lopez to her feet and we joined Rand and his equipment by the doorway. Kovac hoisted Hiller off his shoulder, turned him around, and brought his hand up to the panel.

  There was a loud hiss as the doors slid open, revealing not an army of Eggheads, but a room full of very surprised faces.

  12

  THE LOOKS OF surprise were quickly replaced by looks of confusion as a room full of plasma weapons swung toward us.

  “Drop your weapons!” A voice yelled from somewhere near the back of the room.

  Well, that wasn’t the sort of welcome I had expected from a room full of Peacekeeper soldiers.

  “Look,” I said, looking around the spacious, silver-walled room lined with identical metal lockers and racks upon racks of weapons. It smelled like steel and sweat.

  The same angry voice sounded again.

  “I said drop them!”

  We lowered our weapons slowly and set them on the floor.

  “Who the hell are you?” An imposing figure stepped forward, waving a plasma rifle at me. Her light brown skin made her dull maroon fatigues look even more dull. She had shiny, jet black hair pulled up into a tight bun, and her sharp eyebrows were slanted down toward each other.

  I cleared my throat. “Is this any way to treat visitors from your sister station?”

  Someone among the mass of plasma weapons responded. “You’re from Hydra station?”

  I let out an exasperated breath. “No, we’re from Nix station. And could you please put those guns down?”

  Lopez groaned in pain beside me.

  “Someone help her,” Kovac said loudly.

  There was a long pause before the woman answered. “Galbacci. Peterov. Get a medikit and patch her up.”

  Two soldiers came obediently forward—a tall, skinny one with a folding stool and a short, stocky one with a sm
all white box. Lopez grimaced as they lowered her to the seat, and the two soldiers began working on her.

  “And while you’re at it, could you grab me a snack?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. The woman glared back at me. Guess not.

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” Rand said quickly, before the woman’s glare cut straight through me. “We’re desperate to get to the communication relay station and connect with Peacekeeper HQ on Pluto. I brought—”

  Rand bent down to pick up his duffel bag and the mass of weapons shifted to focus on his movements. Rand froze, wide-eyed, and raised his hands.

  The woman in maroon took a hard step forward. “I don’t know who you are or who you think you are, but I’m in charge here. And from now on you will be taking orders from me. Do you understand?”

  I bit my lip, then spoke. “Lieutenant, we have information about the enemy.”

  She stared at me as if she were trying to read my thoughts. “You mean, the Dominion?

  “Whatever you call these Stay-Puft Marshmallow troopers,” I said. “We know how to neutralize their weapons. Now if you’ll just stand down—”

  I took a step forward and the room full of weapons immediately shifted from Rand to me. I froze too.

  “Weapon intel?” The woman said. “Good. We’re just getting ready to take the fight to those bastards. We refuse to retreat one more step.”

  Then, with a sneer, she said, “Unlike you discarded leftovers from Nix station.”

  “Easy now,” I said with my hands up. “If you’ll let us explain—”

  “Let me guess,” she interrupted and started pacing in the space between us and the variety of still-raised plasma weapons.

  “Your colonel was knocked out and you’re the plucky soldier who took charge and led this ragtag crew off Nix station. And now you think you have a daring plan that will stop the Dominion, save everyone, and promote you to fame and glory?”

  She stopped, looked me in the eyes, and tilted her head a little. “How did I do?”

  Rand raised his eyebrows. “That . . . was a surprisingly accurate read of Walker’s modus operandi.”

  I scowled, but Rand kept talking. “However, it appears as though he just might have the ability necessary to accomplish those goals.”

  He looked at me, his mustache raising slightly in a smile. I wasn’t prepared for Rand’s unexpected compliment, so I was left with a goofy grin on my face.

  But the woman didn’t smile. Instead, she nodded at me, then said, “You’re scared, soldier. You’re young. You’re full of bravado, but you’ve never seen combat. And what you really want is to just stay alive. I get it. But there’s no glory in running. We’re making a stand, right here, right now.”

  Then, standing a bit straighter, she said, “And we’ll go down in history as the platoon who drove back the Dominion and saved the solar system.”

  So who’s the aspiring hero now?

  “Okay, okay—you’re in charge here,” I said. “Now can you get those barrels out of our faces?”

  The woman looked hard at me for a moment, then said, “Stand down, soldiers. Get back to locking and loading—we’re out of here in five.”

  She looked at Kovac, who was still propping up Hiller. “And for God’s sake, set your colonel down.”

  All at once, the soldiers lowered their weapons. One soldier with massive arms—their Kovac, I guess—came forward with a metal chair and set it up near Lopez. The real Kovac carefully placed Hiller into it.

  I noticed a few of the soldiers do a double take when they recognized Hiller—even though his head was bandaged with an oily rag—but most of them turned around and shuffled off to the shiny silver tables behind them. All sorts of weaponry and ammunition was spread out on these tables, and the soldiers began loading various weapons and attaching them and extra ammunition clips to their uniforms.

  Lopez let out a gasp of pain and I looked over just in time to see the stocky soldier slowly raise a pair of surgical pliers. There was a small, silver arrow between its pincers.

  “Is she okay?” Kovac asked.

  The stocky soldier looked up—way up—at our hulking soldier. Okay, he wasn’t their Kovac, after all. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “Just a little slower. It looks like the arrow actually cauterized the wound, so it won’t bleed out. And it didn’t hit anything vital, just lodged into her muscle.”

  The arrows! I scooped up my crossbows from where they lay on the floor and hurried over to the commander, who was slipping plasma slug clips into a black bandoleer.

  “Look, Lieutenant . . . ” I said, hoping for some help.

  “Patel.”

  “Look, Lieutenant Patel, you really need to reconsider.”

  Patel didn’t bother to look up. “Unless you’re secretly a General, I don’t need to do anything you say.”

  “Not even if it’ll mean the difference between getting out alive and your entire platoon being slaughtered?”

  Patel slung the bandoleer over her shoulder. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, soldier.”

  Then, returning to the weapons table, she said, “What’s this intel that’s allegedly so important? And make it quick.”

  I swallowed hard. “We stole their power. I mean,” I started over. “We managed to de-power the enemy troopers on Nix. You see these stones?”

  I nodded at the scarlet jewels embedded in the crossbow handles.

  “Rand—Chief Mechanic Rand—thinks they’re all somehow connected to a stone that’s controlled by one person—probably their unit commander. If you can find that person and take him out, the rest of the weapons lose their power. Then standard-issue plasma weapons can take care of the rest.”

  Patel looked up at me, unimpressed. “That doesn’t seem too difficult to figure out. Cut off the head and the body dies.”

  “Yeah, but you have to use its own hand to cut off its head, which is way harder,” I said.

  Patel knit her severe brows. “Excuse me?”

  I exhaled loudly. “Look, I think the only way to eliminate one of their leaders is to use these power stones against them.”

  Patel shook her head and turned her attention to a double-barreled plasma rifle on the table.

  “No good,” she said. “Every one of my soldiers has tried using one of those. We can’t get them to work.”

  I stood a little straighter. “I can.”

  She looked at me skeptically, then over at Rand. He nodded.

  Patel loaded a clip of plasma slugs into the plasma rifle and slapped it into place with a loud clack.

  “Here’s what I say—we use you and your intel to take out the Dominion here on Charon. Then,” she said, raising the rifle to her shoulder and looking down the sights on its barrel, “we take it to Pluto and I lead the charge against any Dominion there—if they’re there. We lost communication when those armored freaks showed up.”

  My shoulders fell involuntarily. “But what if we’re too late? Shouldn’t we at least try to find a way to send a message to Pluto?”

  Patel shook her head. “No way. We lost our chief engineer and an entire team trying to go back and repair the comm relay.”

  Then, turning to face the others, she said, “Time’s up, soldiers—fall in. Let’s show these Dominion bastards what UFS Peacekeepers are made of.”

  Suddenly, there was a sound of metal chair legs scraping against the metal floor, which gave me goosebumps. The bad kind.

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” said a deep, groggy voice from behind us.

  Patel and I spun around and saw Colonel Hiller standing, in all his Peacekeeper poster glory.

  “But I believe I’m in charge here now.”

  13

  “COLONEL HILLER,” PATEL said. Her dark eyes had grown so large I thought they’d pop out of her head, but when she saluted, they went back to normal.

  Hiller carefully removed his makeshift bandage, rubbed the back of his head, and winced. He looked around the surprisingly clean armory and saw the handful of troops who w
ere staring at him.

  “How in the hell did I get onto Charon?” Then, looking at me, he said, “Please tell me you didn’t blow up Nix station.”

  I looked down at my anti-grav boots. “Not all of it . . . ”

  Hiller exhaled loudly.

  “Private—what happened?”

  I looked up, took a deep breath, and said, “Monstros knocked you out and I played the music and I stabbed him with a laser sword and took his stone and their weapons turned off and the other shuttle exploded but we got away and they hit us with this weird canon and some of the crossbows do this thing where the arrows just stay there and then they blow up troopers and body parts go flying and Rand keeps dragging his damn toys everywhere and—”

  Hiller held up a hand and I snapped my mouth shut to stop any more word vomit from coming out. Why did I always sound like such an idiot around him?

  “Lieutenant,” he said, turning to Patel. “Who left you in charge?”

  Patel straightened. “Sir—Colonel Silva was killed in a firefight at the Dominion’s entry portals and I brought the survivors back here.”

  “Dominion?” He asked.

  “Yes, sir. That’s what they call themselves.”

  Hiller stepped over to the table and picked up Patel’s double-barrel plasma rifle. “So, what’s your plan, Lieutenant?”

  She smiled. “We’re taking the fight to them, sir. And apparently, we’ll need this private,” she said, nodding at me, “to disable the Dominion’s weapons and take back our station.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but stopped myself. Hiller examined the rifle and, without looking at me, said, “Do you have something you’d like to say, son?”

  “With all due respect, sir, I think this is bigger than just Charon. If I’m right and Pluto is being attacked by the worst of these . . . these things, then our first priority should be to get the comm relay station working. That way, we can make sure Pluto HQ knows their weakness. If the skull-faced monster I saw earlier is leading the charge, the soldiers on Pluto are going to need all the help they can get.”