“It’s okay.” She waved me closer so that we could whisper more easily. I found moving far more difficult than connecting the hand-terminal had been. My legs felt like they were submerged in wet concrete. Somehow, I managed to drag them forward a few steps before I remembered her card was still in my possession. I rotated my hand to face away from her.
“I’m sorry I reacted that way earlier,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t have told them.”
I exhaled so loudly I sounded like a leaky gas pipe. She didn’t see. “Don’t worry about it,” I said as I got closer, keeping the card out of sight. “They just don’t know when to stop.”
“If anyone else found out—”
“They won’t.” I kneeled beside her bed, slipping her card back into her pocket unseen as I did. “None of them would say a word to an Earther.”
“I’d defend you if they did. All the captain cares about is the Piccolo running smoothly.”
“I don’t deserve that.” A sinking sensation in my stomach over what I’d just done made me feel nauseous. I went to stand. Her cold fingers gripped my arm to stop me.
“Yes, you do,” she said.
I regarded her, confused. With her other hand, she reached for my sanitary mask and pulled it down just enough to reveal my lips. She leaned toward me, stopping a few centimeters away. Her silvery hair tickled my face and caused goosebumps to cover my entire body.
My breathing stopped. My eyelids were probably drawn so wide that it looked like I’d stumbled upon a dead body.
“I’m clean, Kale,” she whispered. “I promise. You’ll be okay. I… I want this. I have for a long time.”
I couldn’t manage words. Only a nod so subtle she wouldn’t have been able to see it if we weren’t so close. Her lips pressed against mine, and before I could control it, my arms were wrapped around her. I longed to remove my gloves so I could feel the smooth camber of her bare back.
We didn’t make sense. It wasn’t safe. But in that moment, everything else in the world, all my problems, faded away.
ELEVEN
A violent tremor startled me awake. My eyes snapped open, and I searched the darkness. I wasn’t sure what was a dream and what wasn’t, but when I felt my arm draped over another body, I remembered. Cora and I were squeezed onto her bed. Neither of us wore anything. Not even a mask or gloves.
I touched her arm just to ensure she was real. She was still fast asleep, her head resting on my chest. I never wanted to move.
Another tremor, this one more intense than the last.
“What’s that?” Cora yawned.
As I started to answer, the Piccolo lurched to the side. We were tossed out of the bed. Cups and other equipment slid across the rec room floor, clamoring against the walls like cymbals. The groans and confused shouts of the stirred crew filled the room.
Cora and I peeled our tangled bodies from each other. My shoulder stung from crashing against the floor. She’d landed on me, so she was fine.
“Storm?” I groaned. If it was, it was the worst I’d ever felt. Usually, short-range scanners picked up a bad one before the Piccolo wound up too deep and Cora was woken to alter our heading.
“Must be,” she said.
She grabbed her clothes and stood, fully naked. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I felt like I was seeing the stars for the first time again. She caught me staring and giggled.
“Are you going to sit there, or are you going to help?” she asked.
I don’t even want to imagine how much I blushed. I jumped to my feet and fumbled around with her boiler suit’s loose sleeve as I tried to get it on her. Once I did, she zipped up the outfit and faced me.
“Cora, I—” I said before she placed one of her slender fingers over my mouth.
She smiled. “Find somewhere to sit in case this gets worse,” she said. “We can talk after.”
The smile I returned grew wider. It was beyond my control, like I was intoxicated. When I didn’t say anything, she just giggled again, planted a kiss on my cheek, and hurried through the curtain.
I stood with a goofy grin on my face for a few moments before deciding to get dressed myself. I had to sit down on the bunk to do it, and not because the ship was shaking. After the worst tremor, it’d almost entirely stopped. But my legs were wobbly, in no small part due to the best night of my life.
I finished dressing and sat up. The weight of my boiler suit felt off without the compromised hand-terminal in my pocket. I wondered if it’d finished uploading the program, which I assumed was going to somehow tap into the captain’s credit account and rob him. Something like that at least. I didn’t care. If someone found it, I decided I’d say I left it up there by accident while I was with Cora. Everything had gone perfectly, and my mom would have no choice but to forgive me for what I’d done after it got her out of that hellhole.
On the other side of the divider, the Ringer crew ran amok trying to figure out what was going on. The standard protocol for a storm was for Cora or the captain to announce over the ship’s main com-system whether or not we needed to strap down. The speakers remained silent. I could manage to think of only one thing other than a powerful storm that could knock a ship the size of the Piccolo around like it was a pool ball—one of the dual engines blowing out. Of course, that would also have involved us taking a nosedive straight into the heart of the gas giant to join the Sunfire, and the force of gravity tugging on my body hadn’t gotten any stronger to indicate that had happened. The ship seemed to be flying as steady as it was when there was no storm at all.
I slid forward and rested my feet flat against the floor. It vibrated gently, like it always did from the ship’s engines. I placed my hand against the wall, and it felt the same there. The worst storm I’d ever experienced on the Piccolo also seemed to have been the shortest.
I stood and took a step toward the curtain. I stopped when I realized that I was about to walk into a crowded rec room directly from Cora’s bed. I’d never hear the end of it from Desmond and the others. It was better to stay put and wait it out...
A crack rang out, so loud it resonated in the pipes. It sounded like a piece of the Piccolo’s wing snapping off. The ship dipped again, throwing me forward through the curtain and onto my chest. Red disaster lights along the edges of the ceiling and floors flashed on. Shrill emergency alarms began wailing.
I sprang to my feet and bolted toward the dorm’s exit. It should’ve been sealed, but it was wide open, decon-chamber and all. Desmond managed to get to his feet swiftly enough to catch up with me.
“What was that?” he shouted over the alarm.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
We emerged into the hallway. A crowd of Earthers gathered outside of their dorm. Culver lay in the center of them, howling in pain.
“What happened?” I asked one of the security guards. When he looked at me, I realized he was the one I’d snuck past earlier.
“Whatever that was tossed Culver into the wall,” he replied. I leaned in to get a closer look. Culver’s leg was twisted, a sharp piece of his tibia poking through a bloody gash just below his knee.
“Step aside, Ringer!” the guard growled.
“Screw them,” Desmond hissed.
A series of bangs rang out from the direction of the command deck. They were softer than the one that had preceded the ship’s staggering, but they sounded like gunshots, and not just from a single gun.
“Cora!” I yelled. I sprinted as fast as I could toward the central corridor, Desmond right behind me.
We popped out into the intersection and saw Captain Saunders sprinting toward us from the command deck. Cora was behind him, the g conditions slowing her down, but he had one hand around her wrist to help pull her along. With the other, he fired his pulse-pistol blindly over his shoulder. Two other Earthers ran alongside them. One was promptly struck in the back by a spray of automatic rounds and toppled onto his face.
Bullets whizzed by Desmond and me. I was just able to grab him and heave
him back behind the corner as one zipped by his ear like an angry hornet from ancient Earth. He was in shock, and soon after, when the captain and Cora joined us around the corner, they were equally shaken. I grabbed Cora and pulled her close, but she couldn’t focus on me. Her eyes were glued open. Captain Saunders clutched the handle of his pistol, hands shaking. The other Earther hadn’t made it.
“Captain, what the hell’s going on?” Desmond asked, his voice cracking.
I would’ve asked the same thing if I could have mustered the words. Almost getting shot had my heart pounding, but seeing Cora so near the same fate had my legs faint. As I held her, I found that she was helping me stay upright as much as I was her.
“They came...” Captain Saunders panted. He sounded like he’d just run all the way around Pervenio Station. “They came through the viewport on the bridge. Fired right through the glass.” He paused to breathe again and then popped his pistol around the corner. “Bastards!” he yelled as he fired off more shots at whatever was down the hall.
“Who?” Desmond questioned.
“I don’t know! They’re in heavy armor and tinted visors. Three of them, I think. Got automatic pulse-rifles too.”
“Do we have any weapons?” I asked with urgency as the heavy footsteps of the attackers drew nearer. I knew it was a stupid question, but it was the first thing that popped into my head.
“This is a harvesting ship—what in Earth’s name do you think? This and some batons are it.” Captain Saunders gestured toward his pistol and then reached out to fire another shot. His features darkened when he heard the click indicating that the clip was empty.
“We should get everybody we can into the harvesting bay, then,” I said.
“Run?” Desmond said. “That’s just like you, Kale. We’ve got numbers.”
“Yeah—and fists.”
“Kale’s right,” Cora addressed the captain meekly. “We can lock the blast door down from the inside.”
Captain Saunders didn’t wait for any more opinions. “You heard her,” he said. “Let’s move!”
He sprinted back down the straight corridor toward the galley. Desmond grumbled something before following. I glanced back into Cora’s eyes to make sure she was ready. Every echoing footstep of the nameless invaders seemed to be making her shudder. She forced herself to nod, and I did the same before we fled.
“Everyone to the harvester bay!” Captain Saunders shouted as he ran past the dorms.
“What is it?” an Earther roaming the corridor asked.
“Emergency protocol! Let’s move, move!”
Ringers and Earthers poured out of their respective dormitories ahead. They stared at what was behind us, and I didn’t need to turn around to know our assailants must have rounded the corner. The faces of both races filled with dread before they all started sprinting down the hall. Three Earthers tried to help Culver up, but two of them were the ship’s security guards. They decided to drop the head mechanic and fell in behind John toward the harvester bay as soon as he exited the dorm. That left only one Earther with Culver, and we all blew by them.
The deafening clatter of pulse-rifle fire erupted, making the pipes running along the metal walls rattle and clang. Culver cried out in pain and collapsed with a thud. I didn’t risk looking back. I was slow under Earth-like g, and Desmond and Cora weren’t much faster, but they’d been working on the Piccolo longer than I had. Scrubbing canisters and controlled lifting we could handle, but Ringers weren’t built for sprinting while on Saturn. Plus, there’d been no opportunity to receive my standard-issued morning g-stim before getting to work.
The next turn in the passage led to the harvesting bay. It was a long, straight run away, especially with bullets peppering the walls and ceiling behind us. Even with the alarm continuing to cry, they were all I could hear. Hisses and snaps. Instruments of death all around me. I hadn’t pushed my legs so hard since the time my mother had caught me running foundry salts for Dexter when I was ten.
The captain yelped and smashed into the wall ahead of me. Turning my head to see what happened couldn’t have wasted much more than a millisecond, but it was enough of a hesitation for me to be hit as well. A bullet clipped the meaty part of my thigh, causing me to trip. I would’ve smashed my head on the floor if Desmond hadn’t caught me and dragged me to safety around the corner.
“You okay?” he gasped.
Exerting myself in high g had my heart racing so rapidly I thought my chest was going to explode. I could hardly breathe. My muscles burned like I’d been dipped in a vat of acid. Cora kneeled over me and frantically checked my injured leg. I couldn’t see straight enough to decipher her reaction to what she saw.
“There’s no blood,” she said. She was nearly as winded as the rest of the Ringers were.
I rubbed the area of the wound and brought my fingers close to my dizzy eyes. My leg hurt like I’d been hit with a hammer, but there was no blood.
A flurry of bullets struck the back wall of the adjacent hall. I forced myself to focus, and that was when I noticed that many of the bullets were bouncing back onto the floor. They were rubberized, flathead rounds, used on ships in space to prevent piercing the hull, or during riots when security didn’t want to kill anybody. Luckily, the bullet that’d hit me had done so in one of the few places on my slim Ringer body where there was some extra meat; otherwise, it might’ve shattered a bone.
“I’m fine,” I said, still catching my breath.
“Good,” Desmond said. “We’re close.” He grabbed my arm, groaning as he tried to lift me.
I pulled away and peered back around the corner as furtively as possible. Captain Saunders slumped over a cluster of conduits. His bloody head rested against the wall, and he wasn’t moving.
Beyond him, three attackers clad in heavy, powered armor marched down the hall, pulse-rifles in their hands. Half-sphere helmets enclosed their heads, with tinted visors that made it impossible to determine who they were. I tried to see what color the suits were to get an idea of what faction they might belong to—Pervenio, Venta Co, pirates—but the ship’s emergency lighting was too red to allow me to tell.
“Would you come on!” Desmond implored.
“Kale, what are you doing?” Cora asked. “We have to go.”
I knew I should listen, but just then, the captain’s eyelids fluttered. Because his fall hadn’t been stopped by human arms, he’d been knocked unconscious, but he still was breathing.
It seemed wrong to leave him out there with a faceless death squad bearing down on him. While I was trying to decide what to do, a hungover member of the Piccolo’s crew who’d been left behind stumbled out of the Ringer dorms right in front of the attackers. He didn’t make it far before a bullet caught him on the hip and sent him twisting through the air and into the wall.
The distraction was exactly what I needed. I fought every survival instinct in my body, held my breath, and plunged into the hall. I threw my arm under the captain’s broad shoulder and hauled him backward. The Earther’s body was heavy, especially while I was dealing with overstrained muscles and an injured leg I could hardly put any weight on. I was fortunate we didn’t have to get far. By the time the attackers noticed what was happening, I’d dragged him to safety.
My leg suddenly gave out, and I staggered along with his body toward another wall. I was cramping all over. Breathing hurt so badly it felt like someone inside of me had a knife to my ribs. I moaned and grasped at my chest.
“Kale!” Cora yelled. She lunged forward and caught me. Captain Saunders slipped from my grasp, but Desmond reluctantly placed his arm under the captain’s shoulder to keep him upright.
“He wouldn’t have done the same for you,” he remarked.
There was no time to catch my breath. Cora and I joined Desmond in carrying the hefty captain, and we set off toward the harvesting bay together. Our three exhausted pairs of legs were going to have to do. Up ahead, I could see that the harvesting bay doors were open, but under the emergen
cy lighting, it’d be impossible for anyone inside to tell who we were until we were closer. None of us had the energy to call out over the alarms.
The attackers were just coming around the nearest corner when a group of Earthers finally recognized us and ran out. I’d never been more grateful for them. Their strong arms grabbed hold of all of us and took the weight of the captain off our limbs. Bullet fire clattered again right before we were heaved into the harvester bay. The blast doors sealed shut behind us, and the ship’s alarms grew quiet.
Everyone in the harvesting bay stared while Cora, Desmond, and I crumpled to the floor, wheezing. I was relieved to finally give my legs a rest, but it still pained me to breathe. Cora was behind me, her arms wrapped around mine to keep me from tipping all the way onto my side.
A relatively equal split of Ringers and Earthers were present, only twenty or so altogether. The rest were either caught in the carnage outside, lying somewhere wounded, or dead. The Earthers who’d taken Captain Saunders from us carefully laid him on the floor in front of Doctor Orsini, who used a pile of dirty harvester rags to prop up his head.
Captain Saunders wasn’t exactly a friend, but we’d known each other for years. I couldn’t ever remember seeing him vulnerable. Blood trickled down the ends of his hair from a gash on his head, and Doctor Orsini used the cleanest cloth she could find to wipe it off, her hands trembling.
“He’s still breathing,” Doctor Orsini said.
“What happened?” John questioned, glaring in our direction. He sat near the captain against a rack of canisters, bandage still wound around his head.
“He got hit,” Desmond replied.
“You see who they are?”
Desmond shook his head.
“Soldiers, I think,” Cora said.
“Heavy armor... guns...” I panted. I pulled up my pants leg to reveal a welt the size of a cherry on the back of my calf. “They’re using nonlethal rounds.”
“Makes sense,” John said. “They don’t want to blow us all to bits.”
“Or they want us alive,” I said.
Titan's Son: (Children of Titan Book 2) Page 12