by Alex Oliver
“All the time.” Crane grinned.
Inside Seraph base, the suit was more of a problem. Navy suits were black with red detail, bulkier than this and kept in lockers near the airlocks. Marines wore planet-side camouflage in brown and green, and again, clumsier. When the pirates headed for the main hanger and left her alone, Aurora debated taking the suit off. She could walk to Keene's quarters in uniform, hoping for cover – hoping to be undetected.
But then she'd have to make it back to where she'd left the suit. Her face was now familiar to everyone in the galaxy and she’d have a crying baby in her arms. No. Besides, she wanted Autumn protected against the vacuum ASAP. A moment's distraction on Bryant's part and the pontoth could slip out of his control, gutting this station in minutes.
With that thought, she activated the tracker again and set off toward the blip of Autumn's life sign. She went as quietly as she could, ducking into what cover she could find when hurrying personnel passed by. Barely two minutes later and an alarm sounded in the main hangar, where Crane and her people must have finally arrived.
Aurora ducked back against the wall in the shadow of a massive silver air duct and stood very still as a detail of six guards jogged past, stun rifles tucked into their chests. She thought the first one looked in her direction, stopped breathing, but his eye must have glanced off the reflective material of her suit and seen only a patch of the opposite wall, because he didn't falter. He just ran on by.
Further up the corridor towards the officer's quarters, where metal flooring gave way to carpet, a view-screen flickered on, and a young lieutenant whose black hair was so carefully pomaded it looked painted on announced solemnly. “Pirate ship approaching. Security details alpha through epsilon to the main hangar. Civilians return to your quarters. Blast doors will be shut in three minutes. All personnel to your stations.”
Xan Hu and their people knew what they were about, Aurora thought, watching doors down the corridor open and officers spill out in various states of semi-dress. The fastest jammed their hats on while the slowest were still pulling on boots. In another moment, the quarters would be emptied, and she could waltz in and take her pick of abandoned children if she so desired. The thought wasn't quite as comforting as she might have wished.
As the crush passed her, mostly buttoned up and shod now, the lieutenant on the wall said with surprise “The pirate ship is hailing us.” His hand moved and there was Xan Hu, sitting very straight backed and imperial in a jacket of gold and a wide split skirt of the darkest indigo, pricked with star-like jewels. They didn't look like a pirate at all. They looked like a prince.
“Seraph Base,” Xan Hu said, with a little bow, “It has come to our attention that you are readying a strike at the world of Cygnus Five. I have words to say to you about this. Who do you have on board of sufficient rank to speak to me?”
The corridor ahead of Aurora was quiet by now. Two life signs still showed in Autumn's room, but surely in an emergency like this, Keene would not be--
“We don't talk to terrorists.” No, there was Keene, at the comm point in the main hall. Now that the drone camera had swept away from the lieutenant to take in the rest of the room, Aurora could see why they hadn't shot the Red Cat down already. Because Crane's team had lined up in front of the weapons' systems, each one of them with a different hostage at gun-point.
Aurora should have been horrified, but no one had actually been shot yet, and judging from her suit monitors, this conversation was being broadcast throughout the galaxy. She was glad of that. She had nothing to hide, and she appreciated Sehk Heongu's people and their competence. Maybe if she got out of all this alive, she'd take a goddamned course from the woman. She could learn something.
“Admiral Keene.” Xan Hu smiled slightly. “If you will not talk to me, then you may listen. I am here as a representative of Snow-City. We have a treaty with your government which acknowledges us as a neutral party and a sovereign state. You can continue to treat us like pirates if you wish, but only at the expense of revealing to the entire galaxy how you behave the moment your sworn word becomes inconvenient to you.”
“I'll treat you like pirates while you're holding my men at gun-point,” Keene snarled.
Five minutes, and no more foot traffic. Keene was being kept busy elsewhere. Aurora stepped out of hiding and sprinted to the doors of his quarters. They were locked, but when she peeled off the gauntlet over her left hand and melted through the lock-plate they swung open quietly at her touch.
Plush, but not extravagant, the quarters had a large sitting room where another screen showing the same content hung on one white painted wall. In front of it, a woman lay asleep on a long lilac-striped sofa, the screen remote tipping from her lax hand. Her hair was tightly wound in an immovable bun, but her white apron had a yellow stain at the shoulder and a faint smell of milk and apple-sauce. The pockets of the apron bulged with nappies and wipes and cloths.
“My people came aboard to stop you from blowing me out of the sky before we had a chance to talk. When we've talked, they will leave. No one need get hurt as long as everyone is reasonable.” Xan Hu looked even more impressive on this larger screen, poised and in control.
“And speaking of reasonable,” they continued. “I must assume you're not aware that Snow City has recognised Cygnus Five as a sovereign state, an ally and a trading partner. Any act of aggression towards Cygnus Five will be interpreted by us as an act of war.”
Aurora raised her eyebrows at the image, impressed again. When Sehk Heongu's people committed to a treaty, they really committed. Good to know. In the mean time, she should hold up her own end of the job. Controlling the suit with eye movements, she dialed the stunners in her fingers down to minimum and delivered one quick jolt to the sleeping nursemaid, just enough to keep her asleep for another few hours.
The habitat control slipped out of the woman's hand and fell to the floor, bouncing into the metal table with a clatter. A button must have been activated because one wall of the room seemed to dissolve into the illusion of a set of open tall sliding doors leading out to a cliff-side view, where a small garden of saxifrage and sea grass tumbled bright against an ocean whose distant horizon was a stroke of burning blue. Fans in the picture wall whirred to life to add the illusion of a sea breeze, and at the change of light and noise, a baby whimpered in the next room.
Aurora's heart stopped, and goosebumps prickled in a wave up her spine and down her arms. She pulled off both her gloves and her helmet and set them down on the table before stalking in to the nursery. It felt like stalking – like hunting something shy and rare. Something that would run away if she wasn't delicate enough. And if she lost it… If she lost it again--
She'd been afraid she wouldn't recognize her daughter, when she’d only had that brief glimpse of her after thirty hours of labor. But as the baby thumped the side of her plain white crib with a flailing fist, not quite managing to focus on Aurora in the doorway, there was her grandmother's hatchet nose, made small and sweet for Autumn's use. There was something in the curve of her brown brow that said Selena. The whites of her eyes were so blue, like the glaze on old fashioned porcelain, but her irises had already a faint wash of green, like her father's.
If she had to have something of Keene's, Aurora was glad it was the eyes.
“Hey,” she said, sidling carefully forward. She held her lips between her teeth to keep her chin from shaking. Look how precious Autumn was! Look at those tiny hands. How could anyone continue to exist when they were so tiny? How could there be war in any universe where there was also something so perfect, so holy?
Teeth weren't cutting it. She had to let go and sob, just one breath and then an angry sniffing back of tears she didn't have time for. Autumn's lip wobbled at the sound, as though Aurora's tears were catching, and oh no! “Hey, hey.” What the hell did you do with babies? Why hadn't she paid more attention when her sibs were young? Smiling? Check.
One more sniff and she managed to smile. Autumn's mood s
hifted in an instant as she caught sight of the glitter of Aurora's cuff, her own face reflected in it. She stared like a cat as Aurora reached down with both hands and uncertainly lifted her out of the crib. The weight was odd. She'd never held a weight so warm and small and alive and important all at once.
Now she should release the catch on her back to take down the environment pod, get Autumn in it and get out of there. Other things could--
Fuck that though. She got both her arms around her baby and scooped her into her aching chest, pressed her cheek to Autumn's cheek and breathed in the smell, nuzzling. Clean and almost bread-like and hers, hers, hers. “I'm here sweetheart. I'm here at last. Let's get you home, okay? Let's get you somewhere safe.”
She was half way through wrestling Autumn's flailing limbs into the pod when a crackle at her throat turned into the voice of Xan Hu saying “Aurora. Aurora, where are you? Why's your helmet cam off?”
That sounded urgent, but she still took her time securing Autumn properly in the pod, surprised to find that the tight fit of the padded compartment seemed to suit the baby. When she got the head-piece on and checked all the indicator lights to be sure the oxygen mix was good, Autumn's eyes were drooping as if to resume her interrupted nap.
Aurora coupled the pod to her back and only then snicked her own helmet on, more cavalierly. She felt twenty feet tall, the most important person in the universe, now that her baby was on her back. “I'm here.”
“They agreed to talk,” Xan Hu opened in a tone of voice that made it clear they were going to continue with a 'but'. “But the moment they did, Keene marched off to his ship. Engines are hot and he's pulling away from the station. I need you and my people back on board now. Extraction as agreed.”
“What's the rush, if they're talking?” Aurora asked, a constant tension unwinding at the thought that Keene was off station. But she snapped on her right gauntlet anyway, picked up the left and listened at the door for anyone returning. No footsteps as yet. Should she tie up the nurse, to make it obvious the poor woman hadn't just slept through a kidnapping? No. Radiation residue of the stunner would be on the walls if Keene had time and inclination to investigate.
She slowly swung the door open and slipped back outside.
“The rush,” Xan Hu repeated in a tone like a splash of cold water, “Is that Keene's ship has a core drill and nuke driver on board. I think they agreed to talk so I'd take my attention off him.”
Oh, Aurora had it now. Heedless of witnesses, she let her stride open up into a full run, bowling back the way she'd come. Just as she heeled round the corner, Crane and the rest of the boarding party came hurtling up the other corridor toward her. “You think he's going to--”
“I think he's on his way to blow up your planet right now. And if he figures out my trick of jumping as close to this place's gravity well as possible, we've got about fifteen minutes to stop him.”
“What's the plan?” Aurora asked as they wedged themselves back into the airlock, partnering up for a last inspection of suit seals as the air began to hiss out.
“Xan Hu's got the Red Cat following Keene's Principality. They'll pass on the same vector two minutes after. If you wanted to jump back to the cat, for the baby's sake, you could.”
Ensconced in her little cocoon, Autumn had auto-feed options on hand – she'd only have to turn her head to drink, and every child had that instinct. She'd be exactly as safe as Aurora was, and if the Red Cat was going into combat her safety could hardly be assured even in the depths of the ship.
“You're boarding the Principality?”
Crane's grin was like the drawing of a knife. “I figure 'why change a winning strategy'? One, Seraph Base isn't going to fire on Principality so that minimizes our risk. Two, we seize their bridge, we can stop them without blowing them up. At the moment the brass in here are in two minds about whether we're pirates or not. We should keep it that way. The moment they decide for real that we are, the gloves come off and everything gets harder.”
“And in the mean time the Red Cat shadows the Principality so closely that Seraph base won't try shooting at it themselves because they might clip the Principality in the process.”
“Exactly,” Crane nodded. “So are you coming with us?”
“I didn't ask your name,” Aurora said, suddenly guilty that she had treated these people as a means to an end. They might not be her people, but they were her allies, and they had deserved more courtesy than that. “I'm sorry. What should I call you?”
“What have you been calling me in your head?” the woman asked, apparently amused. The first wave of boarders were crouching by the back wall of the airlock, ready to push off, and the outer door lights pulsed in warning.
“Crane,” Aurora admitted, “After your...” she indicated the pattern on Crane's suit.
“That will do,” she flattened herself against the wall as the first wave leaped past and out, moved back to get into launch position next to Aurora for the next wave. “We don't give out our names. But thank you for asking. Are you coming?”
“Of course.”
This time, the target wasn't stationary and the launch place hadn't been calculated for an optimal trajectory. Once they were free of the walls, and free of the station's delicate struts, Crane called “Right thrusters, five o' clock, two second burst,” and they curved together like a comet's tail towards the sharp outline of Principality's running lights. Red Cat had turned her own lights out, and was invisible except as a shadow that slipped over the lights of the traffic queued behind them.
“Ten minutes to jump point,” Crane announced. “Got to stop her or at least be on board by then. Shit. Is it meant to look like that?”
Principality had swum into the light of the system's distant sun, and been revealed in all her mottled disease. A circle of black pits had opened beneath her engines – the struts and track were hanging on by mere threads of metal. The gun mouths glowed as they charged, and the light was shattered into fireflies as it passed through a lacework of holes in the muzzles. It wasn't stopping her from powering up, though.
She was going to take a shot at where the gunners guessed Red Cat must be. Aurora called up naval comms frequency. Someone on Principality's bridge must be able to hear her, this close. Someone must be listening. “Attention Principality! Check your gunnery status. I'm seeing extensive decay. You're going to blow yourself up if you use those things.”
By its own initiative, her headset had carried on refining its connection to the comms and now she could even hear the chatter on the Virtue's bridge.
“Is that true?”
“Readouts are fine, sir. I'm not seeing--”
“Your readouts are lying to you,” Aurora interrupted. “Your ship is heavily infected with pontoth. Your engine mounts are barely holding together. Who told you to man this piece of junk? It's going to fall apart around the waist the moment you stress the frame at all.”
“You do nothing but lie.” Keene's voice on the comm and she was just tired of him now. She'd had it with feeling anything for him but a kind of weary nausea. There were more important things at stake than their past.
“Send someone out to check, that's all I'm saying. This stuff fucks with your electronics. Put some actual eyes on it.”
The boarding party were coming in close now, tiny targets too fast-moving and too small for the ship's broadside to pick off even if it had been firing, the shadow that was the Cat coming behind them, keeping them in the corridor between the two metal hulls.
“Nice,” Crane laughed on their private channel, “Get them to open an airlock for us and send a hostage.”
“That wasn't actually the plan,” Aurora snorted, “but I'll take it.”
“Nah, it's good,” Crane matched her speed to the coasting ship and flew alongside it so she seemed to hover a meter above its surface. “I'm guessing the only reason we haven't had suited anti-boarding parties from the other ships by now is that Keene's starting to look pretty irrational to everyone.
You at least sound like you care about these people.”
“I do care,” Aurora agreed. “Most of them are good people. It's not their fault there are pricks at the top.” She'd given half her life to this organization; she couldn't stop loving it. Even now – she agreed with Crane – it was tacitly protecting her, supporting her through inaction.
“Or that they actively conquer other worlds and spread their stupid doctrine throughout the galaxy, wiping out and oppressing good people in the process?”
Aurora caught a glimpse of light where there had been only darkness – light outlining the shape of a door. She reached out a glove and closed it around one of the ship's shield masts. She'd matched speed close enough that there was barely a jolt when they connected and the ship absorbed her momentum.
Guilt was like a toxic slurry in her lungs and belly, helping no one, hindering her from doing what was right now. She thought of Bryant, who had loved her even though he had known her when she was still so, so very wrong about so many things, and swallowed it all down.
“Yeah,” she said, discarding her whole career as a mistake, and finding that now Autumn was on her back, only inches away from her skin, she had the strength to see this new one through. “That stuff has got to stop.”
Coming out from the light of the airlock into the darkness of deep space, the poor soul who emerged from the now-open airlock had no chance to spot Crane and her people in their super-reflective suits. The figure had a blaster with them, clutched against their chest, but they were still trying to figure out where to aim it when Crane tackled them from behind, bouncing them flat on their stomach on the hull, and Aurora caught the weapon as it flew from their hand and began to tumble away.
“Six, boss.”
“Okay, first six through.”
Aurora caught on that the ‘six’ referred to was the capacity of the airlock when six of Crane's people crushed inside and shut the door behind them. Another six lined up to go through immediately after. Aurora concentrated on the wrestling match between Crane and the squaddie, trying to figure out which way it was going, whether or not she needed to help.