by Leslie Chase
That would have to wait until we were on our way back to the station. I hung onto the idea as something to look forward to, nodded, and set off.
It wasn’t quick, not dragging the massive data core. Without gravity it was weightless but it still had inertia: once we got it moving, it wasn’t easy to stop it or change direction. It took all of us to herd it where we wanted and not ram it into a wall.
“Boss, I see the gap,” Lily said over the radio while we wrestled the core around a corner. “Not sure I can dock there but I’ll get as close as I can. The Doha Zadzad’s docking now, though. We’re cutting it fine.”
“Good work, Lily,” I said, sweat running down my forehead. “We’re not at the gap yet either, so don’t take any risks to rush in, okay?”
“Got it, boss,” Lily said with an undertone of ‘do you think I’m crazy?’ And, well, yes. When it came to trying piloting stunts, I did.
The rest of us redoubled our efforts to navigate the twisted, broken corridors. Delkor did most of the work, his massive bulk and powerful muscles moving the Archive faster than we’d have been able to manage.
It still took an achingly long time to reach the chewed-up gap in the hull. Whatever weapon had done this damage must have been terrifying: thick armor plate had cracked and twisted, leaving jagged metal teeth stabbing in all directions. Outside, distant stars gleamed, and the wrecked hull extended dangerously into a maze of torn and gleaming metal.
Lily was good, but good enough to weave her way through that without getting tangled in it? I closed my eyes and offered up a quick prayer that she’d manage.
“You’ll have to jump,” Michaela said, voice grim. Not the answer to my prayer I’d hoped for. “No way we get close enough to dock.”
“Figures,” I answered. “The jump doesn’t look too dangerous, though. Get as close as you can and hold steady, we’ll come to you.”
I was proud of how calm I sounded. Moving through that tangled maze of razor-sharp metal would be a hell of a risk. Not too dangerous only compared to being stranded here.
The Ladies’ Choice drifted into view, gentle pulses of the drive edging her closer to us. The ship looked like a toy at this distance, small enough to easily miss and fly past.
If anyone misses, Lily’s perfectly capable of chasing them down and picking them up, I reminded myself. It wasn’t a death sentence, but it would give away our position. And outfighting the Doha Zadzad would be impossible. Outrunning it might not be… unless we were still picking up stragglers.
No, we had to get this right. One chance.
“Okay, Lily, get the cargo airlock open and facing this way, and hold the Ladies’ Choice steady.”
A brief pause. “I can get closer.”
“No, don’t risk it.” The spars of broken ship, the twisted wreckage of the hull, all made it too dangerous. Lily would take the chance, and gladly, but this would be a terrible moment to find out she wasn’t as good as she thought she was.
For a moment I worried that she wouldn’t listen, but then the ship turned, jets of gas spinning it precisely into position. I might worry that Lily overestimated her skills, but I’d be the first to admit she was damned good. In no time the gaping airlock pointed our way, the ship steady in position.
“Right,” I turned to our motley crew and tried to plan our departure. “Delkor, you go first with the core. The rest of us will follow.”
“No.” His flat refusal took me off guard and I glared at him.
“This is my crew, my plan, and my responsibility,” I reminded him. “You get the loot out of here, and then you’ll be in position to catch us. It’s the best plan.”
A strange, low rumble filled my helmet. Delkor’s growl was too low-pitched for the comms to transmit all of it, but even so it made me shiver as my pussy responded. Not now!
God, my body had no sense of timing at all.
“I will not leave you behind and in danger.” His voice held an absolute certainty. Delkor wasn’t arguing, wasn’t debating: he was telling me how it would be. And damned if I didn’t like that.
I swallowed, torn between giving in to him and resisting to reinforce my authority. Delkor met my gaze, calm and collected, ready for anything. This was a fight I’d already lost.
“Fine,” I snapped. “No time to argue about it. The rest of you go, then me, then Delkor with the core.”
I glared at him and he nodded, satisfied with that plan. Jen went first, bracing herself carefully against the far wall and then leaping across the gap in a slow, majestic spin. Alice crouched, ready to follow, but before she leaped Bella screamed into the comms channel.
“Look out!”
I spun to see giant insects scuttling towards us down the corridor. Chrichri, deadly hunters, armed and ready for a fight.
Alice pushed off hard, aiming for the Ladies’ Choice. As fast as she reacted, the Chrichri were faster, a warrior lunging up to grab her boot in one of its four hands.
That earned it a punch from Delkor that lifted it off the deck, its magnetic boots flailing for contact. Another sprang off the wall straight at me, moving faster than I could follow. Not too fast for Delkor, though, who caught that one and swung it off course. The Chrichri careened past me, smacked into a jagged shard of wall and stopped moving.
When I looked back, Delkor had thrown himself into combat, counter-attacking the charging Chrichri. That bought the rest of us some time, but I had no idea what to do with it. At Michaela’s insistence I carried my laser pistol, but the fight was too fast and chaotic for me to fire into.
Alice spun in the middle of the corridor, futilely trying to grab a handhold. That was a problem I could do something about: bracing myself, I reached up and caught her arm. Her momentum nearly pulled me clear of the off my feet, but I got her boots down against the deck.
Perfectly calm, Delkor’s voice came over the comm. “Get to the Ladies’ Choice, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Are you crazy?” I demanded, “We’re not leaving you behind.”
Fumbling at my belt, I drew my laser. It felt clumsy, heavy in my hand. Michaela was right, we didn’t practice enough. I promised myself that would change — assuming we lived through this.
Delkor didn’t waste time arguing with me. Lightning fast, he spun, picking me up and throwing me, all in a single smooth motion. I yelled in panic, limbs flailing helplessly as I flew out of the torn hull.
A moment later, Alice and Bella followed, tumbling through space after me.
“You fucker,” I shouted into the comm. “How dare you?”
“I have already endangered you too much, beloved,” Delkor said, followed by a huff of exertion. The fighting Chrichri hadn’t paused their attack for our conversation. “You will not die because of me.”
“You think I want to live without you?” My heart pounding, my mouth dry, focus was impossible. I tried to get myself under control; the last thing I wanted to do was distract Delkor from the fight. “It’s my choice to make.”
“No.” His voice calm, full of love, Delkor sounded implacable. “No, beloved, it is not. Nor is it mine; I can no more leave my bond-mate in danger than I can eat a star. You will live, and live well, no matter what you think you want.”
I ground my teeth together, trying to get control of myself. “You’d better survive this, you hear me? Because when we get back together, I’m going to kick your ass.”
My suit’s jets didn’t have the power to reverse my course, but they were enough to stop my tumble. I’d already fallen too far from the ship to see anything through the gap. Fumbling at my belt, I pulled out my scanner and pressed it to my faceplate. Magnification and light amplification kicked in automatically, letting me see what was happening behind me.
Chrichri swarmed Delkor, but the narrow and twisted corridor let him block their advance. The lead Chrichri slashed at Delkor with chitinous claws, but even encumbered by a spacesuit, my alien mate was faster. He ducked back, then forward, fist slamming into the insectoid’
s chest. The force of the blow sent the alien spinning into the next enemy.
I breathed easier. Delkor in battle was a beautiful sight, and even outnumbered, he was winning.
“Come on Delkor, jump,” I urged. For the moment he was free of enemies, why didn’t he follow us?
“Can’t,” he said, vanishing from view as a pair of bright red beams sliced through the space he’d just left. “Need to keep them busy until you’re across, or they’ll pick us off with their lasers.”
I swore under my breath. He made sense, but that didn’t leave me much hope. Delkor wouldn’t be able to follow until he’d beaten all of the Chrichri.
“Boss, heads up,” Michaela’s voice interrupted my worries. “Five seconds to contact.”
I turned my eyes towards the Ladies’ Choice and saw that I’d almost reached it. Delkor’s uncanny aim had me on a clean trajectory into the open cargo airlock, and I fumbled the scanner away to brace myself for impact.
The thump of my landing left me dazed, and I almost drifted out of the airlock again before I recovered enough to put down my magnetic boots. The others had it easier with me there to catch them and swing them aboard.
“We’re safe,” I called as soon as we’d all crossed the gap. “Delkor, you need to get out of there.”
Silence.
“Delkor? Fuck, Delkor, answer me.”
Nothing, not even breathing. His signal had cut out.
Lily held the Ladies’ Choice steady, swearing under her breath the whole time, while I peered back toward the torn-open hull of the battleship. Not that I saw anything: the only movement was a tumbling Chrichri corpse drifting away from the hull.
“Come on, Carrie, we’ve got to go,” Bella said, pulling at my arm. “Do you think he’d want us to hang around, for you to get caught?”
She was right. The last thing Delkor would want was me staying in danger for his sake. But screw that and screw him. I wasn’t going to abandon my man, whatever he might want. If our places were reversed, he’d wait for me no matter what.
“Their ship’s moving over the Golden Duke now,” Lily interrupted her litany of profanities to tell us. “If we don’t move soon, they’ll trap us in this debris.”
I wavered. Delkor wasn’t my only responsibility: I had my crew to consider and I’d already dragged them into this mess. My heart a leaden lump in my chest, I took a deep breath and gave the only order that made sense. “Get a course ready, Lily. Full burn at my order.”
“Already done, boss,” Lily said, and I heard the tense restraint in her voice. How close had she gotten to firing up the engines? If I’d been at the controls, I would have been tempted too. But Lily trusted me and kept our ship in place, waiting. I had to live up to that trust.
I swallowed, turning my scanner along the horizon formed by the Golden Duke’s hull. There, forward of us, the Doha Zadzad rose over it, slow and careful, alert for any cunning trap we might have set. More fool them, we had nothing to set a trap with.
As soon as they realized that, they had us. A sitting target, lightly armed, we’d never get out of their range before they wrecked our ship. If we were going to escape, we had to go now.
“Delkor, come on, I need you to answer,” I said, pleading with the empty airwaves. Looking back at the hole in the hull, I saw movement. My heart leaped — there was Delkor, locked in combat with a Chrichri.
I wanted, more than anything else, to jump back across the abyss and go to his aid. A stupid idea, all I’d do was give him more to worry about. But god, it hurt to watch.
Come on, come on, you can win this. I willed him to win quick and clean, to get over here. Forget the Archive, he was the only prize I wanted to salvage.
He caught the Chrichri’s arm in his tail, slammed a punch into its thorax, spun it against the wall. My fingers trembled on the scanner, gripping too tight. He’d done it.
And then I saw the corpse move.
The floating Chrichri that I’d thought dead uncoiled, one long limb snaking out to grab hold of a strut and pull it toward my mate. Another lashed out with blinding speed, connecting with the back of Delkor’s suit.
I screamed into the radio, watching air shoot from the tear. Delkor jackknifed, driving a punch backward that sent his Chrichri ambusher sailing out into space. Not before it grabbed hold of his air tank, though, ripping it free in a maelstrom of escaping gas.
My body tensed, and I almost threw myself back towards Delkor. If Bella hadn’t pulled me back, I might have done it. It would have been a useless gesture, anyway: the rush of air from his ruptured suit stopped in seconds as the last of the air escaped.
I kicked against the hull, Bella’s grip holding me back. Across the debris-filled gap Delkor was dying, and my blood turned to ice at the thought. It felt as though it was me, not him, exposed to the freezing vacuum of space.
I can’t save him. The rest of us might still get away. I pulled myself together with all my willpower, knowing that Delkor would have wanted this. Bella relaxed her grip as I stopped fighting her.
“Go,” I said into the radio. It was hard to force out that single syllable, but Lily didn’t need any more. The Ladies’ Choice vibrated as she brought the engines up to full power in an instant, the acceleration nearly throwing us clear of the airlock.
It was tempting to let it, to stay behind and make the Golden Duke a tomb for both of us. Life without Delkor wasn’t worth living.
Bella saved me from those dark thoughts, hauling me away from the door and slapping the emergency close button. The door slammed shut, sealing me away from Delkor, and I collapsed to the deck.
I should be on the bridge, making decisions, planning our escape. But right now, all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry.
18
Delkor
The world spun around me, everything hurt, and I heard nothing. Training took over, and I breathed out as vacuum ripped the air from my suit. Instinct told me to hold my breath, but that was instinct evolved for life on a planet.
Try to hold your breath in a vacuum and it will tear your lungs to shreds. I’d seen too many people die that way, drowning in their own blood, and I had no intention of joining them.
A human would be dead already, and so would most other species. We Caibar survived longer than many without air, but ten human minutes wasn’t long enough to achieve much.
On the third try, I snagged a hold on the torn hull with my tail. Looking around, I searched the sky for the Ladies’ Choice. It was gone. No safety to jump for, no chance to catch up with my mate.
I took a moment to find the ship, lost against the backdrop of the gas giant Pelureo. Beautiful bands of color, storms the size of planets… losing a spaceship against that was easy. If not for the glow of its thrusters, I might never have spotted it, but Lily had the throttle wide open. Accelerating hard, it shot out of the Golden Duke’s shadow, leaving me to my fate.
Good. Despite the ache in my hearts, that was what I’d hoped for. I’d feared Carrie might try to rescue me and squander her chance to escape. Now I could hope that she and her crew outdistanced the Doha Zadzad and returned to Nautilus Station.
If so, there was an outside chance that they’d come back for me. Which gave me something to live for, a future in which I might see my mate again.
I’d have to survive here for ten days or more, first. Not an easy task. For a second I considered stealing the Chrichri ship. That was a satisfying, if unrealistic, dream. I dismissed it and tried to think where I’d get breathable air.
My lost oxygen tank spun off into the void along with the Chrichri warrior who’d torn it from my back. Going after it would strand me in space, and even if I managed to reattach it that would just mean a slower death. No good, I’d have to look elsewhere.
With a heave I pulled myself back into the corridor, beside the looming monolith of the Archive. Inside was all the information I’d need, and I had no way to get to it.
Still, I wasn’t about to abandon the prize I’d
paid so much for. Putting my shoulder to it, I kicked away from the wall and pushed the Archive ahead of me down the corridor. There had to be something, that would keep me alive. An escape station with working stasis pods, an emergency space suit, anything.
But the damage in this area was horrific and the Golden Duke offered nothing to help me survive. I snarled into the cold vacuum, envying the Chrichri their independence from oxygen. The insectoids didn’t breathe at all, as comfortable in vacuum as in atmosphere.
Fate could not be this cruel. I’d met my mate, claimed her — to lose her now would be unthinkable. There had to be a way to survive and be reunited with Carrie.
Whatever price it costs, I will pay it. I directed the prayer at the half-forgotten gods of my people, gods I barely remembered from my childhood. The carved figures in the temple were all I knew of them now — even the names were gone. Whoever you are, whatever you want from me, let me return to my mate. I’ll offer any sacrifice you ask.
It felt pointless. If our gods could protect us, we Caibar would never have become slave-soldiers of the Empire. No, it was up to me to save myself and my mate.
As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I saw it. A red arrow symbol identifying a sealed survival locker, set into the wall. Not daring to hope, I pushed myself towards it. Without power, warped by damage to the hull, the locker refused to open until I dug my metal claws in and wrenched it open.
Inside I found a pair of space suits sized for Imperials — and shredded by shrapnel from an explosion. No matter, beneath them was what I sought. A dozen emergency air cylinders neatly clipped into a holder.
After lying here for decades I doubted they’d work, but they were my only chance. The first one came apart in my hands, and I felt the burning ache in my blood as I ran low on oxygen.