Asra inhales sharply, and that’s all the warning we get. The door slides open, and on the other side, they’re ready for us.
Zee rolls the grenade over the threshold the second the gap is wide enough, the small explosion sounding more ferocious in the enclosed space. I peek around Asra—four people in tech coveralls sprawl over consoles. No movement, except for the digital countdown visible on one of the displays: thirty seconds. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight . . .
I’m really gonna throw up this time.
The room is a mess of computer consoles, wires, and long, thin tubes feeding through a hole in the ceiling. My chest is cracking open with the panic, my breath loud and hard. There’s so much shit in here, how are we supposed to find the transmitter? Twenty-three, twenty-two—Asra taps frantically at the display next to the countdown. More shouts from back the way we came, damn it. I slap the door control and lock it, though I doubt that will stop anyone with proper clearance. Zee throws open an access panel full of breakers and starts flipping them three at a time, nothing, nothing.
Rion, Case, and I look on helplessly as the clock ticks down, eighteen, seventeen—there. In the corner, a huge boxy structure, newer than everything else in the room, slightly different shade of paint. I tear off the front panel, and inside, at waist height, buried among a rat’s nest of wires, is a circuit board with a familiar tiny blue-and-green logo. The transmitter.
“Here!” I shout, my voice ragged and panicky even to my own ears. The board is screwed in; I can’t get my fingers around it, so I tear at the surrounding wires instead, but nothing stops the timer as it ticks on and on. Ten, nine . . .
“Back!” Zee orders, roughly shoving me away from the console. She takes a step back and swings her leg high, snapping the toe of her boot into the board once, twice, then shifting her hips to slam the heel of her boot in a final resounding crack.
The countdown stops at four seconds, then is replaced with a blinking error message.
HARDWARE FAILURE.
My cheeks are wet. My mouth tightens—then breaks into a grin. I look around at the others: Rion, Case, and Asra openly weep, arms limp at their sides as the adrenaline drains. Zee, on the other hand, looks positively delighted. She rolls her head from side to side, cracking her neck, then her knuckles, then shaking out her legs one at a time.
“That was surprisingly therapeutic,” she says with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen from her.
“I bet.” Rion laughs. “I’m almost jealous!”
I snort, but a quick glance at Case’s face sobers me up quick. She looks nervous as hell, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“Okay everyone, time for part two,” I say, reining everyone back in before we get too drunk on our victory. “We still have to live through this and get out of here. Asra, can you use the terminal in here to reach Earth?”
She tries two different terminals before shaking her head. “We wrecked or shut down too much vital stuff in here. We’ll have to find another terminal somewhere.”
Case and Asra bend their heads together, examining the layout on Case’s tab, muttering back and forth.
“The medbay, I think,” Asra says finally, and Case nods with her.
“It’s close, and the only people in there are noncombatants or already injured, theoretically,” Case says. “Shall we?”
“Lead the way.”
Then the door behind us crashes open, and bullets slam into the wall behind me.
A hot point of fire drills through my left arm, and I fall back against the wall, everything blurring together for several long seconds. The arm of my vac suit locks down around my bicep, sealing off the wound, and the tight pressure snaps me back to awareness in time to see two silhouettes in the doorway collapse backward into a third. Zee drops into a crouch beside me, yanking my wounded arm none too gently around for her to see. The pain makes her voice hazy and distant.
“It’s just a graze, Nax. You’ll be okay,” she says, hauling me up by my other arm. “I’ll wrap it as soon as we get to the medbay, but we need you and your gun to help us get there. Now. Are you with me, Captain?”
I bite my lip and take several long breaths through my nose, then nod. The flooding heat starts to ebb away, replaced by a dull throbbing pain, but I step over the bodies in the doorway and follow Case as ordered. Can’t slow everyone down. Gotta keep moving. There will be more reinforcements coming. Besides, Rion actually got shot, not just grazed, when we were stealing the Kick; I can’t faint now or I’ll never live it down. Some captain I’d be.
Another bullet zings past my head, and Rion and Zee return fire behind me. The motion of the security cameras catches my eye as we turn a corner, so in the next hallway I take aim and fire at one of them; no damage, but at least the gelatinous chemical goop will obscure their view. God, I hope we’re almost there; I’m leaving a helpful trail of blood drips in our wake that practically invites the Earth First assholes to shoot us in the back.
We turn one last corner and come face-to-face with a door painted with a giant red cross. The medbay. I shoulder Asra out of the way, meet Rion’s gaze, and slam the door controls with the elbow of my good arm. We don’t bother looking, just fire at anything vaguely human shaped, and bodies go down over hospital beds and computer consoles before anyone has a chance to react. Case and Zee squeeze off a few more shots down the hallway behind us, then duck through the door. Asra hits the controls and locks everything from the inside.
“We have maybe thirty seconds before they override the door controls. We need . . .” She scans the room for a few long seconds, then darts over to a console in the far corner. “Can you keep them off my back for a few minutes?” she asks, already working to establish the link.
“Let’s set up shop, y’all,” I say.
Case grabs the mattress off the nearest rolling hospital bed and kicks it onto its side, then rolls another bed in front of it, providing some small amount of cover. There’s a snarl, and I whirl as Zee sends a chem blast into the face of a patient, the man’s hand half curled around a surgical knife. She swaps the gun to her opposite hand as she rifles through a cabinet and emerges with a can of the same spray-on bandage she used on me after our shuttle crash.
“No time for anything more. Sorry,” she says, dropping down beside me and yanking my bad arm to her. I consider making a crack about her bedside manner, but it’s probably not a good time. Besides, the door controls are making unhappy chiming sounds as the murdering assholes work to override the lock, so I’m willing to forgive some finger-shaped bruises for the sake of expediency.
Rion pulls the gun from my hand and slips a fresh chem cartridge in for me, then repeats the process for Case. His diplomat mask is in place, and his hands are steady, but his fingers linger on mine when he presses the gun back into my hands. I catch his eye and try on a reassuring smile, but it must come out more like a grimace. His expression is pained as he looks away. No good. Time to rally the troops.
“Okay, seriously,” I say in my best Nax Hall, Professional Bullshitter, voice. “Asra said thirty seconds until they hacked the door, but it’s been at least a full minute. They tried to shoot me, but I’ve gotten mosquito bites bigger than this back home. How exactly did these geniuses manage to take over the station and launch an evil plan for interstellar genocide?”
Not my best material, but the others dissolve into snorting relief giggles anyway, just as the door finally gives a satisfied chime. Back to the shooting it is.
Except they have grenades now.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” I shout as an egg-shaped explosive sails over our hospital bed fort. My middle-school baseball instincts kick in—I catch it and hurl it back the way it came, then drop down on top of Case, Rion, and Zee. Only after the grenade explodes a second later with a deafening CRACK do I process how colossally bad that could have been. Game over with one little explodey egg thing. No time for panic, though.
I roll off the others and bring my gun up, sighting on the door through the gap be
tween the hospital beds. Charred body parts litter the floor in front of the entrance. I drop back down, hot bile surging into my throat. I’m shocked at myself; I don’t feel guilty in the slightest, though the sight is nauseating. But over it all is the sick knowledge that it could have been Case’s burned arm, Rion’s bloody torso. Get it together, Hall.
Then a voice comes over the room’s comm system. “Earth First personnel, Mr. Pearson requests that you spare his stepdaughter if possible. He is on his way to collect her. You have your orders for the rest. Make it quick.” It’s the headmistress, Dr. Herrera. The one who made this whole thing possible, who took the thousands of lives in her care and snuffed them all out. Vile.
“I’m sorry, guys,” Asra says over her shoulder, voice tight and clipped, somehow never looking up through all the chaos. “This is taking too long. I have the info, and I’ve gotten the message out on every major social media outlet, but someone’s blocking my connection every time I try to establish a link with the GCC headquarters on Earth. It’s taking time to work around them. Can you—?”
Her voice breaks in a way I’ve never heard it do before. Not when we stole the ship, not when her brother shot at us, not on Tau’ri . . . never. She takes a deep breath, another, and tries again. “Can you hold for just a little longer? Are we okay?”
I duck as another wave of people pours in through the door, their guns peppering the hospital beds with bullets. No grenades this time—guess they learned that lesson.
“We’ll do our best, Asra. Just focus. We’ll keep you safe,” I say. And god, I hope it’s true.
Pop up, fire a few shots, duck down, move. Repeat. It’s not working. I can’t look long enough to sight a target and aim, much less hit anything. More people push their way into the room, working to set up crossfire, and shit, this is going to hell really fast.
I press myself against our cover and look around our half of the room. There has to be something we can use to our advantage, anything. There’s a cabinet with a glass door, shattered and filled with toppled pill bottles, an emergency exit, a door marked PLUMBING AND VENTILATION, a biohazard disposal container, a row of chemical tanks, a large suspended machine for . . .
Wait.
Oh no, I have the worst plan ever.
The frantic chatter of automatic weapons joins the fray, the rain of bullets ripping our mattress barricade to shreds. Must be actual soldiers responding to the situation now. I rub a hand down my face, collect my courage, and nod.
“Case, follow me.”
To her credit, she doesn’t hesitate for a second. “With you, Captain.”
I count to three to psych myself up, then lean out and fire wildly, managing to bull’s-eye one person in the forehead and send the rest diving for cover. My rollout from behind the hospital beds is so far past graceful, but it gets me behind the next table with a minimum of damage to my messed-up arm, so I can’t complain. Case is so close on my heels that she rolls straight over me, and we flail in a tangle of limbs for a moment until I can get oriented again. The chemicals, the chemicals . . . yes, there, four giant canisters that come up to my waist marked N2O—nitrous oxide.
“Everyone seal your helmets and turn on your O2 flow, now!” I say into my helm mic. “Incoming, ten seconds!” My helmet shield snaps into place, and I get a hit of fresh oxygen mix, then glance over at Case. She’s already good to go, so I wave her over to the first canister and motion for her to grab her side of the valve wheel. I hate putting her in the line of fire with me, but my left arm is useless right now, and I need the help.
“Hope you’re all set, ’cause this might be my worst idea yet,” I say, and heave the valve wheel to the left. Case throws all her strength into it, and it turns, slowly at first . . . then releases all at once. The gas comes gushing out into the medbay with a sound like a fire extinguisher. I grab the top and yank it toward me, lowering it gently to the ground with Case’s help, then push it across the floor until it’s out from behind cover.
The second my head pokes around the corner, a blast of gunfire nearly takes my face off. I throw myself back behind the chemical storage locker, peek out one more time—and lock eyes with none other than Jace Pearson, here to finish us himself. I duck back as a hail of bullets strikes my cover, and take one deep, calming breath. This can still work.
“Zee!” I call over the comms, then wave a hand at the billowing gas canister, inviting her to do the honors. She sketches a tiny bow, then drops to the floor behind the tank, leans back, and slams into it with both feet, sending it rolling straight toward our attackers. She leaps back just as the gunfire concentrates on her location . . . then the shots begin to taper off. Rion’s marksman ability has put a good dent in their numbers, but it’s the tank of gas pouring directly into the assholes’ faces that ends the resistance completely.
And the laughing starts.
I risk a look around the corner, and I’m so glad I did.
The Earth First soldiers who were shooting at us, the vicious assholes who were part of a plot to kill off half the population of the galaxy, are leaning all over one another in fits of giggles, drooling and grinning like little kids. The best, though, is Asra’s stepdad, who drops his gun to bat at invisible somethings around his face with a puzzled expression. I probably look like I got a dose myself; a goofy grin stretches across my face as a wave of cool relief pours through every vein.
Could this really be almost over?
“Laughing gas, Nax?” Rion says, standing up from his cover. “Seriously?”
I sent a mental thanks to Tucker Fineman, wherever he may be. Asshole he may have been, but if he hadn’t gotten high on N2O that one time, I would never have thought of this. This one’s for you, Tucker.
And there’s still one step left: eliminating the reinforcements.
“Yes, Rion, laughing gas, and we’re not done yet,” I say. “Zee and Rion, stay and cover Asra in case we get new visitors. Case, I need your engineer brain over here.” The door to the plumbing and ventilation room opens without a fuss, and Case catches on right away, rolling another N2O canister inside. She immediately sets to work rigging it up to dump into the ventilation system, which is great, because I wouldn’t have the slightest clue where to start. Instead, I grab another tank of gas and roll it in behind the other one.
We repeat the process twice more, emptying each tank fully into the system until all four of them are kicked, then gently guide the high-off-their-asses soldiers—and Jace—out into the hallway. Case rigs the door once again, but takes her time to really rip the guts out of the maintenance access panel this time. No one will be getting in unless we let them.
“Oh, you guys are going to love this,” Asra calls from across the room with a wicked grin. She beckons us over, and oh good god, it is golden. She has the security camera footage from the mess hall, main office, and the headmaster’s quarters up on screen, where people are sprawled out on the tables, grinning from ear to ear or dancing in slow, lazy circles. The headmaster, Dr. Herrera, who recorded our wanted notices and signed the orders to kick us out of the Academy, looks like she’s doing a solo waltz in her office. And in the hallway directly outside the medbay, Jace continues his invisible-fairy-catching dance. Asra aims her tab at the video screen and records a short clip of it with a satisfied smile.
“Mission accomplished, by the way,” Asra says. “Command is now in possession of all of Earth First’s files and plans, along with the message we wrote. Just in case they aren’t paying attention, though, I took the liberty of transmitting a live stream of this footage down to Earth. If nothing else, the generals at GCC HQ will notice this for sure.”
As if on cue, the comm system sounds an incoming call tone. Rion leans over and taps the receive button with a jaunty little flourish, barking a laugh as a round-cheeked man appears on the screen. He looks positively livid.
“What in god’s name is going on up there?” the man roars, the mic distorting from his volume. “Who the hell are you?”
&n
bsp; Everyone crowds around me, getting into view of the camera. Asra waves. Case salutes. Zee crosses her arms, and Rion shoots the man two fingers. Not very diplomatic, that. The fist that’s been squeezing my heart in a stranglehold for the past four days finally fades away, and a grin tugs at the corner of my mouth. I throw my arms around my friends and look straight into the camera.
“Nax Hall, captain of the Swift Kick, at your service,” I say with a little bow of my head. “And before you say anything else: you’re welcome.”
Twenty-Two
MY QUARTERS ABOARD THE KICK feel almost homey now. Brand-new sheets, a little magnetic growing pot with a cheerful mint plant, and my old tablet from home sitting on the bedside table. Some of my old clothes from Earth live in the drawers now, and the chevra mix from my parents’ care package is stashed in my newly designated snack drawer. But despite it all, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the world is going to fall out from under me at any second. My brain and body can’t seem to get the message that it’s over.
It’s over.
It sure was nice of the GCC to fall all over themselves to apologize to us. They sent up packages from our families within twelve hours of the whole ordeal, then transferred documents clearing us of wrongdoing, along with a hefty sum of reward money. There was some vague grumbling at the start when they tried getting us to admit to stealing the Kick, but we said nothing, and they can’t prove it. We have documents showing our legal ownership now, so they can’t do a damn thing about it.
My only punishment in this? They nailed me for, of all things, piloting without an interstellar license. Blow me. I’ll pay the fine out of my beautiful reward cash, thank you very much. After what I’ve been through, the piloting exam was an utter cakewalk.
My parents are . . . less than happy with me, I think. We only got to talk for a minute before the GCC shut us down—something about the integrity of the investigation—and we had to leave Earth orbit to get the Kick back to Brenn’s for repair soon after. But it sounded like my parents were forced to deal with all of my extended family’s judgments and opinions once the wanted notices came out. Grammy was clutching her Southern lady pearls, and Pa and my dad’s brothers were right pissed. Same with my aunties and uncles on my ammi’s side. Turns out I started quite the family scandal.
The Disasters Page 24