by Natalie Grey
The whole Navy could be compromised. Cursing, Wev ran as fast as his biosuit would take him, coming out into the main corridor while the experiments called after him in desperation.
His fear and distraction were nearly fatal. A punch caught him on the side of his sensor array and knocked his suit sideways. Yeldred, armed and armored far better than Wev could ever hope to be, stepped out of the shadows with a ripple of satisfaction.
“Setting the experiments free, traitor?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Behind him, Wev could see the control panel winking, so he did the only thing he could think of. He held up his tentacles in a gesture of surrender. “What’s going on? Why are you attacking me? Are you with the Navy?”
“Am I with the Navy?” Yeldred hissed back. He had always been the meanest of the guards, often threatening to kill the experiments when they disturbed his sleep. Now, he readied a blade and a gun as he stared Wev down. “When your partner is the one killing guards?”
“He did what?” Wev shot back, trying to make himself sound as shocked as possible. Then, in the split-second Yeldred considered this, Wev unveiled the gun he kept well-hidden in his arm plating and shot.
Sparks burst across Yeldred’s sensor array, and he staggered back with a yell. Wev shot again, denting Yeldred’s gun, and then ran around him to the control panel. He plugged in, keeping his sensor array trained on Yeldred as the guard tried to regain his equilibrium.
Feword was the one who had shut down Jeltor’s floor. Wev struggled through the blocks, trying to undo them, cursing when he saw how Feword had locked everyone else out of the system. Wev knew the overrides, but they weren’t going to be quick…
Wev! Any progress?
Wev was slammed up against the wall. Yeldred had recovered, and his knives bit into the joints of Wev’s armor.
Yeldred…here…
Wev!
Have to get Jeltor out, Wev managed. He kicked back and tried to level an elbow strike at Yeldred’s head, but he didn’t take his other arm out of the panel. He was devoting as much attention as he could to getting around Feword’s blocks. Soon…I’ll have it done… Another hit, and he felt a searing agony in his Jotun body. The suit was made to tell him when it was injured, and it was badly injured now. Soon, he repeated.
Wev, get out of there!
Yeldred was laughing. “You’re going to die, traitor. You and Gil, and I’m going to enjoy showing your bodies to His Excellency.”
“You…sure about that?” Wev gasped, and he unblocked one part of the system Feword hadn’t gotten to yet.
Nearby, the cage doors swung open, and the captive Brakalon bellowed. Yeldred swore, turning to look as the experiments streamed around the corner and saw him standing there, weapons out.
Yeldred had a gun, but they didn’t care. They rushed him, screaming and desperate for vengeance, and Wev did his best to stay upright and conscious while he waded through the last of Feword’s blocks.
Gil…
Wev! Wev, are you all right?
It’s…done. Go get him. Wev dropped to his knees, pulling his arm out of the wall panel, and the last thing he saw was the world tilting crazily as the Brakalon picked his biosuit up gently from the floor.
“Wev!” Gil’s voice was full of agony.
Barnabas didn’t wait. He couldn’t. He wrenched the door open as soon as the hum disappeared and ran down the corridors. To any organic being, he would be only a blur.
Jeltor, please! Please be all right. He skidded around the corner into the big central room, terrified of what he would see and hear.
But the big tank was empty, and the wet tracks across the floor showed him that another tank had been wheeled away.
When he felt the low thrum of engines nearby, Barnabas realized they were too late.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Shinigami! Barnabas took the stairs down to the ground floor at top speed, grabbing the handrails to swing himself around. He would have dropped straight down through the center, but the Jotun architects hadn’t left nearly enough room for that. Fire up the ship! We’re going now!
Engines are on, she reported. Problem, though… One of our allies is dead, and the other one is walking right into it—
No time!
I’m not finished, Shinigami said severely. The live one is walking into a trap, and the committee must know what’s going on because they have this place on a self-destruct. As long as I’m here, I can stave it off, but once we leave…
Not our problem.
Do you even hear yourself? She was angry now. Our allies here are why we had a fighting chance to get to Jeltor. We can catch that ship, even with a few minutes more of a head start. What we can’t do is resurrect our allies from tiny exploded bits!
I can’t— Barnabas gave a yell of fury and spun to slam his fist into the wall as he skidded to a halt. Goddammit! We were supposed to get him, Shinigami. This was supposed to be—
He stopped and stood for a moment, his chest heaving.
There was a pause, and then she said quietly in his mind, May I speak as a friend?
Barnabas swallowed. Yes. Always.
Something about this enemy has hooked deep into you. All trace of joking was gone. Please, for this one, let me call the shots when I say I need to. I promise you that I will not sacrifice our friends.
Barnabas stood frozen for a long moment. Months ago, he would never have considered letting Shinigami pick their targets and formulate their plans. Of course, a few months ago, she would never have suggested going out of their way to save their allies, and her plans for infiltration would have involved missiles and flamethrowers.
She had changed…and so had he.
Barnabas, please! You have to trust me. Gil doesn’t have much time.
He felt farther from logic and reason than he had in years, and he clung to her voice as a bastion of sanity. I’m going now. Up two flights, yes?
Yes. She sounded relieved. I’m getting Gar to the ship unless you think you’ll need him.
No. You two go. Barnabas was taking the stairs three at a time, pulling himself around corners as he had gone down, his mind narrowing to the task ahead: get Gil out.
When he burst onto the top floor, it was with a battle cry on his lips and murder in his eyes. Gil was injured badly, his movements jerky, sparks raining down from his suit, but he wasn’t backing down from his fight with the Jotun soldier. He screamed his friend’s name over and over as he fought.
Around them, the experiments lay wounded and dying. Barnabas guessed that these aliens were the only reason Gil stood a fighting chance. It looked as if they had attacked in a mob and had done significant damage to the soldier’s biosuit. They weren’t strong, however, and most of them bore such brutal wounds, inflicted head on, that it looked like they had no longer been safe enough to do anything other than charge their captors in a fit of rage.
And there, on the side of the room, was a Brakalon taking its last breaths. As it died, Barnabas heard the keening sound of its cry and remembered what he had heard in the entryway of the facility. The cry was full of so much pain and loss that he could hardly help seeing into the creature’s memories: the destruction of its home, the death of its family, the torture it had endured.
Something inside Barnabas snapped.
The committee’s lackey never stood a chance. From his perspective, Barnabas moved in a blur. The punch Barnabas leveled at him was hard enough to punch through the armor plating on the front of his suit. His tank exploded within the armor shell, and the Jotun’s body was smashed against the back wall.
Gil staggered back in shock as Barnabas ripped the suit limb from limb, a wordless roar bursting out of his chest. When it was done, when the suit was nothing more than a sparking ruin, he stared at it with his chest heaving and his hands twitching, aching for something more to hit, to tear, to destroy.
He staggered back to the Brakalon and knelt. His bloody fingers, coated with the slime from
inside the Jotun’s tank, reached out to brush the creature’s face.
Rest, he told it. He found the memories of its family, living and happy, and he brought those to the surface of its mind. You don’t have to fight anymore. Rest.
He felt its happiness for one blessed moment, and then the pain released entirely and its head fell back onto the floor.
Barnabas. Whether Shinigami could see what he was seeing he did not know, but her voice was sober. The records are loaded, and we should go now. They’re stepping up their attempts at a self-destruct.
Barnabas stood. He was unutterably weary now, and he wanted nothing more than to be gone from this place. He looked at Gil, who was kneeling by Wev’s body.
“Come,” he told the Jotun. “We have to go. There’s nothing left here.”
Gil came with him as if in a dream, stumbling a little as he walked. He didn’t speak while Barnabas led him into the stairwell and down the three flights. He walked numbly past the body of the Jotun guard outside the records room, and he did not look around at all while Barnabas hurried him onto the Shinigami and they braced for takeoff.
But when they heard the alert to tell them they had left the atmosphere, Gil stirred to life at last. His mechanical face turned to Barnabas and he said, his voice flat and lost, “It should have been me.”
Feword slumped into the pilot’s seat and shook with rage. The repair module in the ship had done its job well. The leaking from his tank had stopped, the fluid was replenished, and the rest of his suit…
It would hold until he could get proper repairs done by a master mechanic on one of their bases. That would have to do for now. There was nothing to do in the meantime except try to relax—
An automated system of alerts sprang to life a moment later, wailing throughout the ship. In the tank nearby, Jeltor was startled awake. He thrashed, blinded and crippled by the torture, but his terror soon gave way to exhaustion and he floated limply, realizing he was helpless.
Feword gave him a contemptuous look before turning to look at the ship’s control panel. He knew what the alerts were without looking, but he still stared at the sensor arrays for a long moment.
The Shinigami was in pursuit. He simply had to hope he could make it to Jotuna D before they caught up with him. The ship was already traveling at its top speed. Fiddling with it would help nothing.
Feword resisted the urge to stride across the bridge and shatter Jeltor’s tank. This traitor, this upstart captain, had cost him his whole team—and the research facility.
Feword hoped he was worth it.
Barnabas helped Gil to the shuttle bay, where Shinigami was waiting with tools. Gil stood without a word of protest—or, indeed, any sign that he was still conscious—while Shinigami’s exquisitely-calibrated hands repaired the tiny cracks in his tank and the multitude of wires and joints that powered his biosuit.
“It isn’t as good as it would be if a Jotun mechanic had done it,” she said when she was done. “Not all of the weapons panels will work properly. We’re formulating more fluid to put into the tank. Gar will be here with it soon.”
The mechanical head nodded once.
Barnabas had been pacing near the door, his hands linked behind his back, and now he looked at Gil. What would he be feeling if it were Gar or Shinigami who had been lost in that facility? He could not imagine.
“Do you need to go anywhere urgently?” he asked at last.
Gil said nothing for long enough for Barnabas to wonder if he’d switched off his sensor arrays and retreated into his Jotun body.
“No,” he said finally, tonelessly. “I’ve informed Intelligence of what happened. There is no more we can do. I will have to go back to the Agency.”
Barnabas and Shinigami exchanged a look.
“They’re not going to hurt you, are they?” Shinigami asked finally. She was always willing to be blunter than a human would be in her place.
“No!” Gil’s tone betrayed genuine shock. He looked at her as Gar and Tafa hurried in with a closed container of fluid. “Why would you think that?”
“One too many bad experiences,” Barnabas answered for Shinigami. “We’ve seen a great number of people be punished for things that were beyond their control.”
Gil began to laugh. He laughed wildly, the sound cutting off as Shinigami eased his tank forward for Gar to pour the fluid in; the sound came back when the tank was settled into place once more, bouncing off the walls. It was disturbing in its intensity.
“What more could they do to punish me?” Gil finally asked. “Wev is dead. What could they do that’s worse than that? No, my punishment is my failure.”
“You didn’t fail,” Barnabas assured him quietly.
“I asked him to go!” Gil yelled. His voice clipped against the range of the speakers, raw in its grief. “I was the one who said he needed to stop what he was doing and get Jeltor out—and we didn’t!”
“We’re going to get him back,” Shinigami told him softly. She opened her mouth to say more but caught Barnabas’ minute head shake. She closed her mouth again.
“Gil,” Barnabas began, “I know that no words can bring Wev back.”
Gil stared at him, and Barnabas could feel the hatred roiling in Gil’s mind. How dare Barnabas even speak to him, when Wev had died for Barnabas’ mission, and Barnabas had his whole crew around him, alive and safe?
“Both you and Wev were prepared to give everything to stop the committee,” Barnabas said gravely. “To stop your own government from becoming something truly horrific. Wev did nothing less than what you would have done in his place.” He paused. “I imagine…well, I imagine neither of you thought you would get out of this mission alive.”
Gil stared at him wordlessly.
“Wev paid the price you expected to pay,” Barnabas said, “but you’re still alive. I know it’s too soon right now, but I hope you will continue to fight. The committee is not defeated yet, Gil. The Jotuns still need you.”
Gil looked down at the ground.
“Gilwar,” he said finally. “That’s my full name.”
“Gilwar,” Barnabas repeated. “We’ll leave you in peace. Speak up if you need anything. Shinigami will hear you.”
He waved the others out of the shuttle bay and lagged behind them as they made their way to the bridge. He wasn’t surprised to see Shinigami turn to look at him from down the hall.
Do you want to talk about it? The question was awkward, but the fact that she’d asked it at all made him smile.
Not…yet. There were too many thoughts for him to articulate any of them. I’m going to shower, and then I’ll come to the bridge. Let’s see if we can capture this ship before they get wherever they’re going.
Jotuna D is my guess, Shinigami said. And I’m doing what I can. She looked at him for another moment, then turned and walked toward the Pod-doc that had been formulated to fix her cybernetic skin.
Barnabas watched her go, then went to his quarters.
Trust me, Shinigami had said. He could do that. He had to.
She was right. Something had hooked deep into him with this case. Without his team, he would be lost.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Barnabas?” Shinigami’s voice echoed around the room as Barnabas finished buttoning his shirt.
He paused. “Yes?” His heart was suddenly beating very quickly.
“We’re pursuing, and not far out from Jotuna D. I have not been able to disrupt any of their systems so that we could land. I’m worried that if we try to force it, they will simply kill Jeltor.” She paused, and he could sense her choosing her words carefully. “My recommendation would be to keep following the ship without engaging.”
She placed faint stress on the word recommendation, and he sensed that she was looking for his input. Shinigami, it seemed, did not enjoy command.
Barnabas smiled slightly before remembering that she could probably see him. “I think your reasoning is sound,” he said. “I’m willing to go with your judgm
ent on this. I trust you.”
She made a sound like a spoon in a garbage disposal, leaving Barnabas wondering what exactly she’d meant to convey. Privately, he thought that she might be a little nervous about running a mission.
Since they had begun working together, she had definitely changed—more than he had realized, in fact.
“We’ll be in range of the moon in forty-five minutes,” Shinigami told him, apparently having recovered her composure. “I’ll know at that point if they’re going to be landing there. I’ll tell you if anything happens before then.”
“Thank you.”
Barnabas studied himself in the mirror for a moment before combing his hair carefully. He selected a tie, knotted it, and pulled on a vest. This was a useless gesture, as he might need to change into armor again in short order, but putting on clean, neat clothes made him feel like himself.
He had not felt like himself for some time now.
He worked hard to think of nothing as he cleaned his armor and his weapons, taking care not to get any grease or blood on his clothing. He laid everything out once more when he was finished, looked at it in satisfaction, and washed his hands thoroughly. After the time spent doing these tasks, he felt calmer.
“You should come to the bridge,” Shinigami said suddenly.
His calm vanished. Shinigami did not tend to speak like that unless there was a good reason. Barnabas left his armor laid out and headed for the bridge at a brisk walk, trying to retain a sense of process and decorum. Halfway there, he broke into a run and arrived at the same time as Gar and Tafa.
Barnabas stepped back to allow them onto the bridge first. Discipline, he believed, was made of small moments like this, forcing himself to stillness when he wanted to rush to his seat—as if it would help.
That was when the ship banked sharply. Alarms went off and Tafa gave a worried cry, sliding into her seat and bringing up all of her panels. Gar, who had gripped his chair to keep from falling, threw a hand out to steady Barnabas, and in her seat, Shinigami fixed her eyes on the screen with grim determination.