by Amie Kaufman
And it’s not that she doesn’t take care of them, because she does. But she doesn’t like the cats, and they don’t like her, and she doesn’t pay attention to them. She doesn’t notice when Mākoko’s off her food or Totoa needs an extra walk.
Back at the very start of the occupation, he wrote a letter to his sister for transmission, reminding her about the dog’s vet appointment. Of course, the letter never got through. And who knows what his sister who doesn’t like cats has done with them by now, with her brother vanished into thin air.
There’s a cat that’s been hanging around the barracks for the last seven months. Small and black, somebody’s pet before the invasion. These days, it squeezes into little warm spaces to sleep, and the soldiers feed it, all pretending somebody else is doing it. And Christie lets them, carefully not noticing.
He put in a request three days ago to bring it with him when the troops evac. In his paperwork, he named it Waimarie.
Lucky.
Ezra Mason’s Chimeras scream the length of the geeball field once more, taking in the scene of his former high school glories, from a time when his greatest concern in life was getting up the courage to kiss Kady Grant on the walk home from the game.
“Hold that line!” Christie bellows, striding along behind the backs of his soldiers, somehow everywhere at once, shouting orders and putting the fear of God into his troops. The thought of Joran Karalis and his miner rebels might be scary, but Jake Christie in the flesh is ****ing terrifying.
His attention is mostly focused on the incoming rebel troops and deploying his pounders to counter them. Occasionally, he focuses on the Chimeras overhead. Tracking them, making calculations. And there, amid all that chaos, the shouting and firing and driving snow, he notices the soldiers’ mascot, the little black cat, picking her way through the mess of rubble a dozen feet away.
His attention is divided, splintered into too many pieces.
The Chimeras turn, wheel back for another pass. They’ve zeroed in on the BeiTech troops, protected, but also marked, by their bulky ATLAS armor. Christie should be yelling at the pounders around him to move.
I’ve watched this vid a dozen times and I can’t figure out what the hell he’s thinking. But instead of shouting a warning, he stoops to grab a rock and sends it skimming toward the cat. It clips her back leg. And with a yowl, she vanishes in a black streak, running for her life.
The Chimeras open up with their missiles.
And then First Lieutenant Jake Christie, Delta Company, 4th Platoon…is gone. There’s a crater where he and forty-seven other BeiTech pounders used to be, and a small black cat still running as far and as fast as she can, clear of the blast zone.
Lucky indeed.
Joran Karalis wants to get to his wife and daughter. It’s all he’s ever wanted.
He wanted it so badly that while Asha Grant and Rhys Lindstrom planted their bug to allow them to transmit to the Mao, instead of causing a diversion as was planned, he tried to find a route across town to the building where his family were being kept. He was the reason Grant and Lindstrom were caught. The reason Oshiro had to bail Lindstrom out, not knowing what she’d nearly stumbled upon.
Grant asked Bruno Way if he thought they could trust Joran.
They could. It turns out it was Bruno they couldn’t trust.
But Joran is still desperate, and he’s still fighting.
The rebels have cut off BeiTech’s access to the apartment blocks where their families are now. And the engineers—ever logical—know that pulling their husbands and wives, children and lovers and best beloveds, out into the middle of a war zone is just asking for them to be shot.
So they’re not only fighting for those apartment blocks.
They’re fighting for the entire colony.
And riding in the bus that used to carry him and his workmates to and from the mines in the morning and evening, on the strangest, bloodiest commute of his life, Karalis has made it to the geeball field.
Now he’s raising a ragged cheer as Ezra Mason and Nik Malikov put a crater right where a bunch of BeiTech pounders used to be.
And then he’s lowering his head to the sights of his gun again.
There are still plenty more of them to kill.
Lindstrom is leaning over, hands on knees, as Grant clambers down from the wreckage of the apartment building in her stolen BeiTech uniform. He has his head up, keeping watch. This footage was shot through his ATLAS cam, so it’s a little shaky.
“I never thought I’d say this,” he says, straightening to offer her his hand as she jumps down. “But I think we’re safer out of these uniforms than in them. There are too many rebels around, and the two of us won’t stand a chance if we get on the wrong end of them. They won’t stop long enough for us to tell them we’re friendly.”
She shakes her head, face half-hidden under the cap he stole for her, skin smeared with dirt. “She has to be somewhere.” It’s like she didn’t even hear him. “She has to be, she has to be.” There’s a rising note in her voice, and Lindstrom grabs for her hands.
“She is,” he promises. “We’ll find her.”
“I can’t do this again,” she whispers. “I have to be there this time.”
I can’t see his face as those words sink in, but the guy knows every part of her. He knew little Samaira Grant, Asha’s lost sister. He knew how she died. And why. And you can tell by the way his whole body stops moving, and the footage is so perfectly still that you’d swear the camera had frozen, that he gets it.
“Okay,” he says, his voice soft. Controlled, even. “Where else could she be? Where else is familiar to her? We have to assume we haven’t missed her, here or at the hospital. So if she needs somewhere that feels safe, where else do you know that she could go?”
“I don’t know where she’s been going,” Asha admits. “She sneaks out of the hospital sometimes, and I…” Her voice trails off, and suddenly both her hands smack against his breastplate, sending the footage wobbling, eliciting a grunt from him.
“Where?” he prompts, reaching up to release his helmet.
“She got herself this little toy gladiator,” Asha breathes. “It’s a mascot from one of the school geeball teams. I mean, she could have gotten it from someone’s house, but it looked so new. I think…I think she stole it from the gift shop.”
“At the geeball field?” Quiet horror in his voice.
“I think so,” she whispers.
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Okay, you’ve still got your hospital scrubs on under that uniform, right? Lemme get out of this armor. We’ll stealth it there. We’ll find her.”
He sheds his ATLAS, the camera falling facedown in the snow.
RADIO TRANSMISSION: TRANSPORT MAO—COMMAND CHANNEL 001
PARTICIPANTS:
Kady Grant, Systems Chief
Artificial Intelligence Defense Analytics Network
Ella Malikova, Mastah of Disastah
DATE: 09/05/75
TIMESTAMP: 10:02
GRANT, K: Ella, the rail guns are dropping offline. You still doing okay?
MALIKOVA, E: Um, nnnnot really, no.
MALIKOVA, E: Their deckers have ID’ed the incursion source and they’re counterattacking our network. They aren’t ****ing around anymore.
MALIKOVA, E: AIDAN, they’re cutting power to RG fire control manually.
AIDAN: I S-S-S-SEE THEM, LITTLE SPIDER.
MALIKOVA, E: Well, pick your end up! Fabulous as I am, I can’t fend off the whole ****ing commtech team solo!
AIDAN: PL-L-L-L-L-LEASEHOLDDDDDDDD.
MALIKOVA, E: What the **** do you mean, “please hold”?
MALIKOVA, E: DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING BETTER TO DO?
AIDAN: {WARNING: HOLD MUSIC FILE NOT PR
ESENT} [RETRY?YES/NO]
MALIKOVA, E: NO, GODDAMMIT.
GRANT, K: Ella, let me help.
MALIKOVA, E:****ing piece of worthless…
MALIKOVA, E: Okay, K. If you run the labyrinth, I’ll script the killers.
GRANT, K: Already on it.
MALIKOVA, E: See if you can—
MALIKOVA, E: Whoa…
MALIKOVA, E: Hold the phone, where the**** is this drain coming from?
MALIKOVA, E: Processor speed just dropped to 17 percent?
GRANT, K: AIDAN, what are you doing?
AIDAN: [REF=TRANS.009∞18.∑corecomm001891-109020]
AIDAN: TRIAGE.P-9108Ð2K.X2[secfile:8971-9340Ð]console112]
AIDAN: < ERROR >
MALIKOVA, E: Oh ****…
MALIKOVA, E: Did it really decide to fall to pieces on us NOW?
MALIKOVA, E: ARE YOU ****ING KIDDING ME?
GRANT, K: AIDAN, report!
AIDAN: PURGESYS{09182Δ-091083}alt12[108038Ð01883.10931V1Π0381X]
AIDAN: EXEC0091.718723Xβ.Parse:10901832≥109038013
AIDAN: < ERROR >
AIDAN: FINDFILE[PERSONAÐA=Ω]Trans→AllÐ
AIDAN: EXECUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU_
MALIKOVA, E: Sweet blue ****ery, these ****ing deckers are all over us.
GRANT, K: Watch the interd—
MALIKOVA, E: I see them! But I don’t have the speed to keep them off the walls anymore.
GRANT, K: AIDAN?
AIDAN: …
MALIKOVA, E:****, they’re in our directories.
GRANT, K: AIDAN, can you hear me?
MALIKOVA, E: Kady, they’re cutting us out!
>> Attention, crew of the Mao.
>> Attention, this is Kady Grant.
>> We have lost control of Churchill’s computer systems. We’re closing to short range in case they get their missiles back online. They might think twice about using their nukes if they’re going to take themselves out with us. Brace for thrust.
>> We have enemy fighters incoming on our position. All hands, prepare for impact. All fire crews on standby. Equip your breathers and locate your nearest exit. In the event of a hull breach, proceed in orderly fashion to the closest intact level.
>> And if anyone out there is the praying sort, now’s the time.
>> Kady Grant, out.
Winifred McCall’s forces on the Magellan are outnumbered, but they were always going to be. This is their last desperate throw, after all. They charge forward anyway, rattling the table as best they can before the dice settle their future—or deny them one at all.
But though humans are trained to believe that stories should have happy endings—that the good win the day and the bad meet their downfall—there are a number of problems with that equation today.
The good are outmanned, outgunned, outclassed.
And many of the bad never asked to be here in the first place.
BeiTech troops pound down Magellan’s hallways in well-drilled unison, weapons ready, orders barked across secure channels. And somewhere in the middle of the labyrinth of the ship’s endless hallways, the two sides meet.
Each scrambles for the upper hand in tight hallways, taking aim from behind any cover they can find, and bullets fly and lives end and commands are screamed as order dissolves. There’s nothing noble, or dignified, or easy about this battle.
Sabaa White, a security section head from the Hypatia, who never thought she’d be handling anything more than the occasional rowdy research scientist, goes down as she rounds a corner. A bullet has pierced her suit, and her heart.
Her last act, though she will never know it, is to stumble backward into Bronwen Evans, Hypatia security officer (2nd Class)—once outwitted by Kady Grant as she stole Shuttle 49A to run for the Alexander—and drive her out of the path of the bullet that would’ve killed her. Evans presses back against the hallway wall, eyes wide, condensation forming inside her helmet as she breathes too fast.
Sam Ryan, Hypatia security officer (1st Class), teams up with UTA private Jack Cousins, and the two of them never take their eye off the ball. They bark orders to their small squad, advance up their assigned hallway to rendezvous with Winifred McCall.
Lindsey Cohen, a Kerenzan refugee, forgets her martial arts training as she rounds the corner to find herself face to face with a BeiTech soldier and simply punches him. She flashes her trademark grin as he drops like a sack of potatoes.
McCall has teamed up with Reichs and Roth, Garver and Tran, all four of them formerly of Heimdall, two of them formerly mutineers. Their differences are erased now by their black Mao envirosuits, and the five fight like they’ve been a unit all their lives.
They all fight, the Mao invaders. Some kill. Some die. But they all fight.
They take ground. But they don’t take enough.
And slowly, the tide begins to turn. With the element of surprise fading, the larger, better-trained, better-equipped BeiTech forces begin to muscle McCall’s forces back the way they came. The Mao’s soldiers don’t know the Magellan’s layout, and though they’ve guessed correctly where the bridge will be, they can’t break through.
BeiTech drives them off, erasing their advances, backing them toward the shuttle bay doors.
Which they cannot open again.
Not from this side. Not in the time they have. And even if they could, there’s nothing to help them on the other side.
No way out.
They are cornered. Corralled.
But even now, with no way out and no way forward, they fight. Maybe—maybe—they might still make it. Maybe some miracle might find them. Stranger things have happened since they began their journey together. Stranger things by far.
McCall is magnificent, laying down cover for her soldiers as they retreat, envirosuits now spattered with blood, throwing themselves into an alcove and narrowly escaping a haircut from the bullets following their path.
“This isn’t done!” McCall shouts, firing as a BeiTech soldier appears around the corner. “Garver, check the hallways to the right, find a new route!”
She’s forced to duck as a bullet cracks off the frame above her head, and when she looks up, Ben Garver’s pressed into a doorway opposite, staring at her.
A second stretches into two, three, into an hour, into forever.
Garver isn’t moving. He isn’t following orders.
Her lips part, as if to protest something she can’t believe is happening.
And then, his eyes never leaving her face, Garver raises his voice in a parade-ground bellow. “Cease fire! Everyone, cease fire!”
McCall’s voice is quick on his heels. “Belay that!”
“Hold your fire!” he shouts as the gunshots begin to peter out. “We surrender!”
Tran, one of the *******s who mutinied alongside Garver, is lowering his gun. And he’s not the only one. Others from the Heimdall crew—not all, but plenty—are lowering their weapons or raising their hands.
Taking their orders from Ben Garver, not Winifred McCall.
Through the glass faceplate of her suit, McCall’s expression is clearly visible. Every ounce of hate, of frustration, of fear and anger that she’s accumulated since the Alexander answered Kerenza’s call seven months before is writ on her features, her lips drawn back in a snarl. Every friend she’s lost, every sleepless night, everything it’s cost her to keep getting back up on her feet and fighting. It all boils over in this instant, and she glares at the man who’s just become the straw that will break her back. And as the first BeiTech troops round the corner, she lunges for Garver’s throat.
Reichs grabs her as the BeiTech troops take aim, wrestling to
keep her still.
“Captain, you’ll get us shot,” he hisses.
Around them, her troops are looking at the advancing BeiTech troops. Outmanned, outgunned, outclassed. And in a breath, the fight goes out of them. Evans lays down her gun. Ryan and Cousins. And then another. Another. Another.
“I’ll kill you, Garver,” McCall spits, her eyes never leaving him, elbowing Reichs in the stomach in her attempt to get free. “You ****ing traitor.”
The BeiTech troops fan out across the hallway as Roth and Reichs restrain their captain. You can see that a few of them can’t believe this is really happening. That they’re about to win a battle because the enemy started squabbling like children.
It’s a terrible way to lose a war, a terrible way to end.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Garver breaks eye contact, slowly sets his weapon on the floor. Beside him, Tran does the same, and the movement is echoed among the rest of the Mao forces, corralled like a herd of cattle up against the shuttle bay doors.
“Hold your fire,” Garver says to the BeiTech soldiers, raising his hands.
“You lying *******,” McCall spits. “Burn in hell.”
“Probably one day,” he agrees quietly. “But not today if I can help it.”
This footage was shot in the belly of the Mao.
It’s funny, in a completely not-funny kind of way. Before AIDAN killed two-thirds of the Mao’s population, you couldn’t walk three steps without bumping into someone’s business. People had been living in each other’s pockets for months. A few weeks back, I’d bet most of them would’ve traded almost anything for just five minutes alone.
Now families have entire rooms to themselves. There’s no one bedding down in corridors or sleeping four to a rack. But looking through the Mao’s intellicams, you can see that as the battle rages in the black outside, all the passengers are drifting back together.
Maybe they lived so close for so long that they don’t know how to be alone. Maybe it’s fear that makes them seek the comfort of a stranger’s company. Or maybe there are no strangers in here anymore. Crews of the Alexander and Hypatia, refugees from the Kerenza IV colony or Heimdall Station. Maybe after the millions of kilometers they’ve traveled, when they look at each other, they just see the crew of the Mao.