by A. R. Knight
Crawling the ship would take time. Something Lamya might be used to, in her squad’s standard role securing a front line and holding it for days, for weeks. The idea of sitting in this comm center had Aurora twitching. She belonged in the action, not holding an objective. Especially after she’d achieved what Aurora needed.
“It sounds like you have it under control,” Aurora said. “Deepak said to bring the agents to bay C-17? I’ll head that way. If Renard’s there, I’d like to ask him a few questions. Maybe fill him with a few holes.”
“Aurora, I’m telling you to stay here.”
“Lamya, don’t know if you remember this, but I don’t work for DefenseCorp anymore.” Aurora turned, started for the comm center’s doors. Lamya could shoot her in the back, could try to stop her, but Aurora had to bet Lamya wouldn’t go that far. Had to bet that the mutual crisis mattered more than keeping Aurora here. “You ought to try leaving sometime. Very freeing.”
In the windowed reflection as she left, Aurora caught Lamya’s burning glare, but the squad commander didn’t attempt anything else. A squaddie took advantage, went up to Lamya and started asking questions, and Aurora found her way back to the concourse unmolested.
The walk back to the docking bays—Aurora looked for Rovo, but the rookie must have taken a different route—went slow and fast. More squads poured around the ship, moving in groups as they cleared rooms for suspected agents. Aurora didn’t hear any firefights as she passed by the Quartermaster, no calls for back-up or alarms raised about an ambush.
Maybe the agents had given up, had realized their smaller numbers meant nothing against the more numerous, better armed and armored squaddies.
Aurora could hope.
The Sever commander caught up with Lamya’s escort detachment as they neared bay C-17. The C-level bays were designed for larger troop transports, the ones meant for full-scale invasions. The big ships could hold a thousand or so frontline soldiers, sacrificing comfort for protection and space. They resembled long, flat arrowheads, coated with crimson-black solar paint. Aurora had never dropped in one of the things—Sever belonged in smaller, targeted craft—but she’d heard from others that the experience felt like purgatory: by the end, you tended to wind up in hell.
The first sign things might not be as clean as Deepak’s order warranted came via the concourse itself. Those bot-cleaned walls picked up interesting smudges as Aurora caught up with Lamya’s advancing squad. Dark burns and pink-red sprays said combat took place here, and the Nautilus’s strict cleaning regiment echoed that combat had happened recently.
Which would explain the squad’s creeping movement. The agent prisoners stayed in the center, disarmed and stun-cuffed, but otherwise walking like expectant victims rather than humbled criminals. At the front, a squad trio kept their rifles raised as they approached bay C-17, listening for sounds beyond the bots whirring, the Nautilus’s continuous churn. No overhead announcements peppered the quiet, bringing an unsteady aura to the whole array.
Aurora could’ve been in a dream, a nightmare.
Instead, she felt her rifle’s solid grip as she came up behind and then joined the front ranks approaching the bay door. Unlike the comm center, no windows graced the walls around the bays, a feature designed more for protection against accidental vacuum leaks than anything else.
Made for killer ambushes, though.
“Assume we’re not on the winning side,” Aurora said when she took her place at the front. “Anything could happen, and it’s not likely to be nice.”
“There should be more of us here,” the squad’s provisional leader agreed. “I’m not getting anything over our local band.”
Not good news, that.
“Then here’s what we do,” Aurora replied. “Split your crew. The back half take the prisoners, stash them in one of these closets and keep guard. The rest of us scout ahead.”
“Split my force in half?” The leader held up a hand, halted the advance as the C-17 door, wide and closed and free from any living person, sat a few meters ahead. “Why would I do that?”
“Because if things turn dark, having hostages could be important,” Aurora replied. “And the last thing you need is to watch prisoners in the middle of a firefight.”
The man, a young one without enough scars to show much mission experience, threw a suspicious glower Aurora’s way. She recognized the look, someone who’d found himself with a taste of battlefield power and wanting to keep it.
“You want to know why you should listen to me?” Aurora said. “Because I’m the one that’s going to get you out of this alive. Just like I’ve done with my squad for years.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“And I don’t care,” Aurora said. “Do it. Or I’ll have Lamya replace you with someone smarter.”
Diplomacy required time, required tact, and they didn’t have much of the former, and Aurora never had any of the latter.
Lamya’s little leader decided not to press Aurora’s experience. He put her suggestions into practice, leaving five squaddies, himself included, surrounding the bay door while the others nudged the captured agents into a nearby supply room.
“Triggers ready,” Aurora said, taking up her position at the door’s right end, one squaddie behind her. Three on the other end. “Whatever we see in there, it’s not likely to be friendly. Don’t play nice.”
Aurora caught what eyes she could. Not as polished, as hardened as Sever, but ready. These were still professionals, and Lamya’s squad saw enough gritty action to prep them for the other side of this door. At her nod, the squad leader, her opposite, tapped his wristlet on C-17’s scanner.
The door whisked down in a second, exposing the big transport and everything around it. The bay should’ve been clean, should’ve had its battery packs, potential provisions, gear and maintenance bots clustered around the sides. A clean blue-black metal floor should’ve greeted Aurora and the squad.
Should have. Didn’t.
The materials splayed across the bay, stacked and strewn on each other in makeshift barriers. The transport, behind them, had its big ramps lowered and ready for boarding, the ship’s yellow running lights mingling with the bay’s bright white. Those lights flared past the barrier to light on bodies, so many bodies, mixing on the bay floor. Squaddies, yes, but the crimson black belonging to agents too. Laser scoring marred the floor, the bay walls and ceiling, and even the transport behind. Several bodies smoked still, the recent violence leaving its mark.
Aurora had to hold back a cough. The man behind her couldn’t. The Nautilus kept its filters running hard, but they couldn’t compete with burnt skin’s raw, gut-twisting scent. The infernal char smell flooded the hallway, forcing Aurora to hold her breath as she peered around the doorway and hunted for enemies.
None showed. Not even behind the barricades, where Aurora would’ve expected any defiant force to be waiting. Maybe they’d made a run for the transport, but then why were the ramps down?
“Stay close, stay cautious,” Aurora said. “Two up, two down.”
Aurora and the squad leader peeled around the edge while the squaddies behind both took up positions at the doorway, rifles ready and covering. Aurora went around the doorway and snapped a look hard right, hunting for anyone waiting just inside. An empty wall greeted her, though the wall itself had seen better days. Like everything else in the damn bay, it bore battle scars up and down its surface.
What didn’t make sense was that this looked like an engagement. An actual battlefield, when it should’ve been a rounded up struggle between captured agents and squaddies. Aurora could see a few agents making a surprise attack in here, hoping to free their captive friends, but this spoke of a traditional conflict. And the bodies littered where they were? It looked like the squaddies had come into an entrenched ambush.
Keeping her rifle up and ready, Aurora turned back to the barricade. Snuck a glance at the squad leader, whose side proved similarly empty. Together, with synced nods,
they advanced towards the barricade itself. The jumbled objects provided a motley line, maybe a little over a meter high at its tallest point. Behind it, the transport ramps gleamed empty, but the big ship’s engines hummed a low whine.
Powering up and getting ready to leave. Not a good sign.
Choking in some air, blinking away stinging tears from the smell, Aurora approached the barricade. As she came close, her shoes scuffing along the floor as she stepped over the bodies, Aurora did a quick sidestep, and lunged for the barricade itself. Tried to throw off expectations.
Though her own died when she saw over the edge, saw what waited for them.
Agents, laying almost head to toe, with rifles and pistols held over their chests. Eyes open, looking at Aurora. She hadn’t seen any because the bastards had been hugging the ground, and not in a way to get any good shots off. The way they were now, Aurora could gun half of them down before they—
The squad leader shouted, and not the triumphant gloat of catching an enemy compromised and ready to destroy. Aurora, finger slipping to the trigger as the agents started to move, took her eyes to the squad leader and saw him fly back from the barricade. With his second in the air, Aurora saw three bright flashes come from nowhere, blitzing out and striking the squad leader before he hit the ground, where the man didn’t move.
There were times to fight and times to run. Aurora counted herself as brave, even foolhardy.
But now? With enemies coming up behind her and some invisible thing in the bay with them?
Aurora ran back towards the door, holding her rifle behind her, finger pressing the trigger and scattering bolts at the barricade. Not trying to hit anyone, anything.
Just buying herself another second to live.
Twenty-Seven
Never Stop
Sai didn’t pull the triggers expecting to live. Any bomber understood you don’t stay near the explosion if you want to be there afterward. The Prisa’s prior owners, though, had invested a lot in their ship. Those plates surrounding the turret were thick, the glass coating the windshield had been reinforced.
When the turret triggered its overcharged shot, draining all the energy Sai could pull, the nozzles barely focused all that power into a bolt. Really, from Sai’s view, it’d been more like a flood. A great wide burning power swath, waving from the Prisa and immolating the dagger fighter in much the same way a fly might vanish in a rifle’s laser.
‘Course, Sai had to infer all that from the shrapnel rain cascading around his little bungalow. The pet name, what he’d called his family’s house, came in the dim aftermath, his ears buzzing, his nerves on fire, and his body reigniting burns received on Wexer that hadn’t had time to heal. The Prisa’d taken damage, and that damage made the ship’s left prong a cracked mess. Lockers and vents had burst, and some air recycler spattered and rattled.
All the lights died after Sai pulled the trigger, leaving him sitting in the turret’s chair bathed in what starlight he could find. The intercoms did nothing, and the Prisa coasted on, Sai wondering if he might be the only person left alive. Not that he could do much with it.
The blast fried the turret controls, sent its heat cascading through the sticks and into Sai’s space. The chair melted to his clothes, the grips sealed to Sai’s hands. For long moments Sai sat there, wondering how he still lived, wondering when he ought to let go. Sai watched the Nautilus slide away, its bulk passing from his viewport, with no rescue coming.
So his bungalow, a small spot in a bigger ship, isolated and comfortable—once Sai grew used to the pain, not all that hard, seeing as a spot in Sever meant getting real familiar with hurting—began to seem a fitting coffin. Go out with a beautiful stellar view, safe in the knowledge that he’d fallen trying to save his squad member.
Die fighting, a vision rooted in the heroic tales his own parents had told his childhood self, cultivated by the warriors Sai had served with in DefenseCorp. Not, perhaps, with his katana, but Sai could take this finale.
Then the damn Prisa turned. Flipped on its head and accelerated, cutting the Nautilus and its distance. The big cruiser wasn’t going to escape so easily, not from a ship no longer dead.
“Eponi,” Sai said, his usual tenor a crusty gravel with a throat that’d come too close to inhaling fire. “You amazing . . . ”
The words broke off in a coughing fit, a rise brought about by lungs, by a body compelled to action by a life’s equation no longer resulting to zero. The bomb had gone off, but the demolitionist had a chance to survive.
But to survive, Sai would have to get out of this chair. Something ought to have been easy in zero gravity, easy in normal gravity and, hell, easy in the higher gravity reserved for big, dense planets proved itself a difficult proposition. For one, Sai’s hands were still locked onto the turret’s aiming stick, thanks to his gloves, now melted in place.
A tug with his fingers produced nothing more than a sticky sensation. No progress. Sai’s palms did no better. There were animals that, when trapped, would gnaw off limbs to free themselves, and Sai looked down and wondered. He’d have to bite off both wrists, and both legs, a disgusting and suicidal idea.
Which left one option.
Leaning forward, Sai went for his left hand first. The gloves, meant to help keep a grip on something like the turret or a rifle’s stock, slipped on tight and molded to his hands. They weren’t designed to resist scratches, bites, and tugs. Like a dog, Sai used his teeth to snatch the thin fabric, black stuff that tasted like overcooked gelatin, and tear it off. One strand at a time until the only bits left were the pieces linking his fingers to the flight stick.
Though Sai’s throat felt like it’d taken a long vacation to a desert, he managed to squelch up enough saliva to throw some spit on the stuck fingers. The liquid did enough, working to grease the melted strands, to eat at the ties to Sai’s skin, so that, with another tug, Sai peeled off his left hand, leaving a few skin strands sticking to the glove.
Another burn to salve. Pretty soon Sai would just be that, all burns, instead of a body.
With one hand free, Sai plied his right one finger at a time. While he worked at it, Sai continued to hear sounds echo through the Prisa. Eponi rumbling, putting things back together. Maybe even trying to get to him.
The Nautilus, out front, slipped further away.
Once he had his right hand free, with the gradual effort sparing those fingers and palm as much pain as Sai’s left, the dire situation slid towards hope. The two of them were going to survive this. They’d find a way, even if the Nautilus left them behind.
Sai’s legs proved the easiest. With both hands, and his pant’s thicker material, Sai ripped his legs free, leaving himself wearing the first, and possibly only, pair of space shorts in existence. The Prisa kept things cool—heating things up in vacuum took energy, and Eponi surely wouldn’t spare any for creature comforts—so goosebumps riddled Sai’s exposed skin.
But damn if he wasn’t free from the chair. Floating never felt so good.
It felt even better when Sai noticed a new blip flying away from the Nautilus. The small ship’s lights flared their way, splitting into rainbows as they hit the shrapnel cracks in Sai’s bungalow glass. Someone coming to pick them up.
Sai pulled himself around and kicked back down the crowded prong, brushing aside debris as he went for the connecting door. A circular portal ready to seal off the prong to keep out a vacuum leak, the Prisa had done the safe thing and slammed its red-tinted doors down with the power surge. Without energy, and with minimal light, Sai looked at the thing and tried to figure out a good way to open it.
Easier to do that with two minds instead of one, so Sai pounded on the door. The hollow booms echoed around the ship, and after a minute, several more booms came back from the other side.
“Can’t hear me through there, can you?” Sai asked, then felt stupid.
The door had been designed to prevent vacuum leak. No way it’d let voices through. Eponi’s non-answer confirmed the assessm
ent, so Sai knocked again.
This time Eponi didn’t reply. Sai waited, then looked back down the prong to watch the oncoming ship draw closer. The silhouette looked familiar now, silver-gray streaking in towards them. A DefenseCorp drop shuttle. Whether those inside were friendlies, who knew.
A bright ping drew Sai’s eyes back to the door. Little lights sprung up around it, lime green and cheery. Following the clear evidence, Sai tapped the open button and the door followed his command, whooshing open to reveal the Prisa’s central chamber and Eponi’s head as she bounced up the stairs.
“Hey,” Sai managed, before Eponi kicked her way at him and tackled the demolition man into a tight hug.
“We’re alive,” Eponi said, crushing her face into Sai’s shoulder. “Can you believe that?”
“Not really,” Sai replied, “I thought I’d be dead when I fired that shot.”
“Me too,” Eponi pulled back, eyes glittery, devious smile coming up. “Thought you’d gone and pulled a hero move.”
“I tried.”
“Yeah, you tried to leave me to die out here alone. Jerk.”
Sai tried a laugh at that, felt his body hurt in the attempt, and Eponi’s look shifted to concern. She lifted up his left hand, frowned. Took in his shorts, frowned deeper.
“It wasn’t easy getting out of there,” Sai said. “Think I can get some salve?”
“I’ll get the salve, you get some pants,” Eponi replied. “There’s a shuttle coming, and nobody wants to see what you’ve got going on right now.”
Sai found some new clothes in the crew quarters—the Prisa’s prior owners had plenty, and while Sai wouldn’t say he had no guilt over taking all their possessions, the continual risks to their lives kept him from dwelling on it—and salved himself up, joining Eponi with a ready katana when the drop shuttle docked. The Prisa didn’t have crap for working communications, so they had no idea whether their visitors were friends, enemies, or something in between.