by Tanya Huff
“The military can’t fire on civilians.” Craig tipped Promise starboard to avoid a stray shot.
“The government can’t order . . .” Yahsamus began.
“Carveg isn’t Morris,” Elisk said flatly.
Tylen waved a hand for attention. “But they’re pirates!”
“Still civilians,” Alamber told her. “The Mu’tuv can defend themselves, but unless the pirates attack the Berganitan, Captain Carveg can’t . . .”
The screen they’d used to follow the battle whited out. Scanners shut down. The window polarized.
“Fuk,” Zhou breathed.
“Well put,” Werst growled. “What the hell kind of weapon was on that boat?” Fingers and toes worked the board. “Rear scanner is back. Near total destruction of the Mu’tuv ship, no survivors. And one less pirate. Only six heading after us.”
“That’s comforting.” Craig dropped Promise straight down, tipped her so her narrower profile pointed toward the pirates, and sped toward Big Yellow. “I should’ve left the lot of you back on the Berganitan.”
“Where General Morris would’ve had the lot of us tossed in the brig before he sent the Mu’tuv after the Promise.” Craig couldn’t turn to see Yahsamus’ expression, but she didn’t sound impressed. It was almost Torin’s why am I explaining this again tone. “We’re a team. We stay together.”
“Morris couldn’t hold you. Captain Carveg . . .”
“Captain Carveg has no say on the Marine packets.”
“At least you’d be alive. If I get you killed . . .” He twisted Promise thirty degrees to port on the y-axis. “. . . Torin’s going to have plenty to say.”
“And if you get killed, we might as well be dead with you. Gunny told us to take care of you.”
“I’m not . . .” The Promise flipped up on one end, the AG field catching up a moment later. “. . . five.”
“And I’m not fukking dying,” Werst snarled. “Drop. Now.”
The shot came close enough, the scanners went out for the longest three count Craig had ever made.
“Zhou!” Elisk snapped. “Harness, now! I don’t care how light you are on your feet, if the AG goes, you’re a missile weapon in here.”
Craig heard Zhou drop into the last empty seat and say, “You’re still standing.”
“We’re a seat short, and I’ve got twice as many ways to . . .”
“Number eight array has been hit!” Werst bellowed.
“. . . hold on.” The duct tape on the second seat buckled under Elisk’s grip.
“Alamber!” Two pirates had moved out to port, Craig began calculating angles. “Split arrays seven and nine to cover eight.”
“On it.”
“Five to one now. That’s either crap shooting or one of the pirates settled a personal score.”
“Who cares? Our odds are looking better.”
With one of their own having proven that there was no honor among thieves, the five remaining pirates hung in space, bow to bow. They weren’t shooting, so Craig had to assume they were talking. If Alamber hadn’t been needed on the scanners, he could’ve cracked into their signal. Had Ressk been with them . . . but he wasn’t. As maneuvering to avoid sudden death had opened up distance between Promise and Big Yellow, Craig concentrated on regaining lost ground. “Sorry about the seating,” he said, as brain and hands took over flying without conscious input. U’yun had seven on the team to Alpha’s six and the extra body had gone with him. “Figured a few of you would plant ass elsewhere. There’s crash harnesses in the galley.”
Orange appeared to have melded with the deck. With fewer potential disasters to concentrate on, Craig would’ve been stroppy about that.
“And miss the commentary?” Elisk snorted. “Not likely.”
“Hey, Orange! Now we’re so close, if the pirates catch up, will Big Yellow interfere in the fight?” Zhou sounded excited by the prospect. “They’ve got proof the pirates have dangerous weaponry.”
“The pirates destroyed the significantly more dangerous weapon heading toward the majority and presently are attacking the vessel carrying the differing opinion to the majority.”
“So that’s a no?”
“Should the pirates destroy this vessel,” Orange continued, “the majority will be annoyed at the delay in our delivery.”
“Still not sure that’s a no.”
“Can the pirates destroy you?” Craig asked as they broke the twenty-kilometer mark.
Orange leaned forward, appearing in Craig’s peripheral vision, stretching their upper body until they leaned over the board. “Using the weapons this vessel has identified, no.” They snapped back to their default humanoid norm. “If this vessel is destroyed, we will become the data sheet again, and allow the majority to retrieve us from vacuum. Should the pirates retrieve us first, then the majority will do what it must. It will not matter to you, however, as you will all be dead.”
“Yeah, got that. Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”
“Incoming missiles!” Alamber threw the information on his slate onto the screen over the board.
“Who the fuk thought selling pirates missiles was a good idea?” Yahsamus muttered.
He’d dropped Promise twice already, so Craig hit the belly jets and went straight up. Up, relative to where the AG currently defined down.
“You blew up pirates the last time they came after you.” Tylen swallowed heavily, and Craig wondered how anyone who’d been Navy could get motion sick.
“We blew up a Marine armory,” he told her. “The armory blew the ship. And Binti was around to take the shot.”
“Hey, also a sniper here,” Zhou protested. “I could take the shot.”
“With what?” Werst growled.
“Fine,” Craig hit the front burners and snapped back two hundred meters. “We get back to Berbar, we’ll go into refit for weapons. Happy?”
“Just saying,” Werst muttered, “that I’d like to shoot back.”
“If you had weapons, you would not be able to deliver us to the majority.”
“Yeah, because that situation’s going to keep coming up.” Werst fought to hold the stabilizers in the green, both feet on the board. “Two pirates coming around . . .”
“Looks like they’ve started working together.” Elisk leaned in. Werst snapped his teeth and Elisk leaned back again. “Must’ve blown up the dissenter.”
“The surveillance drones on the far side of Big Yellow have been taken out.”
“Happened the last time, too,” Craig told Alamber swinging his stern to port.
“Last time they were hiding a Primacy ship,” Werst reminded him. “Wonder what’s going on back there this time.”
“Can we worry about the pirates?” Elisk tightened his grip as another missile blew short of the hull.
“We can defo worry about the pirates; they’re trying to get between us and Big Yellow.” Craig stroked up engine details, and fed in a little more power. The deck vibrated faster.
“I could go take a look at your engine,” Yahsamus began.
“No.”
“Because you blowing us up is better?”
“I said . . . Fuk me!” The windshield polarized again. “What the hell was that?”
“And where the fuk did it come from?” Werst bent over the board, jerked back, and turned to Craig, nostril ridges closed. “Three separate energy readings, two ships Promise can’t identify and one that spent seventeen seconds flickering in and out of Susumi.”
“And we have a weapon designer with no sense of self-preservation,” Yahsamus observed. “There was talk about integrating parts of a Susumi drive into a new weapon,” she explained to the expectant silence, “but they couldn’t get it stabilized enough to use safely.”
“And Parliament never approves new weapons,” Werst muttere
d.
“That, too.”
The window depolarized. Big Yellow reappeared, filling the upper two thirds of the view. In the lower third . . .
Craig leaned forward. “Is that what it looks like?”
“Does it look like a piece of Big Yellow free floating just under the airlock protrusion?” Alamber asked. “Because that’s what the scanners are picking up.”
* * *
“Cease fire!”
Anthony pushed past Belcerio, feeling he had to be close enough to the communications board for the idiots in the Liberty to realize how angry he was. “I told you to hang back! I don’t want us involved in this until it becomes necessary.”
“The plastic kept us at war for centuries, and we can hurt them! We need to make them pay!”
It seemed that some of the ex-military who made up the majority numbers of Humans First weren’t exactly stable. “I need you to fall back as you were ordered!”
“The weapon works!”
Perched on a jump seat, Dr. Banard blew his nose and muttered a damp, “Huzzah.”
Clutching the edge of the board so tightly his fingers turned white, Anthony wrapped his voice in ice and iron. “I have given you your coordinates. Get there. Stay there.”
“Liberty is moving to their assigned coordinates, Commander.”
The person at Freedom’s com board had spiky white hair. He didn’t know her name, had no idea of who she was. Apparently, she had no idea of who he was or she’d have reported to him, not Belcerio. He concentrated on breathing and watched the piece of Big Yellow drift away. So close. He was so close.
“At least the plastic will recognize we have a strong position to negotiate from.” Standing in the center of the control room, Belcerio tucked his hands behind his back, right hand in his left. “Once we have the data sheet, we’ll hold all the cards.”
“I sent out six pirate ships. They had one job.” Anthony exhaled. Calmly. Inhaled. Calmly. “Is the Justice ship dead in space? No. And the overly enthusiastic captain of the Liberty has poked Big Yellow with a sharp stick, moving up any incipient confrontation. I provided a plan that was elegant in its simplicity. Stop the Wardens, get the data sheet, negotiate a glorious Human future with Big Yellow.” He smoothed a crease from the front of his jacket. “I wonder why there seems to be so much trouble actualizing it.”
“To be fair, Per Marteau, the Wardens’ pilot is good. Better than any of the pirates.”
“I don’t see why it matters when they’re outnumbered,” Anthony replied through clenched teeth.
It was, he admitted, good to know that Banard’s weapon worked. They’d been fortunate that the Wardens and those idiot pirates had blocked visuals of Liberty’s shot. If the captain of the Berganitan were to suddenly become aware of a weapon able to blow a piece from the plastic, would the battlecruiser join the dance? That, he acknowledged, would definitely complicate the situation.
* * *
“Humans First have a weapon that’ll damage Big Yellow. That’s . . .” Werst stopped looking for a word that would sum up their position. “That’s fukked.”
“So much for having Orange switch back to data sheet and fall out the airlock while we get rid of the pirates on our ass.” They wanted Orange in Big Yellow, not in pieces. Unresponsive pieces from the looks of the debris. Craig knew debris.
“If it’s the same sort of weapon General Morris came up with, at least we know it’s very explosive,” Yahsamus said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, that’s comforting.”
“Craig!” Alamber’s voice cracked. “Big Yellow’s shifting!”
Almost too fast to follow, one moment a big yellow ship hung in space, the next the big gray head. At least Craig assumed it was the same head. At their current angle, he couldn’t actually see features.
“I’ve got three ships, previously blocked by Big Yellow. One of them’s definitely Humans First, we’ve gone after it before, so let’s assume they all are. Dangerous levels of residual radiation say the one on the far left took the . . . ablin gon savit.” The Taykan profanity almost sounded like prayer.
The head opened its mouth, crossed a hundred kilometers in an instant, and swallowed the ship on the far left whole.
When it opened its mouth again, pieces drifted out. Most of the pieces were small enough they were only visible to the scanners.
* * *
“Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” The pale-skinned young man stared up at the view screen, eyes wide, and took a deep breath. Anthony hoped that meant he was finally going to shut up, but no such luck. “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.”
“Janssen!” Belcerio snapped out the name, got the young man’s attention, and gentled his voice. “That’s enough.”
“But, sir, the plastic just ate the Liberty! The ship is destroyed! The crew is dead!”
“Because they didn’t do as they were told.” Anthony spread his hands as Janssen jerked around to face him. Given that Janssen’s account of the last few minutes was entirely accurate, he was impressed his hands weren’t shaking. “I gave them coordinates.” He channeled his terror into anger. “I told them to wait there for my signal. They didn’t, they’re dead, and their stupidity has lost us a unique weapon.”
“Big Yellow ate your unique weapon!” Janssen’s chest heaved. “It ate it and took no damage! None!”
“Turns out the weapon only works if it’s fired,” Dr. Banard pointed out dryly. “Being chewed into bite-sized pieces wasn’t part of the design specs.”
“Maybe it should’ve been!”
Dr. Banard blew his nose and shrugged. “Can’t think of everything.”
“You’re insane!”
Anthony didn’t disagree, but that wasn’t the point under discussion. The rest of the command crew were watching, and he had to regain control before they surrendered to fear. They weren’t throwing away their best chance for Humanity because the plastic had tapped into a hindbrain reaction. If he wasn’t surrendering to the urge to pull the covers over his head, neither was anyone else. “We need the leverage the data sheet will provide unless we want to be the next entree on Big Yellow’s menu.”
“Fuk that! We need to get the fuk out of here.”
“Sir.”
Belcerio turned toward an older woman with purple hair and skin so dark the control room lighting threw matching purple highlights on the upper curve of her cheeks. “Omondi?”
“There’s no way we can outrun that thing.” She threw a chart of comparative speeds into the air over her board. “It covered over a hundred kilometers in seconds. If we tried to jump, it’d be on us before the Susumi engines came on line.”
“Then we need to destroy it.”
“No.” When Belcerio pinned him with a glare, Anthony repeated himself, giving the word enough weight to crush objections. “I say, no. If we destroy the plastic, we’re heroes for a moment.” He swept a gaze around the compartment, meeting each set of eyes before moving on. “I’m not saying we can’t build on that, improve Humanity’s place in the Confederation. But . . .” No one leaned into the pause, but no one protested either, so he counted it a win. “. . . if the data sheet is destroyed before we convince the plastic to work with us, or before we know if the data sheet allows us to control it, then we’ve thrown away our best chance. I thought we were here to reclaim the independence, the glory Humanity had ripped away when we joined the Confederation? I’m here to get that back, I thought you were as well. The universe was ours and it will be again. You’re Human! Act like it! We are Humans First, and we are not backing down.”
Belcerio stared at him, eyes alight, but then Belcerio had been a true believer from the start.
“It ate one of our ships!” Janssen’s voice had begun to fray around the edges. “How do we defeat that?”
How unfortunate Belcerio wasn’t the only one who needed convincing.
&
nbsp; Anthony sighed and wondered why it always devolved onto him. He was supposed to work behind the scenes, emerge for their triumph, organize the future. “We defeat it with Human ingenuity. The Liberty proved Dr. Banard’s weapon works. Proved Humans have weapons that can destroy the plastic. Why isn’t it running from us? Because it needs the data sheet. We can use that. Omondi, you were Navy, wouldn’t you like to make it pay? For all the ships? For the crews?”
“Yes.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced, but other heads nodded. Even Janssen managed a weak agreement.
“I say we stick to the plan. I say we don’t panic, we teach the plastic about Human domination!”
He spread his hands as a ragged cheer arose. He’d had no idea rhetoric would still be necessary at this stage. He’d definitely had Richard Varga killed too soon.
“It ate a ship,” Dr. Banard said, directly behind him. “You think you can dominate it?”
“If I can’t, I can destroy it. We can build our way up from there.” It would take longer, but he always had a backup plan. “Meanwhile, it seems if I want anything done right, I have to do it myself.”
* * *
Big Yellow returned to its original coordinates and floated in space like it hadn’t just become a giant head and eaten a ship. Sweat running down his sides under his tunic, Craig had serious second thoughts about getting closer. He could attach Orange to one of the grappling cables and let it play out until they were snagged by the majority. He just had to get them inside. He didn’t have to escort them all the way in.
“Craig!” Even without turning, Craig knew Alamber’s hair had flattened. “I’ve got a Susumi point opening dangerously close.”
The coordinates put it at one hundred and sixty-seven degrees, between the Berganitan and Big Yellow, seven hundred and fifty-two kilometers out. The amount of Susumi radiation that hit the Promise would depend on the size of the emerging ship, but they would be hit.
“Assholes,” Werst grunted. “Guess I’m having the old leaves and twig irradiated again.”