by J. N. Chaney
He dug through anything even resembling a pocket or pouch on Nathis’s sleek, leathery uniform, but found nothing. Shit. Well, so much for that.
Of course, half of Nathis had been pulled through the smashed port and now hung in space like a grotesque decoration affixed to the side of the ship.
“Okay,” Dash muttered, “this is going to suck.”
He grabbed Nathis’s legs and pulled. He might as well have been trying to pull apart a bulkhead, though. The air pressure against the body was probably hundreds of kilograms, far more than Dash could ever move on his own. Dash strained one more time, and another shudder vibrated the deck, ending a long, low groan of some structural component protesting under loads it had never been intended to bear.
“I recommend haste,” Sentinel said. “The Archetype is likely to survive the failure of this ship’s structural integrity, but you—"
“Are a squishy meat-bag. Yeah, I know.”
Dash stopped to gasp in some of the thinned air. This wasn’t going to work. Maybe he could remount the Archetype, move around to this port, and grab Nathis’s body with it.
Except the comm on the body’s wrist was still blinking, demanding attention. Once that battlecruiser saw the Archetype come to life and start moving around, he’d have much bigger problems than retrieving the Lens from Nathis’s body—if it was on him in the first place. Although, knowing what he did about Nathis, it was unlikely he’d leave it anywhere anyone else could grab it. Moreover, if he’d needed to evacuate in a hurry, he’d want to have it close at hand.
Dash saw a pocket on Nathis’s chest. He didn’t know, of course, if it held the Lens, but if Dash had had to put credits on it, that was the pocket he’d bet on. It was within easy reach, too. Except, of course, the remains of the view port prevented it. It might as well be on the other side of the gas giant.
“Dash, the Clan Shirna battlecruiser is under high acceleration, its trajectory in-system.”
“Yeah, the Prelate, or whatever he is, has run out of patience, I guess.” Dash scowled at the viewport. All that stood between him and where he was sure Nathis’s Lens was, was a few centimeters of transparent composite. He turned his scowl onto the wrist-comm. No doubt the impatience came from a lack of a response from Nathis. Maybe he could buy a little time to do something.
Dash tapped the comm, reopening the channel.
“—assume that you have been compromised. The device must not fall into the wrong hands. If you are receiving this, you will do everything in your power to protect it until our arrival.”
Dash cracked open his faceplate, wincing as his ears popped from a pressure drop—just enough to tell him that the atmosphere was still venting. But it also told him that his suit was retaining some pressure, so that was good.
“Can you make it so I reply in their language?”
“If you wish.”
Dash took a breath—a deep one, because it was the only way he took in much air at all—then unmuted this end of the channel.
“This is Nathis,” he said, trying to make his voice as close to the menacing growl he remembered as possible. Remarkably, though, his mouth and throat said something entirely different, shaping his voice into sounds and rhythms that were entirely alien to him. “I am here. I’m okay. Not compromised. I have things under control.”
A long paused followed, and Dash frowned.
Then he heard, “What is the status of that machine embedded in your hull?”
“Oh, that? Well, I’m proud to say that Clan Shirna is now the proud owners of a…” He was about to say Archetype, but Nathis probably wouldn’t know it by that name. “I’m calling it a titan, for now.”
“The one who had been piloting it…the human you named Sawyer, also called Dash…what is his status? The Prelate is anxious to interrogate him.”
Dash winced. Yeah, well, I’m not anxious for that at all, myself. “He is dead. I killed him.”
“The Prelate will not be pleased. He wants to know what Sawyer knew, and to whom he may have communicated it.”
“Oh. Well, um, sorry, but it was him or me, you know?”
Which is true, Dash thought, looking at Nathis’s freeze-dried corpse hanging halfway into space. Maybe not in the way I’m implying, but it is perfectly true.
“The Prelate will be informed. We will be in weapons range in just over ten minutes. We will be able to rendezvous with you in perhaps three times that. Maintain your current trajectory.”
“Oh, uh, sure.” A heavy tremor shook the ship, ending on another of the low, menacing groans, followed by the high-pitched squeal of something metallic ripping apart. “Look, we’ve taken a lot of damage here, I’ll get back to you.”
Dash shut down the channel.
He had ten minutes, or whatever the Clan Shirna equivalent of ten minutes was, and no matter what unit of time he was dealing with, it wasn’t much.
Better think fast, Dash. Between the Prelate and his ridiculously large ship rushing toward him, this one venting atmosphere and starting to fall apart--and he couldn’t forget the Slipwing, still likely in trouble in the gas giant’s depths somewhere.
Dash looked at the viewport. He could think of only one way to get at the Lens.
“Yeah,” he said, snapping his faceplate back into place, “this is going to truly suck.”
Dash checked the vac suit’s tether one last time. A flexible cable, it unspooled from an enclosed drum on the suit’s belly, wire-thin but exceedingly strong. It was intended to help anchor someone moving or working outside a ship, in zero-g, when they didn’t want to have to stay focused on not inadvertently sending themselves drifting off into space. Now, it was—Dash desperately hoped—going to prevent both him and Nathis from doing exactly that.
He looked back to where he’d looped it around Nathis’s waist. It was tight enough that there was no way the body should be able to escape its grip. So, as long as nothing went catastrophically wrong.
“Yeah, Dash, you just keep telling yourself that,” he muttered, grabbing the plasma pistol he’d retrieved from another body on the bridge. As he did, the ship groaned again, deep in her components; this time, Dash was sure he felt the whole bridge shift slightly. At the same time, a loud clatter rose from the compartment behind the bridge, the one into which he’d crashed the Archetype.
“The Clan Shirna crew is finally breaking through the damaged portion of their ship. They appear to be intent on reclaiming the bridge,” Sentinel said.
Dash checked the plasma pistol. It was set to its lowest possible yield. “Of course they are.”
“It may be a futile effort, of course, because this ship’s structural integrity is now on the brink of failure.”
He raised the pistol. “Of course it is, Sentinel.”
“And the battlecruiser is now within weapons range, and will arrive in less than ten minutes time.”
Dash aimed at the viewport, at a point above and to the right of Nathis’s head. “Of course it will.”
“All of which is to say—”
“That the whole situation is going to shit, I know,” Dash said, interrupting Sentinel. “And I’m about to make it even worse.”
A change in the blinking icon on Nathis’s communicator caught his attention. Once more on impulse, Dash tapped the channel open.
“You are not Nathis,” the voice—an oddly rich, and even somewhat soothing baritone—said. “You are Sawyer, the one called Dash.”
Dash considered ignoring it, or even trying to deny it and keep pretending to be Nathis anyway. But he didn’t. Instead, he popped his face plate and said, “Yeah, you got me. What’s up? This the Prelate? You offering to surrender?”
“I assume you killed Nathis.”
“And I assume you’re trying to buy time. So, let’s say goodbye now, so we can all—”
“I do not care about Nathis, or you, or your ship or companions. I only wish to have the Lens.”
Not the Archetype, too? But Dash didn’t say that. Maybe th
e Prelate just hadn’t noticed it yet. Although, how do you miss a giant mechanical ass and legs hanging out of the side of your underling’s ship?
“I will guarantee you safe passage off of Nathis’s ship,” the Prelate said, “in return for you handing over the Lens.”
“You know, I might be tempted by that if whoever was talking on here before you didn’t let that whole the Prelate wants to interrogate you thing slip out.”
“You have no hope of escape otherwise.”
Dash was about to snap something back, but was cut off by a sharp explosion from the compartment behind the bridge. A moment later, a figure appeared in the entrance, clad in a vac suit and holding a plasma pistol. An almost constant tremor shook the ship now, probably caused by the Shirna attempting to take back the bridge.
Idiots. Dash fired his own plasma pistol at the viewport.
Even on its lowest yield, the pistol pulsed out a dazzling flash and an earsplitting blast. The viewport shattered, the remnant fragment immediately blown into space by the explosive rush of atmosphere. Dash was yanked off his feet, sucked out of the gaping port, then slammed to a hard stop as the tether snapped taut. He crashed into Nathis’s body, also held by the tether. The Shirna who had just arrived weren’t quite so prepared, the rush of venting atmosphere whipping two of them past Dash and into space. A third grabbed Dash, catching his leg and twisting it painfully upward. Dash aimed the plasma pistol into the faceplate of the man’s helmet and, as his eyes flew wide at the sight of the muzzle filling his face, pulled the trigger. After another flash, but almost silent this time, the Shirna’s head simply vanished. The remaining atmosphere roared out of the empty port as rushing mist, then died away.
Then there was utter silence.
Except, that is, for the low-pressure alert in Dash’s suit. He had about two minutes of breathable air left.
Holding his breath, Dash reached for the pocket on Nathis’s suit, upon which he’d pegged his hopes. If it was empty, or just contained a package of sweets or something, then this was all a big and potentially lethal waste of time.
He got the pocket open, reached in, and extracted…a Lens.
“Hey,” Dash whispered, “something went right!”
A minute and three quarters of air.
Dash thought back to what Conover had told him about the Lens and how it seemed to work. Dash gritted his teeth and tapped at the Lens in a particular way.
Nothing happened.
Shit!
No…wait. A faint, bluish light glimmered in the heart of the alien crystal.
And then, in that strange way it just happened, Dash knew. He knew what he had to do with the Lens.
He started tapping at it. The movement made him and Nathis, who was still tethered to him, wobble about with tiny accelerations. By the time he was done, he had a minute and twenty-ish seconds of air.
Dash shoved the Lens back into Nathis’s pocket, opened the channel on his wrist-comm so it was transmitting, then pulled himself around Nathis, unlooping the tether around his waist. It brought him momentarily face-to-face with the Shirna, whose face was locked in a frozen rictus of what seemed to be both rage and agony.
Okay, that’s going to be haunting a few of my dreams later.
He got the final loop of tether off Nathis. Without hesitating, he shoved the body away from the open viewport as hard as he could. Nathis sailed off, drifting away in the wake of the other Shirna, who seemingly didn’t have suit thrusters, or just couldn’t use them to get themselves under control. The push sent Dash the other way, back toward the port. When he reached it, he had one minute of air left.
He grabbed the rim of port and pulled himself inside. The artificial gravity reasserted itself, pulling him to the floor. He reached down and punched the emergency release on the tether, releasing it from his suit. Then he clambered to his feet and rushed to the exit. He still had the plasma pistol and kept it ready in case any other Shirna tried to block him.
“Given what you have done, you now have very little time to return to the Archetype and get clear of this region of space,” Sentinel said.
“I know.”
“I would suggest making all possible haste—”
“I said I know! Nagging isn’t going to make it go any faster!”
Now that he had weight on his leg and was trying to move fast, Dash realized just how injured he was. The burn on his leg sent searing pain shooting from his foot to his hip with each step, so he limped on his other leg, which he’d somehow managed to twist at his knee, and now his left shoulder burned with a deep ache, yet another wound he hadn’t even realized he’d suffered.
He reached the exit from the bridge. Forty seconds of air left. But he stopped and peered around the hatch-frame. It would truly suck to get this far, only to bumble in front of some Clan Shirna guy with a readied plasma pistol. But there was no one in sight. Just the ruined compartment—much more ruined than he remembered it—and the head and shoulders of the Archetype, still smashed through the hull. Dash wasn’t sure if the emergency containment field was still operating, but it didn’t matter anyway, because the atmosphere had found a way through the shattered viewport. Besides, all that mattered was getting back aboard the Archetype, which Dash was going to do, even if he had to hobble to it.
He was still about ten paces away when the overburdened structural components of Nathis’s ship finally gave way. With a wrenching groan that Dash felt through the deck under his feet, the bow section of the ship tore free, tumbling in one direction, while the rest of the ship spun another…
And Dash sailed off in a third.
Dash said, “Wha…?” confused as to why the compartment suddenly dropped from under his feet, apparently leaving him just hanging there, watching as a vast expanse of hull-plating suddenly sprawled ahead of him, framed against the titanic, stripped wall of the gas giant. Then his brain caught up and he gasped.
SHIT!
As the stricken ship rotated away from him, Dash saw a protruding structural piece, a beam, sweeping past him. Instinct made him grab for it; he caught it and was immediate yanked into motion after it. Fortunately, the relative velocities of the beam and him weren’t too different. The shock of sudden acceleration slammed through his arms and shoulders, but he managed to hang on, and suddenly everything changed—the expansive remnant of Nathis’s ship wasn’t moving, but everything else was. The gas giant slid across the distant stern, and the starfield rotated, while behind him, the shattered bow pulled slowly away, trailing sparks and debris.
Less than twenty seconds of air.
Dash heaved himself along the girder, wincing and groaning at every ache and pain. As he did, he sucked in air, and blew it out, deliberately hyperventilating. He reached the twisted edge of the nearest hull plate, then pulled himself around it, back into the smashed remains of the compartment containing the Archetype, though now along what had been its ceiling.
Ten seconds.
Dash kept sucking air in, blowing it out, trying to pull as much oxygen into his bloodstream as he could. For a panicked instant, he couldn’t see the Archetype. Oh, fuck, was it ejected during the breakup of the ship? He opened his mouth to call out to it, but then realized he’d become disoriented and was looking in the wrong direction. There it was, about twenty or so meters away.
He considered launching himself straight at it, but some dangling debris blocked his way. Grimly, he pulled himself along the ceiling of the compartment, reaching the obstruction just as his air ran out. Pain flared in his ears as the vac suit, unable to generate pressure, failed and Dash was exposed to a vacuum.
He tried holding his final breath, but it shoved hard at the back of his throat, while his chest expanded painfully. He gave up and blew it out, emptying his lungs. He now only had the oxygen in his bloodstream to keep him going, which, if he remembered his vacuum emergency drills, gave him not much consciousness.
He aimed himself at the Archetype. As he did, his vision blurred; the moisture on his eye
balls was starting to boil off into the vacuum. Dash had to do this, and do it now.
Gritting his teeth, the only sound penetrating the preternatural silence the pounding throb of his own heart, Dash launched himself at the Archetype.
The next few seconds were the longest of Dash’s life. He felt a growing urge to breathe, but there wasn’t anything to pull into his lungs. His eyes tingled painfully, his vision clearing as the last of the fluid boiled away. His body felt like it was swelling, the gases in it expanding in the absence of any pressure pushing them back. In another few seconds, he’d likely start experiencing the searing pain of the bends, embolisms degassing from his blood and threatening to stop his heart.
He was dying. Literally dying.
His brain started to fog up. Dash focused as hard as he could, realizing he only had seconds of consciousness left. The Archetype’s open hatchway swelled in his vision; he scrabbled at the edge of it as he passed by, trying to pull himself in, but he had no strength left in his arms. He only succeeded in deflecting himself…in some direction, he wasn’t even sure which. Hopefully inside the Archetype, because if he’d just managed to bounce off of it…he was…was…
Was nothing. Nothing left. Just an airless dark, going on forever.
…
Dash blinked. He saw a dark roof above him. Oh. So this was heaven, or whatever the religious types called the place you went after you died, anyway? Or was it the opposite place? He hadn’t exactly lived a very clean or pure life. Hell, he hadn’t exactly lived a pure moment, let alone a life.
No, wait—
Dash gasped, as searing needles of pain lanced into his body. For a panicked instant, he thought maybe this was hell, and this was going to be eternity now.
No. No, wait again.
He turned his head. He saw a device, a complex construct of arms and cables, and it was familiar, somehow.
Oh. It was the cradle. Inside the Archetype.