There were several drums on wheeled carts sitting about the room, perhaps waiting for testing or storage. Soma found a full one and sealed and pushed it over to the door. When he got there, he grabbed the bar at the base of the cart and lifted with all his might. The drum capsized and the cart with it. Soma gave a breathless chuckle when he was done. Let them try to get through that any time soon.
“What’s your play here, Soma?” Cel whispered. “Why have you locked us in here?”
Soma looked at her, smiling. “You don’t recognize this place?” he asked.
“I recognize it as the water reclamation plant, why?”
Soma looked up at the ceiling of the room. He pointed at the gaping hole in the concrete above them. “Just above us is where you ambushed my fireteam.”
Cel looked up at the hole and a sly smile stretched her lips.
“Wait,” Remnant said, “who ambushed what?”
“Long story,” Cel said. “Let’s go.”
Soma grabbed another drum and he and Cel pulled it off its cart. He climbed on top of it and then climbed the metal supports in the ceiling, dragging himself up to sublevel eight. He looked at the hole in the ceiling that could take him to S9. It was as high as the last one, but with nothing but empty air between him and it.
“Guess we’ll have to find another way to go up to the next floor,” he said.
“That’s okay,” Cel said, pulling herself through the hole. “There’s no way they know we’re up here.”
Soma nodded. He drew his repeater from the sling and headed for the door. The door had no window, so Soma pressed an ear to the door and listened for activity. It was quiet. All he could hear was the buzzing of malfunctioning light strips and the rumble of distant explosions.
He turned back to the others.
“It sounds clear, but let’s go ready to fight,” he said. Cel nodded, drew her own stolen repeater and stepped in front of Remnant.
Soma hit the console button and the door unlocked. He pushed it open clearing the hallway in a radial pattern. The wide tunnel was empty and dim, stretching out for a dozen meters in both directions before bending out of sight.
Soma gestured for them to follow. Cel came out, covering the tunnel in one direction while he covered the other. Remnant tiptoed out after, hugging the inside wall as Cel instructed.
“This way,” Cel whispered.
Soma followed her and Remnant down the dim corridor. As they jogged, Soma counted the gap between the distant explosions. He had a feeling they were slowing down. Another distant boom rattled, and Soma counted. One, two, three, four, five, six. Boom. One, two, three, four...
They came into another big junction room, but this one only had one other tunnel running off of it, to the right. Soma tried to determine in which direction that tunnel was going but these passages curved and bent too much, and they weren’t the same here as on the floor below. Soma would have figured all of these tunnels were ancient, and the palace had all the ones they needed. He was surprised to find a massive mining vehicle aimed at the far side of the junction. The floorplates in that part of the room were gone. The corridors were all circular, so the floor was mounted about a half-meter above the bottom, giving people and vehicles a nice flat surface to travel on. The mining machine sat in the actual stone ground beneath the floor plates. The far wall had the beginning of a rough circle cut into it, the edges weren’t yet smoothed and covered.
He followed Cel’s gestures, holding while she checked the corners of the L-shaped junction room.
“What’s going on out there?” Remnant whispered to him.
“Battle,” Soma replied, keeping a keen eye on Cel. “Insurrectionists are making a heavy play at it, but their artillery is slowing down.”
“Is that bad?”
Soma shook his head and frowned.
“Don’t know,” he said. “It could mean they’re winning, or they’re losing, or they’re just running out of ammunition.”
“There’s so much mystery in a battle,” Remnant said. Soma looked at her to continue, then back at Cel again. “We’re here, and we have no idea what’s going on. Whose winning, whose losing. And all the while people are fighting and dying.”
Soma nodded. “Well,” he said, “part of the mystery comes from the fact that we’re not tapped into the comm network of either side. We don’t have a chain of command to give us intel or orders. We’re on our own.”
Remnant put a hand on Soma’s shoulder. The touch surprised him, and he looked at her hand, then at her. She smiled.
“We’re not on our own,” she said.
As if to subvert her claim, a shot rang through the corridor. Soma turned in time to watch Cel stagger to the ground amidst a lightshow of fire.
Chapter Fifty:
Seeking Someone to Devour
Ashla had convinced Dothin to let her stay aboard the Jessamine during the fight. It came down to the oldest argument that a kid ever had with an adult not their parent. “You’re not my father,” she’d said. “I appreciate you, I respect you, and I know you’re trying to look after me, but you have to let me do what I think is right. And I think I need to stay on the Jessamine. You’re not putting me in a bubble with Nix, okay? If it makes you feel better, I’ll route control of the docking bay to my ship and I’ll sit inside Luna and if something happens, I can drop out and fly away.”
This last part was an ingenious touch, she thought. Make him feel better while getting herself closer to her goal. Dothin had nodded, consented, resigned himself to having no authority over her and Ashla was a step closer to her goal without having to sneak around.
She had hugged Dothin and Nix, wished the members of the Jessamine’s crew good luck and then got to work.
Throughout their return trip to Antarus, Ashla had been making repairs and then tweaks. Luna was a complex machine and adjustments were just a part of creating one’s own spaceship. She did look forward to coming to the end of the endless to-do list of improvements and changes she wanted to make to her ship, but she never obsessed over it. Partially because she loved working on Luna. Partly because she was nervous about the end. The end of the list meant the end of her course as a journeyman engineer. Of course, she would start a new project, build something new and far better off the back of everything she’d learned and mistakes she’d made building Luna. But Luna was special. She didn’t want to have to give her up, and so she didn’t obsess about finishing her.
Now, as the Jessamine’s crew prepared to kill the reactor, shut down all non-essential systems and get ready for the assault, Ashla made sure Luna was charged and then started routing docking bay controls to her link. This wasn’t too difficult, since she had the crew’s permission to do so. Without that she couldn’t have, short of asking Nix’s big, scary friend and she wasn’t willing to do that.
Nat Ginsey’s second, a thin young man with a patchy fifteen-year-old’s attempt at a beard walked into the bay pushing a metal cart loaded with bulky battery packs as Ashla was finishing up.
“Hi,” Ashla said. “What are those for?”
Fish—she didn’t know why the crew called him that—shrugged. He looked bored. “All non-essential systems are going down in ten minutes, so I need to get emergency batteries plugged into the doors and whatever other systems we might need while we’re in blackout mode.”
“Oh,” Ashla said. “Um, what’s your name again? I mean, I know they call you...” Fish gave a deep frown, “but, uh, what should I call you?”
“Second Engineer Belcom, at your service,” he said. He was practically pouting.
“I’m—”
“Oh,” Belcom said, “I know who you are Ms. Vares.”
“Please,” Ashla said, “just call me Ashla.”
Belcom chewed his bottom lip for a moment, frowning still. He seemed to come to a conclusion. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
“I guess you can call me Fish, then.”
“Nice to meet you, Fish,” Ashla said. She
tried to keep her smile warm and sincere, but he seemed not to notice.
She helped Fish plug the emergency power cells in to the various locations. Had her ship not been there, with plans of her to bolt if they got in trouble, they would have only hooked up the door. Instead they had to install them at the control station and at the big docking bay doors and on the big claw holding Luna in mid-air.
As they worked, Ashla poured on her charm, trying to be sweet, trying to complement him, but to no avail. Fish seemed permanently glum and being in his presence seemed to drain her hope away. By the time he was gone she almost considered going back to her cabin and hiding under the sheets. She wasn’t going to do that though. She wasn’t. She had a job to do.
Ashla hopped into Luna’s cockpit, put her helmet on and strapped in. Then she lifted the ladder and sealed the cockpit, watching as the transparent material crawled up and over her, sealing her in.
She made a call to Tally. She didn’t know who would be best to talk to, but Tally was the friendliest, so she opted for her. After a second Tally’s face showed up on her comm screen.
“Hello, Ashla,” Tally said, smiling her shy smile. Her big, dark eyes darted here and there, only looking at Ashla for milliseconds at a time.
“Hi Tally,” Ashla said. “Sorry to bother you. I didn’t know who to call. But I’m sealed in the Lunar Seed right now so if you guys need to depressurize the docking bay you can.”
“No bother at all,” Tally said. “I don’t know if the Captain will want to, but I’ll ask. In either case, they’re about to shut down the reactor so sit tight.”
“Thanks Tally,” Ashla said. “Good luck.”
Tally smiled. If the Sabatean woman felt any fear, it was impossible to tell from her alien features. Her face blinked out and Ashla’s comm screen went blank. A few moments later, Nat’s voice popped up in a general, ship-wide broadcast.
“Alright folks,” she said, “This is Chief Engineer Ginsey. We’re about to begin our orbit of Eltar and it’s time to hit the lights. It is 0210 local time. If things go according to plan we’ll begin our reactor start-up checklist at 0550, so in about four hours. I hope you’ve got a fluffy pillow and something to read. Ginsey out.”
Ashla couldn’t help but laugh at Nat’s easy-going disposition and lazy drawl and how it clashed with the serious military mission they were on. She wondered how things would be different if this were a military ship. Maybe they, too, would be making jokes. Maybe that’s how they got past the boredom and fear.
A minute later the lights shut off and she was in darkness, but for the screens in her cockpit. She noticed instantly, without any visual cues, that she was also weightless. Luna’s sensors told her they hadn’t depressurized the bay for whatever reason.
Ashla waited. She spent the time going over her to-do list, making notes and posting optional solutions to the problems therein. She couldn’t do much without crawling out of the cockpit and getting back to work. She tried listening to music, but everything in her usual playlists felt trite and uninteresting. She decided to read. She pulled up one of her favorite engineering periodicals, told her link to filter out the advertisements and started reading, but soon her eyes started defocusing and then closing for seconds at a time. With a sigh she let go of her link, and gave in to sleep.
She awoke at the feeling of being shaken, like someone pushed at her shoulders to wake her up. She opened her eyes. There was no one there, couldn’t have been, the cockpit glass was still in place. She put her hands on her shoulders and felt the straps there. Maybe something had shaken Luna and the motion carried into her straps. Luna shook again, a tiny motion, only perceptible, again, through her straps.
Ashla raised a finger to the comm screen, ready to hail the bridge, then remembered they were in radio silence. Motion at the edge of her vision grabbed her attention. She turned towards it, gasping. No one was there. The bay was silent and dark.
She felt another little shake and then something knocked on her cockpit glass. Ashla gasped again, turned and saw Nix floating there above her. Once her heart vacated her throat she checked her sensors again to make sure the bay was still pressurized, and then lowered the cockpit dome. It disintegrated around her in tiny hexagonal patterns.
“What are you doing here?” She asked, whispering, though she didn’t know why. “You scared me half to death!”
Nix tried to hide his amusement behind a penitent smile but failed. “Sorry,” he said, “I got turned around in the zero G and had to grab onto Luna to stop myself from spinning. Let me in.”
“Wait a minute,” Ashla said, her mind coming back to something. “You’re supposed to be in the lifepod. They would have jettisoned you by now.”
“They did,” Nix said, his smile edging onto haughty. “I came back in. You’re going to the palace, right?”
Ashla narrowed her eyes and screwed her face up in a question. “Yeah, came back in how?”
Nix shrugged. “The bow airlock. I waited for Gan to jump out and I crawled in. Terrifying, by the way.” Then he frowned, his eyes getting big with worry. “I hope he’s okay.”
“I’m sure he’s already there and slitting throats with abandon.” Ashla knew she was wrong even before speaking. She regretted it and was angry at her regret.
Nix frowned. “Gan’s not a killer. Not anymore. And he saved your life, so I think you owe him.”
Ashla knew she owed Gan but didn’t have the stomach to admit it.
“Anyways,” she said, “why are you here?”
“Like I said,” he said, “you’re going to fly to the palace, right?”
“Yes,” she said, drawing the word out. “So?”
“So,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”
Ashla shook her head. “No way. You can’t. It’s too—”
“Dangerous?”
Ashla gritted her teeth. “Yes.”
“No less dangerous for you,” Nix said, pointing, and in the gloom his hand took the form of a handgun, pointed at her head. Ashla knew Nix didn’t intend those connotations but they chilled her anyway. “You need a friend to watch your back. That’s me. I’ve got you covered.”
Ashla wanted to frown. She wanted to shake her head and argue. But she couldn’t because she was too busy swallowing the lump in her throat. She swallowed hard, trying to fight the emotions, to look strong.
“Thanks,” was the best she managed. “Are you sure?”
“I am,” Nix said. Ashla was glad he didn’t answer with a joke, or a smug remark. It reassured her that he was serious. Ashla opened the back end of the cockpit and Nix smiled.
“Thanks,” he said, and pulled himself into the seat behind her.
When Ashla heard the restraints click tight, she reengaged the whole cockpit, watching it form before her eyes. She realized how thankful she was to have him going with her. Her mind kept trying to go back to the time she planned to fly down to the palace alone. The thought seemed to suck the heat out of her body like the frozen vacuum of space. The cold feeling was conquered by the warmth of Nix’s act of friendship. He had already risked his life to help her, doing an untethered spacewalk in low orbit. She should have told him he was stupid to do that. She couldn’t help but appreciate it.
Before Ashla had the chance to check the time the lights came on in the docking bay.
“Alright,” Nat said over the general channel, “we’re spinning up the reactor. Prepare to break orbit and bust some heads.”
“All crew to action stations,” Captain Kol said over the comm. “All crew to action stations.”
A few minutes later blue lights throbbed in the docking bay. Ashla could feel Luna shifting, which meant the Jessamine was shifting. Not only had gravity returned, or at least perceptible gravity, but the ship was now under thrust, careening closer to the planet.
“Here we go,” Nix said. His voice was almost wistful.
Ashla requested external sensor access through her connection with the Jessamine’s docking bay station
. Such stations would be able to pull up things like external temperature and air pressure. The Jessamine rumbled, in the throes of re-entry, her external temperatures were night and day: blazing heat on her belly, frozen cold on her back.
Ashla berated herself from failing to ask for more ship sensors from Tally. She would have liked to look outside, see where she was, sneak a peek at her old home.
The rumble ceased, and the external temperatures normalized. Ashla could feel her home planet’s gravity. The sensation was euphoric, it almost cut through the anxiety of what she did next.
Ashla tapped a button on her screen. Alarms blared, spinning orange lights flashed and the bay doors opened beneath her.
“Something’s wrong,” she heard Nat say over the general comm. “The docking bay doors are opening.”
“Ashla,” Tally called. “Did you open the bay doors.”
Ashla’s response, was to unlock the docking claw gripping Luna and maneuver it downwards.
“Ms. Vares,” Captain Kol barked over the channel. “What the void are you doing?”
“I’m going to the palace,” Ashla said. “There’re some things I left behind last time and I’m going to get them. Meet you there.” Ashla was proud of the easy tone she’d managed to manufacture. She tapped the button and the claw released her into the wide-open sky. The Jessamine soared ahead of her until Ashla shoved the throttle forward and then it seemed like the bigger ship hit the brakes.
Ashla looked out and ahead. She could see the palace like a blue silhouette on blue. Her chest ached when she saw it and she almost started crying. You never know how much you miss home until you see it after a long journey. Ashla sniffed, cleared her throat and flew onward.
“Wow,” Nix said. “That’s really something.” And he was right, it was. “Okay, what’s the plan?”
“We’re going to land at the emergency landing pad off the southern wing of the palace,” Ashla said. “Hopefully the palace isn’t too heavily guarded. Once we land I can try contacting some people.” She frowned. “One person in particular can tell us where everyone is, but he’s dangerous and definitely with the Alliance.”
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