Conviction

by Tammy Salyer

  Instead of heading to the shuttle bays, where I’m stationed as first navigator during a general alert in case the Hammer’s smaller gun shuttles need to launch, he leads me toward the heavy-gun deck.

  “We got a problem with one of the gunners, Enlistee First Class Tollhut. You know him, right? You two are close?”

  “Yeah.” Greg? We go back to the Academy, and he’d probably saved me from worse punishment by coming to find me at the fights last week instead of waiting around and letting someone else do it.

  “He’s barricaded himself inside one of the bugsuit bays. You have to talk him out.”

  I snort, thinking he’s joking.

  “That’s an order from Major Evans.”

  But Smitty doesn’t have this good of a sense of humor. “What do you mean ‘barricaded himself in’?”

  “Look, Erikson, this is need-to-know, but I’ve been authorized to tell you. We have the PCA Frontline locked in our sights—”

  “You mean locked in our sights because we’re rendezvousing with them,” I interrupt. Our leave had been canceled due to urgent orders for the Hammer and our sister gunship the Szablya to intercept and escort the PCA Frontline. We weren’t told why, only to get there posthaste.

  “Shut up and listen. Central tasked the Hammer with putting the cruiser out of commission. Full stop. They’ve had some kind of onboard rebellion, and Corps Command reports they’re threatening other Corps ships. Right now, they are our enemy. Tollhut’s unit is on the assignment, but he went batshit when he got the fire command. Now he’s threatening us, the Hammer. You have to talk him out of the bugsuit bay until we can restrain him.”

  The autoclave that’s become my brain spins too fast. I can’t believe any of what I’m hearing. An entire Corps fleet cruiser has, what, mutinied? That’s over fifteen thousand soldiers who are, apparently, no longer soldiers. And we’ve been tasked to fire on them? To destroy them? The level of lunacy at work in those two situations is beyond me. But what he’s saying about Tollhut is worse.

  I don’t know what to say, so I start with a pointless question. “Why me?”

  “I volunteered you.”

  That warms me up. “How could Tollhut be a threat to the whole ship?”

  Smitty doesn’t bother explaining, just lets the comment “You can’t let him get into one of those suits. He could seriously fuck us. Good luck” do it for him as we arrive in the main armory.

  We stop at the perimeter of a ring of troops on alert outside one of the ship’s six Goldblum Squad Leveller—aka bugsuit—bays. The suits are mechanical urban-assault body weapons that can turn a regular soldier into a walking swathe of destruction. Their enhanced sensory analysis processors and attunement to the wearer’s nervous system radically change the way a soldier reacts to battlefield situations, making one unit of bugsuited ground troops all a strategic op needs to wipe out, or neutralize, hundreds of targets. If Tollhut starts walking through the Hammer with one on, he could indeed, as Smitty put it, seriously fuck us.

  Major Evans, as usual, is leading from the rear and approaches us. “Tech One Erikson, you’ve been briefed.” He’s not asking.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get that man out of there.”

  “Roger, sir.”

  Smith taps me on the arm as I face the bugsuit bay hatch. “Where’s your sidearm?”

  “In my locker. It didn’t seem necessary for toilet detail.” But it seems pretty goddamn necessary now.

  “Just get it done.” He waves at the soldier nearest the hatch controls, which have been gutted. Either Tollhut had destroyed them so no one could enter, or the guard had so he couldn’t exit easily. The Tech has a bypass board attached and gets busy opening the hatch.

  My breath sounds too loud in my ears. The hatch retracts.

  Inside, cargo bins and storage bunks have been shoved in a hurried frenzy toward the entryway, a wall of metal and plastic. I can’t see anything beyond, but the sound of movement confirms Greg is up to something.

  Stepping forward, I gingerly push against a looser-looking obstacle. “Tollhut? You in here, buddy? It’s Erikson.”

  The sounds pause, then resume. “Don’t come in here, Aly. You and David need to get somewhere else, somewhere safe.”

  “Safe from what, Greg? What’s going on? What’s with the drama?” I make room to get a look toward the rear of the bay, past the rows of suspended bugsuits. He’s doing exactly what I’d hoped he wasn’t—getting outfitted.

  “They didn’t tell you, did they?” he says, the sound of the bugsuit’s many connectors clicking home punctuating his words. “We’ve been ordered to fire on the Frontline. They want us to shoot down our own brothers. You’re always talking about it; can’t you see? This is where the line is drawn. This is what separates humans from the monsters in Corps uniforms.”

  “C’mon, you know I’m just blowing smoke when I bitch about the Corps.” This statement flares out and dies like a dud round—because he knows I’m not just blowing smoke, I’m dead fucking serious when I say the Corps is corrupt. Lately it’s been worse; lately I haven’t been able to keep my mouth shut about it—like with what happened on Ohm Lumi—and I’m one insubordinate-bordering-on-insurrectionary comment from getting thrown into lockup. But that’s not the problem right now. Right now, I have to keep Tollhut from getting loose and turning his fellow soldiers into a chow-hall hamburger surprise. “We all blow smoke occasionally. If you have an issue with the chain of command, you gotta go through it. But not like this,” I add hastily. Going through it is exactly what he’s about to do. “You listening, buddy? You have to come out of there. As one of your battle buddies, I—”

  I hear him say “Switch to full-auto” and know the time for discussion is over. Wasn’t doing any good anyway. I can’t convince myself; there’s no way I was convincing him. “Move out, everyone!” I yell, but I don’t know if they hear me.

  The blast of a cement-mixer grenade overrides everything, turning the world into noise. I feel the impact of something hitting me from behind. Strangely, it doesn’t hurt, but when my chin hits the deck, all the lights in the hold fade to gray.

  3

  CUTTING LOOSE

  “Come on, come on, Aly! Get up, get moving!” The alarms ripping through the ship’s speakers almost drown my brother’s voice, but his tugging on my arm doesn’t leave any of the situation’s urgency to guesswork. “The Hammer’s going down. Get up!”

  “I’m up,” I manage to say, no doubt my weak voice lost beneath the blaring alarms. My vision is fuzzy, worse even than my head, but I can make out the shock on David’s, my brother’s, face clearly. Is the air filled with smoke? Between his hand pulling me up by my arm and my body’s own primal drive to survive, I make it to my feet, sway for what feels like minutes while my brain, equilibrium, and legs negotiate a treaty, then finally find my focus. “What the hell happened?”

  “No time, come on.” Not letting go of my arm, he pulls me through the armory—or what’s left of it. Crates, shattered suits, and blast marks are scattered everywhere. An explosion. And—

  “Tollhut!” I yell.

  “He’s dead.” David jerks me to the side of the bay, just avoiding a stampeding group of soldiers heading aft toward the evacuation pods. “Took at least thirty of us with him. No one could stop him before he got to the main engine cooling deck. Crazy bastard.”

  “I’m good, David. You can let go of my arm.” It’s too much to think about. How does a guy like Tollhut, someone who’d been next to me in the trenches, watching my back while I watched his, cool and calm on every mission, just lose it like that?

  He throws me a quick glance, then drops my arm. “You sure you’re all right?”

  Swiping my hand across my face, I feel a painful knot on my chin, but not too bad. “Yeah, just a bruise. How did you find me?”

  “Everyone on the ship has been ordered to evacuate. I ran into Tech Sergeant Smith at the evac pods, and he told me where you were.” With a quick jer
k of his head, he moves out.

  “Wait, let’s get to the squad gunship hangars.”

  “No, Tollhut caused too much damage. All the airlocks are disabled. The ships can’t cut loose.”

  If they can’t cut loose…

  “What? You mean it’s the pods or nothing?”

  Instead of answering, he spins the manual release for the armory’s small-arms locker room. “Grab as much as you can, Aly. I think we’re going to need it.”

  My body feels cold and my skin breaks out in gooseflesh; it’s from more than the mild concussion. Evac pods. No more than coffin sized. In a few minutes, I’m going to wish I’d stayed unconscious.

  “Aly, move!” His tone is drill-sergeant-on-adrenaline sharp. Life-or-death sharp.

  My feet get moving toward my own arms locker, but I’m less than a meter inside the room before a bellowing explosion shakes the fleet gunship from inside out, and I’m flung into an array of lockers. Shaken but not hurt, I get up faster than last time and hurry to slam my palm against the reader to my own locker after a glance at David tells me he’s okay. Pulling out my torso body armor, I quickly buckle it on, then grab my AK-80 and the two magazines of ammo I always keep handy—but, dammit, more would be so much better!—and pack the mags away. The question of why we’re grabbing weapons and ammunition when we should be abandoning ship doesn’t even cross my mind. Guns are as important as oxygen. If you don’t have the basics covered, nothing else matters. That’s another soldier’s philosophy.

  David shoves his cargo pants pockets full, grabs his field radio and shoves that in a backpack, and says, “Let’s get to the pods.”

  He and I are in separate units that are attached for mutual support during ground operations. Hence our barracks and evac pods are on the same crew deck; lucky for me, or he’d never have seen Smith and found out where I was. We haul ass toward our pods aligned along the ship’s aft flank. The rollicking shriek of the alarms and the blow my chin took set off a high-pitched whine inside my ear, tinnitus, and the two tones merge into a vibrating hum that threatens to make me lose my mind, just like Tollhut. We see only a few crewmembers on the ten-minute sprint; most have already evacuated, becoming so much floating dust in space in the tiny e-pods. I must have been out for several minutes—enough time for Tollhut to get past the squad at the bugsuit bay, rampage his way to the engine cooling deck and destroy it, and then get himself killed. How many soldiers had he taken with him? Thirty, David had said.

  A new wave of shock smashes into me. Tollhut could have killed me too, but he hadn’t. But what he’d done to the Hammer would have meant a slow death instead if David hadn’t come looking for me. Profound gratitude for my brother, who wouldn’t leave me unless I was a cold cadaver, quakes through me. My brother, my lifeline.

  Then another thought strikes.

  What about the PCA Frontline? Had they known we were targeting them? Will they retaliate if they did?

  Suddenly the evac pods are sounding even less inviting than they had. Nonweaponized and lacking any defense, they’re nothing more than a box to wait in until someone comes along and reels us in. Or blows us up.

  Coming to a sudden stop, I say, “David. David!”

  He puts on the brakes and spins, mistaking the alarm in my voice for something more imminent.

  “We can’t launch. We were about to fire on the Frontline. We’ll be target practice for them!”

  He looks momentarily stunned, but pragmatism is his guiding star. “No choice. The Hammer is done for.”

  Maybe we are too. Regardless, I speed up again, and the two of us reach the last hatch to the launch-tube corridor. David quickly enters the open code, but nothing happens.

  “You try.”

  Same result.

  “Dammit.” He slings his carbine around his back and bangs open the cabinet in which is housed the locking manual release arm. It gives with a heave, and the airlock seal releases with a loud thock! Without hesitating, he grabs the hatch’s door wheel to spin open the locking bars.

  “Hold on.”

  “No time,” he grunts.

  “No!” I grab him by the shoulders and forcefully jerk him back. “You feel that? No pressurization. There’s a breach on the other side of the door.”

  He curses, then steps in front of the ship’s visual console next to the hatch, a terminal linked to the ship’s main systems for calling up quick reference information. Every hatch includes one. This one is still functioning, and he quickly pulls up the alert grid, which shows what I already know.

  “The explosion ripped the hull wide open on this side. We have maybe five minutes before we’re breathing space.” He looks pale. “We’ll never make it to the starboard pods.”

  What little saliva remains in my mouth flash dries, coating my tongue and throat with a sick flavor of fear and adrenaline. “The bow. The flight deck evacuation raft. We can make it.”

  His eyes widen, and he’s about to say something, something about how there’s no way in frozen hell it will still be there or, if it is, the flight deck brass will let us aboard, but I’m already moving at triple time up the corridor. The echo of his boots lets me know he’s on my heels.

  The flight deck life raft is the largest on the ship and located directly above the flight deck itself. More than just a simple evac pod, it’s the commander and her crew’s last-minute getaway craft, the notion of a captain going down with her ship as antiquated as old Earth. Though I’ve never been inside one, I know it’s roomy enough for six crew and stocked with survival gear and necessities for up to three weeks. Built for flight, not merely for escaping, it’s docked on the outer hull, and the airlock leading inside is small, made only for people, therefore not a threat to the overall ship’s integrity if breached. Most importantly, it can be opened even when the ship’s internal security shuts down the main dock airlocks. The engineers reasoned that if the flight crew is trying to evacuate, the main ship must be doomed.

  The hatch to the final corridor leading to the evac craft is still open when David and I get there less than three minutes later. We careen through—and stop short at the sight of blood on the walls and the floor, and the smell of a recently discharged firearm inside.

  “Is that…?” But I know immediately the body at my feet is Command General Fischer. And beyond him lie Major Evans and three others, contorted and very dead. The entire flight deck crew.

  David drops to the floor, pulling me down with him, as a round flies past us. “Don’t shoot! It’s Tech Sergeant Erikson and Aly Erikson!”

  “Eagle Eye?” I know that voice. Enlistee First Class Bernthal. “That you and your sister?”

  “Yes!”

  “Bernthal,” I yell, cautiously getting to my feet, “the Hammer is history. Let us on the evac raft.”

  He says nothing for a second, then: “Aly, you can come, but not Eagle Eye.”

  It’s as clear to me as my own name what happened here. Bernthal probably had this plan in mind long before he ever expected to need it. If the ship was ever compromised, he’d hijack the flight deck craft, ambush the command crew, and have it to himself. It’s a legitimately good idea—for a morally bankrupt parasite.

  “You have room for us both,” I yell.

  “I got room for you, sweetheart, but not you, Eagle Eye. You didn’t back me up after those Admin bureaurats got wasted on Chum Miro. It’s your fault I got reprimanded and lost two stripes. You go right ahead and be the good little soldier you are and die with your comrades.”

  David stands up beside me, and Bernthal sights down his carbine, ready to fire.

  “C’mon, Bernthal! Don’t do this,” I plead, knowing it won’t do any good. “We’re almost out of time.”

  “No, you’re out of ti—”

  His head jerks back, and a shower of red smears against the airlock door behind him before I hear the shot that hit him. David and I both swing around with weapons at the ready, prepared to go down fighting.

  Tech Two Rebecca Soltznin
from the 701st Ground Division stands behind us, the barrel of her Bowker O9 pistol still aimed forward. I know her from the chow hall but have never had duty with her.

  Less than a handful of heartbeats pass between the three of us, all standing statuelike, our weapons and our nerves about to cook off. David’s the first to react. “Come on, Tech. We have to go.”

  Relief floods over her face, and the three of us pass through the airlock, leaving a trail of bloody footprints along the floor.

  The craft is easily piloted, made for survivors who may not necessarily be in top flight condition. David takes one of the two seats at the helm, and I strap in beside him. Once the outer airlock and the ship’s hatch are sealed, blocking out the death knell of the Hammer’s alarms, the silence is almost ethereal, like a grave.

  “Screens open. Thrusters online. Pressure and life support optimal.” David goes through a basic checklist, his hands moving across the console. “Aly, get on radar. What’s around us?” What he doesn’t have to ask, but what we’re both most concerned about now is, where’s the Frontline? “We’re clear in five… four… three… two… clear.”

  The craft releases from the Hammer’s hull smoothly, like the pull of a trigger, and the thrusters push us upward. As we begin to rise away, leaving the gunship beneath us, dots of hundreds of white evac pods float away in the horizon outside the viewscreens, made infinitesimally small juxtaposed with the endless blackness of space. As we rise higher, more of the gunship comes into view, vapor from the numerous hull breaches on the ship’s underside and flanks spilling into the vacuum and disappearing in the same second.

  “Aly, have anything?”

  I’d been too absorbed in what’s happening around us to get on the radar or nav-system yet. “Gimme a sec.”

  “Hurry.” He continues to put distance between us and the Hammer while speaking to our passenger. “Soltznin, right?”

  “That’s right, Tech Sergeant.”

  “Just call me David. Thanks for saving our asses. Why didn’t you get out with the rest of your company?”