Fight Like A Girl

by Juliet E. McKenna

  She nodded. “Yes . . . we were almost back at the ship, when a sniper started shooting. There was a battle and Matthews got shot. He was bleeding out. The alarms went and suddenly the place was crawling with Thral.”

  Lithir shook his head. “Retris is a death trap these days. The time of it being a neutral haven for travellers is long gone. Retris attracts the less salubrious element: raiders, mercenaries, criminals; but now the Thral have a stranglehold on it. War is coming, Adii. At this point I think it’s inevitable.” He sighed. “I am sorry for Captain Matthews, but I find it miraculous that any of you survived. Although I’ve grown accustomed to expecting the miraculous from you! Unfortunately, the pod’s visual recordings are unclear. Do you remember anything else about the final attack?”

  Adii checked the door; they were alone. “Lithir, it wasn’t a Thral ship that attacked us, it was their masters! A Draelloth ship. A Draelloth ship!” She swallowed. “The Draelloth haven’t been seen in this quadrant—”

  “For over a millennium,” Lithir interrupted, his face grim. “As I feared, the Draelloth are on the move again. May the gods help us all!”

  Adii shifted her weight, her head swimming. She felt a wave of nausea return, then everything went dark.

  *

  Her mind raced – transports on fire off the Miralis nebula, swarms of black ships emerging from a temporal rift, gas giants ringed by ice and rock and a blue pearl shining in an ocean of black. Earth – ancestor to all humanity, mythical mother to the Kaelinian race, hidden from view, from danger, by an anomaly in the fabric of time and space, an envelope of dark matter obscuring the precious system within. For millennia, only the Dekiyol Order had stood between Earth’s discovery and destruction by Kaelin’s enemies, enemies sworn to destroy every colony, protectorate, every vestige of humanity in the galaxy. Only a select few Dekiyol fighters knew for certain of Earth’s existence, and they protected that secret with their lives. Only Adii, Kolya and Lithir knew its exact location, deep within the Gorein sector.

  For the last four years, since the bitter end of the Thral War and their joint resignation from the military, Adii and Kolya had patrolled the edges of the Gorein sector, scanning and destroying the frequent anomalies, wormholes, temporal rifts and “corridors’ that periodically opened up between normal space and the Gorein interior, stopping any from entering. It was through one of these collapsing rifts, twenty-three days before, that a fragile human craft had emerged, its damaged systems in failure as the four astronauts inside slowly suffocated.

  Commander Nakiri had made a decision that day, one that would change their lives forever.

  *

  Adii woke up in a monitoring tube surrounded by flashing lights and medi drips. It was hardly the clinical med labs you’d get on frigate ships or on home-world. This place looked like an abandoned slaughterhouse. Adii hated med labs. She’d much rather die on the battlefield than on a butcher’s slab. She tried to move, feeling her body ache. Another war wound, another scar to add to the collection. Her body was riddled with them: the scars of combat. She’d been put together more times than she cared to remember, spent too long stuck in rehabilitation units, quietly going mad, along with the rest of the inmates.

  Unhooking the various tubes and needles, she slid open the glass and managed to sit up. It all flooded back . . . finding Kolya’s ship drifting through space, the Thral ambush, Retris, the attack after, watching her ship light up the skies like a dying star. She closed her eyes.

  Why did everyone she loved die?

  Too much, all of it, too much. She should have died years ago; the gods knew she deserved it.

  “You’re awake, and obviously feeling better.” Lithir stared at her, looking worried. “You passed out again. You were vomiting blood. Your head wound has been seen to, but your lungs are not in great shape. You’ll need to be looked at when we get back to Kaelin.”

  Adii motioned for some water.

  “Small sips . . .” He passed her a flask.

  “Don’t mother me, Lithir. I’m not a child and I’m not dying.”

  “You’re a mess.”

  She shrugged. “Been worse, been better, who cares . . . ?” She tried to steady her voice. “Tell me . . . It was Kolya’s ship, wasn’t it?”

  The old man sighed. He knew that mercurial expression well, the volatile nature that suffered no fools and no fabrications. There was nothing to do other than tell the truth; Adii had an uncanny talent for sniffing out lies and liars.

  “Yes, it was. I’m so sorry.”

  She shook her head, feeling her chest tighten. “Go on.”

  “I received a coded sub-space message, a distress signal cast out to one of our long range sensors. It was partially decayed, but . . . it was him. He was ambushed. It was a trap. He was investigating an anomaly when they attacked.”

  “Thral?”

  Lithir nodded. “Five ships, maybe six. Kolya said there was increased activity along his section of the Gorein border. He thought they were searching for a nexus, a corridor. He thought they knew something, that they were there for a reason.”

  “I want to see it.”

  “You will, but—”

  “Now!”

  Lithir stood up. “Adii, we have to deal with the humans first. Kolya was killed protecting their very existence. That secret is worth any sacrifice; that was the oath you both made.”

  “Don’t lecture me about duty! When have I ever broken an oath?” Her anger blotted out the pain as she jumped down and kicked his chair across the room. “You of all people dare to lecture me on sacrifice? My entire fucking life is nothing but sacrifice!”

  Lithir stepped back. “I’m sorry, I truly am. But the issue of the humans must be dealt with first. If we dock at home-world without a cover story for them, we risk exposing their true identities and undoing a millennium of work. Then all those lives, including Kolya’s, would have been lost for nothing. Whatever your feelings about these humans, or Earth, they are innocent children. With their level of development, their lack of technology, if the location of Earth is discovered, their home-world would be strip mined and billions killed or enslaved in the blink of an eye. You know this!”

  “What d’you want me to say?” She rallied. “You want the truth? When I found their ship I had two choices – blast them into oblivion or take them on board. Clearly, I made the wrong fucking decision!”

  The room lock chimed. A short, dark haired man stood tentatively in the doorway.

  “Apologies, but your passengers are waking up. Do you want them to stay in stasis or be roused?”

  Lithir stared at Adii. She looked deflated, her energies spent.

  “Don’t ask me.”

  Lithir turned. “Let them wake up. Can you arrange for food and water to be in their quarters?”

  The man nodded and left.

  Adii threw some clothes on. Why should she give a damn what happened to them? They were ungrateful strangers. Instead of thanking her for saving their miserable hides, rescuing them from a critically damaged craft, all they did was gripe on about their families and home world, asking a thousand questions she couldn’t answer. They didn’t matter, nothing did. Her ship was destroyed and Kolya was dead . . . Kolya was dead.

  *

  She sat in front of the flickering screen. The picture had failed but she could still hear the sound recording, albeit in a deteriorated state. She strained to hear what Kolya was saying through the background noise. The ship’s self-destruct sequence could be heard, then the message ended. Again she played the message, and again, fists clenched, knuckles white. Adii wanted to rage and rant. She wanted blood.

  The next few days were a blur as they travelled through Kaelinian space. Lithir, ever the adroit negotiator, managed to change the flight plan without too many questions, to include a docking at an outlying spaceport where their passengers could quietly disembark onto a waiting Dekiyol transport.

  Commander Nakiri kept herself to herself. She avoided Lithir and
the astronauts, especially Daniel, whose own grief at losing his best friend seemed to fuel his rage towards her. She didn’t care. She was beyond caring. She ignored each poisonous glare and refused to discuss what had happened.

  *

  The vessel approached the shipping port, a small but busy spaceport for commercial freighters and long-haul transports. Adii stood alone in one of the cargo decks, staring out of a narrow viewing window. Daniel burst into the room.

  “Hey! Commander!” He walked up to her, bristling with anger. “You’re not fucking human, are you? I mean that’s probably a compliment to you, right?”

  Adii kept her back to him. “What do you want, Lieutenant?”

  “Stephen . . . Captain Stephen Cory Matthews, husband and father to four young children. You just let him die!”

  She sighed. “He was dying anyway.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  Adii turned to him, her face devoid of expression. She could tell he was itching to hit her. “Yes I did. And so did he.”

  “So, what, you were helping him? You left him to die. You didn’t even try-!”

  “He made a choice, Lieutenant.” She kept her voice deliberately flat. “He made a choice: his life for ours.”

  “It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? What are we to you? Just a fucking inconvenience? It must have been a tough call for you, deciding whether to pick us up or let us burn!”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” He moved closer, spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth. “I forgot you lost something important too. Not your best friend for twenty years, the nearest thing to a brother . . . but yeah . . . you lost your precious ship. What a fucking loss!”

  Adii kept calm which seemed to enrage him more, but her eyes were deadly serious.

  “You think you know me?”

  Daniel’s face was inches from her own, his eyes black. “I think you’re dead inside, that’s what I think.”

  “Is that right?” she said, coldly.

  He grabbed at her arm. In an instant she punched his windpipe, seized his neck, kicking his legs out from under him, and threw his full weight to the floor. She stood over him as he clutched his throat, fighting for air, and waited.

  He stared at her, his face reddening, his eyes wild.

  “Maybe,” her voice was no more than a whisper, “I should have left you all. Or blasted you out of an air-lock while you slept.”

  She waited as his gasps became rasping, desperate, and his legs began to spasm. She watched the tiny blood vessels in his eyes strain. Then, she bent over him.

  “You know nothing about me, Lieutenant. You’d best remember that!”

  She pulled his hands away from his throat as he struggled against her, then with a crack she hit his windpipe again, and walked off. Daniel sprawled on the floor, gasping.

  *

  “She’s right. You do not know her,” said a voice nearby.

  Daniel looked up to see Lithir, offering him a hand. He shoved it aside and staggered to his feet.

  “Jesus! You fucking people!” he coughed, his voice hoarse. “She’s a psycho! You people are supposed to be what . . . defenders, protectors of Earth, you and your band of merry fucking men? Jes’!” His larynx felt like shattered glass.

  Lithir stood impassively, a disappointed expression on his face. “You’re very wrong about her. She’s risked her life countless times for our people, and yours.”

  “Really?” Daniel spat blood onto the floor. “You know, I think I understand her pretty well. If we’ve got people like her protecting Earth, then we really are fucked!”

  Lithir wandered past him and over to the window, staring at the stream of traffic outside, then turned. “That destroyed ship you came across, the Lokai, do you know who it belonged to?”

  Daniel looked blank. “It was just junk.”

  “I don’t suppose she told you, why should she? His name was Captain Kolya Takri. He was her, how do you say, life partner? When she found his ship, destroyed, she knew he’d been killed. That has been confirmed, I’m afraid. He left her a message which she has now seen.” He turned to face Daniel again. “She said nothing, did she?”

  “Only that she knew the ship.” Daniel muttered.

  “She had a younger brother, Ensha. I’m sure you didn’t know that either. She loved him very much. He died six years ago at the beginning of the Thral War.” Lithir looked at him plainly. “She tried to save him, but failed. She is haunted by that. He died in her arms, horribly. She has nightmares, night terrors actually, almost every night. She relives those dreadful events and it makes her sick. If she doesn’t remember to turn in her sleep, she’ll choke on her own bile.”

  Daniel gasped, and for a moment he forgot the pain in his own throat.

  “We all live with our pain, Lieutenant, and Commander Nakiri has more than most. Her burdens may not show, but she carries them all the same.” He paused. “You should know this. According to the ship’s log and the time of Kolya’s message, if she hadn’t rescued you she could have reached Kolya and saved him instead.” He placed a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “I am truly sorry about Stephen. He sounded like a courageous man and a good friend. I am sorry for your loss.”

  Daniel felt the weight of Lithir’s hand slip slowly from his shoulder and with it his anger seemed to melt away. He turned to ask something, but the old man was gone.

  The drone of docking ships continued outside.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, “Way to go, Danny boy!”

  *

  Adii leant over the basin and rinsed her mouth. She wiped the mirror and stared at her reflection. Dark shadows circled her eyes, red from crying. She hated any sign of weakness.

  The hum of the engines changed in tone as the Dekiyol transport gathered speed. They had left the docking port and were on their way again, heading for a safe haven for the humans.

  She felt the bile rising in her throat again and choked it back. Despite her contempt for the astronauts, especially Lt. McKendrick, she had a job to do. No time for anger or self-indulgent destruction, though it had taken all her self-will not to kill the little fucker! Because of them, she hadn’t been there to help Kolya. In this whole rotten universe, she’d failed the one person that meant the most to her. He had died alone and outnumbered.

  A knock at the door brought her senses back.

  “What is it?” she snarled.

  Lithir appeared in the doorway. “We need to de-brief the astronauts. You should be there.”

  “Fine.”

  “What are their names again?”

  “Don’t play mind games with me, Lithir. The data was on the ship’s log. Knowing their names won’t magically endear them to me.”

  The old man held her gaze until she complied.

  “Fine,” she sighed. “The short dark haired one is Lt. Peter Caulfield, the co-pilot is Michael Shannon, they call him “Mike’. You know about the dead one, and the other one is Daniel McKendrick. Are you happy?”

  Lithir looked satisfied. “Are you coming?”

  *

  The astronauts paced their quarters like caged animals, except for Daniel who slumped on one of the bunks, staring at the door. Lithir had shuffled them on board quickly and kept them away from the rest of the crew.

  Peter looked weary, as they all did, but Daniel sensed his mounting frustration. “Are they going to tell us anything? Where the hell are we going? When can we go home?”

  Michael dug his hands into his pockets. “I’m not sure that is an option anymore.”

  “What?” Peter looked shocked.

  “You really think they’re going to send us on our way? In what? The Explorer is gone. I’d say the likelihood of seeing our families again is zero.”

  Daniel remained silent, but he knew Michael was right. None of them would be seeing Earth again.

  The door opened and Lithir stepped inside with Commander Nakiri. Daniel sat up, his eyes fixed on Adii. She hung back, arms cross
ed, a detached expression on her face.

  “We’re flying to a Dekiyol planetoid for full de-briefing. It’s a short flight, you’ll be safe there.” Lithir leaned against the door so he could watch the corridor outside. He lowered his voice. “We have a mixed crew on board here, some trusted Dekiyol rangers and some commercial pilots. For now, I ask you to keep your identities a secret. I know you look a little different from most Kaelinians, a little shorter, due to your planet’s gravity, so if anyone asks, you’re miners from the ice colony at O’Tarris. That will explain your paler skin, too.”

  “You really think that’s necessary?” Peter asked.

  “What happens to us when we get to wherever we’re going?” Michael asked, studying them both closely. “We all want to know -what are the possibilities of us getting home, getting to Earth? We have families. Stephen had a family.”

  Lithir cast a glance at Adii, who remained expressionless.

  “In truth,” he replied, “we have no answers for you at this point. I’m sorry. I’m sure that’s not what you want to hear, but this is as unprecedented for the Commander and myself as it is for you.”

  “We’re just grateful to be alive,” answered Daniel, still watching Adii.

  *

  She kept her gaze resolutely fixed on the floor. Kolya was worth ten thousand of these humans. She should have let them die.

  All of a sudden the alarms blared and the transport lurched violently to one side.

  “What’s happening?” called Lithir, steadying himself against the increasing gradient.

  “Quiet!” Adii snapped. She felt the ship straining, its juddering engines reeling under the pressure. Something was very wrong. She threw a pulsar gun to Lithir. “Stay here,” she shouted. “Lock the door and shoot the locks from the inside if anyone tries to get in!”

  Lithir fumbled with the gun. “What’s happening?”

  “We’re under attack! Don’t open this door for anyone except me. Lock it now!” She ran into the corridor outside, pulsar drawn and ready.

  A massive blast ripped through the ship, and the transport lost its gravity drive. Adii felt her internal organs lift along with the rest of her, a clever move for any attacker. Without a gravity drive, every floating occupant became an easy target. Strangely enough the human astronauts, in their primitive craft, would be best equipped to cope with this suspended chaos.