by Piers Platt
Rath's Redemption
By Piers Platt
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1
So this is how it ends, Rath thought.
Shit.
All around him, the ships of the Jokuan fleet hung in low orbit over Tarkis’ sparkling blue atmosphere. As he watched, the front rank of ships lit their engines, and started their descent onto his homeworld. The invasion had begun.
And I brought them here. Ricken picked Tarkis because he hoped I would inspire the people to join his revolution. And instead, I’ve doomed them all.
He sighed, and was suddenly aware of his breathing. What did Ikeda say? Five minutes of air in this suit? With my hemobots lowering my metabolism, I should be able to stretch that to ten or fifteen. But that would just prolong the inevitable.
He craned his neck, surveying the fleet. He had lost sight of Lonergan in the confusion of being expelled into space – somehow the old man had drifted out of sight already. Rath saw the fleet’s flagship several hundred meters away, and the airlock that Ikeda had ejected him out of. It felt close enough to touch, but it might as well have been on the other side of the planet, for all Rath could do about it.
Stuck here floating, with no means of propulsion. He watched as the ship began to move, slowly, inexorably, toward the planet. Jaymy’s on that ship. I doomed her, too. Press-ganged into the Jokuan army, while I sit here, running out of air, watching my world crumble.
No air supply, and no means of propulsion. This is how it ends.
Rath frowned.
No.
Fuck that.
Activate low oxygen procedures, Rath ordered his hemobots.
He looked down at his hands, surveying the suit. The spacesuit’s rubberized gloves were attached to the suit’s sleeves via a metal collar. He lifted a hand up to his visor and studied it.
No air supply, and no means of propulsion, huh? Bullshit. I’ve got air … and air can be used as a means of propulsion.
Rath found the release catch on the wrist seal, and tested it experimentally. It lifted incrementally under his fingers. He looked up, studying the massive flagship as it started its entry. Rath twisted himself, pointing his back at the ship, with his right hand held straight out in front of him.
Fuck it. Here goes nothing.
He lifted the catch, breaking the seal, and a small burst of air leaked out of his suit, propelling him backward toward the flagship. Red warning lights flashed in his visor, alerting him to the leak. Rath slammed the catch closed again, and glanced over his shoulder.
It worked! I’m getting closer!
But the ship was gathering speed, Rath saw – in less than a minute, it would be gone.
No time to finesse this, Rath decided. He yanked on the catch again, holding it open this time, and took a last gulp of air. The air blasted out of his wrist seal in a rush, white and silent in the vacuum.
>>>Warning! Oxygen supply depleted! a notification appeared on the suit’s visor.
No shit, Rath thought, holding his breath. He sealed the suit again and twisted to face the ship. He was closing the distance, but the flagship was still accelerating. He could see the ship’s stern now.
I’m going too slow! I’m not going to make it!
Suddenly, a white space-suited form drifted in front of him, blocking his path to the ship. As the form rotated slowly in the vacuum, the helmet turned, and Rath saw Lonergan looking back at him. The old man grabbed Rath’s suit with one hand and twisted them, so that Rath’s back was pointed at the retreating flagship. Then he pulled his feet up, setting them on Rath’s chest.
What the hell are you doing, Lonergan? Rath wondered.
Lonergan saluted Rath, smiling sadly, and then pushed off with both feet, sending Rath flying through space toward the flagship, as he tumbled away in the opposite direction.
Realization dawned on Rath. He sacrificed himself for me. Rath turned, and saw the flagship looming large in his visor. Son of a bitch, it worked.
Rath reached out both hands in front of him, grasping for the ship. His fingers brushed the hull, and a second later, the rest of his body bumped up against the ship. Rath scrabbled at the metal, but it was smooth, and slid through his grasp.
No no no!
His fingers caught on a lip – the trailing edge of the ship’s hull, just above the engine nacelles. He dangled for a second, the massive engine blazing just below him, with his feet swinging dangerously close to it – Rath could feel its heat even through the suit. Then he pulled himself up and forward, into an awkward kneeling position on the hull.
Shit! That was close.
He could feel his pulse pounding in his temples, and his chest ached – his hemobots were working hard to maximize every scrap of oxygen in the final breath he had taken, but from experience, he knew he didn’t have more than a minute or two of consciousness left. The ship was approaching Tarkis’ atmosphere now: past the hull, the planet filled Rath’s visor from edge to edge.
Tarkis has air. Once we get low enough, I’ll be able to breathe again. But I have to survive reentry first … and this suit is not going to cut it. I’ll be burned to a crisp out here – assuming I can even hang on when the air friction hits.
He pulled himself, hand over hand, toward the center line of the ship, ensuring each hand had a firm grip on the hull before he moved the next.
Lose your grip … and you die.
Once he reached the top of the hull, he faced forward, and knelt again, surveying the hull.
Come on. Where are you? I need a docking tube, or an exterior hatch … somewhere to take cover.
Less than fifty meters ahead, past a battery of large-bore cannons, he spotted a series of circular bumps on the hull, each several feet across.
Lifeboats! Or escape pods, or something. That’ll do.
Rath pulled himself forward again. He felt a subtle shift, and realized they were passing into the upper atmosphere – he could feel resistance pushing against him as he moved forward, and his suit started to warm. Then he was at the lifeboats.
Rath grabbed the rim of the nearest lifeboat, and studied it through his visor. He had hoped there would be a gap between the lifeboat and the ship’s hull that he could slip down inside, but it was nestled tightly in its compartment.
Maybe I can launch it from out here?
The hull was getting uncomfortably warm now. Rath traversed the protruding bump of the lifeboat, but the hull sported no controls or release levers that he could find.
Shit!
He was starting to sweat inside the suit from the heat, and he noticed his vison was darkening.
>>>Hypoxia; loss of consciousness imminent, his hemobots reported. Seek oxygen immediately.
Rath shook his head as if to clear it. Then he thought to examine the lifeboat itself. It had a large, convex porthole atop its outer edge, and Rath saw lettering around the edge of the porthole.
Emergency Access Window.
Rath found a release lever lying flush against the lifeboat’s hull. He scrabbled at it, the suit’s gloves preventing him from getting a solid grip on it. Then he had it, and he yanked upwards. The lifeboat’s window popped off, flipping away behind him. Rath saw that his gloves were starting to melt where they touched the hull – the heat was becoming unbearable. He pulled himself down and tumbled inside the lifeboat.
He landed, face first, on the floor of the lifeboat, and pushed himself onto his back, looking up
at the window. Rath could feel the heat of their reentry coming in through the open window, but inside it was radically cooler than it had been a second ago out on the hull. As he watched, the window glowed red, then bright orange, then white-hot. Then, abruptly, it cleared, and he saw blue sky.
Rath gasped unconsciously, his body convulsing as it sought oxygen in his depleted suit. His vision dimmed, and then went dark.
* * *
Sensing he was about to die, Rath’s hemobots initiated a final, automatic emergency procedure – they administered a shock dose of adrenaline, directly to his heart.
His lungs searing, Rath’s eyes snapped open. He saw Tarkis’ blue sky above him. Instinctively, he reached for the collar of his suit, seeking the release catch. But after a second of fumbling, he could not find it: the melted rubber of his gloves made it impossible to feel anything.
I’m going to fucking suffocate in my suit, after all that.
He laughed, noiselessly, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Fucking gloves. … the glove!
He held a hand up above his visor, and found the catch at the wrist seal, and yanked on it. The glove popped off, and with a rush, cold, crisp air filled his suit. Rath lay gasping for what felt like hours, just feeling the joy of air in his lungs.
A jolt broke his reverie – the ship had landed. Rath pushed himself to his knees and removed the other glove, then found the release catch on the helmet seal, and popped it open. He let the helmet fall onto the floor of the lifeboat.
Okay, mission planning. Objective: find Jaymy. Kill Ikeda and Yo-Tsai. Stop an entire army from invading my home. He looked around the lifeboat, but saw only medical kits and food supplies. Inventory: no weapons. No Forge. One half-melted space suit.
And one seriously pissed off contractor.
2
Dasi opened her eyes. It was pitch dark in the supply closet of the Senate building on Anchorpoint, but she could feel something heavy lying on top of her.
>>>Activate your infrared vision.
Right, she thought. Thanks, Six.
The dead weight atop her turned out to be Shofel, Senator Foss’ chief of staff, who they had been interrogating. The man was unconscious, knocked out by supplies that had fallen onto them during the explosion. Dasi grunted and pushed him gently to one side.
Across the small room, she heard Hawken groan and sit up. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing his head. “Dasi, are you there?”
“I’m here,” she told him.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so,” she replied. “Shofel’s unconscious.”
“Can’t see anything,” Hawken mumbled.
Dasi watched as he pulled his holophone out of his pocket and activated it, using its holograms to light the small room. She stood up gingerly, touching a sore spot on her ribs where something had crashed into her as it fell. Hawken stood, too.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and reached for the door switch. Nothing happened when he pressed it.
>>>The external corridor has been depressurized, Six told Dasi. Opening the door would kill you. So I am preventing the door switch from functioning correctly.
“Six says the corridor outside is depressurized,” Dasi told Hawken. He pulled his hand away from the switch as if he had received an electric shock.
“Shit. Sorry.” He looked at Dasi. “How did it get depressurized?”
“Apparently a lot of the Senate building was exposed to the vacuum in the blast,” Dasi told him, reading Six’s reply from her heads-up display. “But not this section of the building. It was on fire, though, so Six depressurized the corridor intentionally, to prevent the fire from reaching us. It’s still burning in several locations around the building.”
“Are we trapped?” Hawken asked.
“For now. But rescue crews are en route,” Dasi told him. “Six gave them our location.”
“Do we have enough air in here?”
Dasi cocked her head to one side. “Yup. At least eight hours, if we don’t do any strenuous activity.”
“Why do I get the feeling Six is going to put us all out of a job pretty soon?” Hawken asked rhetorically. He put his back to the door and let himself slide back down to a sitting position. “In all seriousness, though … thank you, Six,” he said, sincerely.
“He says ‘you’re welcome,’ ” Dasi told him, smiling and taking a seat on the metal floor herself.
Hawken shut down his phone, leaving them in the dark once again. “Does Six have any idea how bad the bomb damage is?”
Dasi watched her heads-up display as several external views of the great battle cruiser appeared onscreen. She shook her head. “Bad. It looks really bad.”
* * *
Dasi lifted her head at a tapping on the door, rhythmic and insistent. Across the room, she heard Hawken scrambling to find something hard in the mess on the floor, and then he rapped the door back. The tapping outside stopped, and for nearly a minute, nothing happened.
“Did they hear me?” Hawken asked.
“Yeah, they’re repressurizing the corridor now,” Dasi told him.
The door slid open several seconds later, revealing a firefighter in a spacesuit with several large scorch marks across the chest. The man pulled his sealed helmet off.
“Got them!” he announced down the corridor. “You guys okay?”
“Yeah,” Hawken said, standing up and shaking the man’s hand. “Thank you.”
“We’ve got an unconscious man here – gonna need a stretcher or something,” Dasi told the man.
“Are those handcuffs?” the firefighter asked, shining his flashlight into the room.
“Yeah, he’s technically under arrest,” Dasi said.
“Anything to do with the bombing?” the firefighter asked, frowning.
“No,” Hawken said. “At least, I doubt it.”
“All right, we’ll handle it,” the firefighter agreed. “My chief’s down the hall.” He pointed at an older man in a dress uniform that was torn and covered in ash. “He needs to get your names for the search and rescue database.”
Dasi and Hawken hurried down the hall, where the chief was supervising the tear-down of the repressurization equipment. He straightened up when he saw them approaching.
“Either of you need medical attention?” he asked.
“No, we’re okay,” Hawken replied.
“Glad to hear it. I need your names for the SAR registry, and then you guys can get on out of here.” He pulled out a datascroll and flicked it on.
“Dasi Apter,” Dasi told him.
“Occupation?”
“Police officer,” she replied, showing him the badge around her neck.
“Jace Hawken,” Hawken said next. “District attorney.”
The chief frowned at Hawken. “DA? That’s an elected position, right?”
Hawken nodded. “It is.”
“In that case, I need to get you to police headquarters, sir,” the chief said, putting away his datascroll and beckoning for them to follow him.
“Why?” Hawken asked, falling into step beside him.
“Orders, sir. They didn’t say why, they just said to bring any elected officials in as soon as we found them.”
“Who else have you found?” Hawken asked.
“You’d be the first,” the chief said, grimacing. They walked through the building’s exit, out into the street, and the fire chief pointed upward. “There’s not much left, sir.”
Dasi craned her neck, following his finger with her gaze. Many of the Senate building’s lower windows were still on fire, dark smoke belching out into the ship’s internal hold. Fire crews on the street pointed hoses at the heaviest patches of flame. Above, the top of the building was torn away, ripped off as if by some giant beast. A temporary plastic seal covered the gaping hole in the ship’s structure, keeping the internal hold separated from the vacuum beyond. Dasi could see the exterior hull at the top of the blast area, and a few stars twinkling in the depth of spa
ce.
“My god,” Hawken breathed.
“Yeah, you guys were damn lucky you made it out at all,” the chief agreed, shaking his head sadly. “We’re not expecting to find many more survivors.”
“Why … why did Ricken detonate the bomb?” Hawken asked.
“No clue,” the fire chief observed. “Hell of a way to commit suicide, though.”
“He’s dead?” Hawken asked.
“He was right at the center of the blast,” the chief said, shrugging. “Along with the entire Senate.”
Wordlessly, Hawken turned to look up at the wreckage again.
“Come on, Jace,” Dasi said, after a moment. She took the stunned attorney by the arm, guiding him past several of the fire crews, to the chief’s parked truck.
>>>Dasi, I would like to actively monitor all radio traffic on Anchorpoint, for your safety. That will require overriding some encryption protocols.
Do it, Dasi said. Keep feeding me info as you get it.
They sat in the back of the chief’s truck, and rode in numb silence for several minutes. The central roadway was curiously deserted, empty of the traffic that usually packed the interior roads connecting the massive battleship’s cavernous holds. Finally, the truck stopped in front of the Interstellar Police headquarters offices.
“I’m needed back at the site,” the chief told them.
“Jace?” Dasi prodded him.
Hawken shook himself out of his daze. “Of course,” he said. “Thanks for the ride.”
Inside, the IP building was a chaotic swirl of noise and activity. Dasi couldn’t find anyone manning the reception desk, and the first patrolman she tried to speak to ignored her completely, hurrying off down the hall.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Hawken asked.
Dasi took a deep breath. “At ease!” she yelled. The commotion stopped, as confused officers turned to look at her. “I’ve got a surviving elected official here. I need to take him to see whoever’s in command,” she said, gruffly.
“Chief of Staff’s got a war room set up on four,” a captain told her, from across the hall. “Conference room in the corner.”