“Move,” Caurfo commanded. “Go! Go!”
Kettle complied and noted that Caurfo’s other fist was clenched on Haley’s shirt. The big colonel was practically carrying the two Earthlings out like duffle bags.
“Everyone out!” he hollered.
As soon as they hit the dirt, they sprinted for the tree line directly in front of them. Caurfo called out “On me,” as he ran, but it was unnecessary. The whole crew was hot on his heels.
They broke through the first row of trees and stumbled through the bush, which was fortunately sparse enough and sufficiently illuminated by the moon that navigation wasn’t overly hindered. All around, Kettle could hear the huffing and grunting of soldiers keeping pace with each other while carrying weapons and packs. Haley was off to his right, moving easily across the landscape and belying her origins as an ornithologist.
It wasn’t until they dropped down an embankment that descended toward a small but exuberant creek that they stopped running. Caurfo motioned for them to crouch and keep their heads down.
About fifteen seconds later, the pilot and co-pilot joined them, both breathing heavily and both still wearing their helmets.
“How long you figure before it blows?” one of the soldiers asked.
“Dunno,” Caurfo admitted. “It might not. Could’ve been programmed to detonate when we reached a certain distance from the LZ.”
“We can’t just leave it there,” another pointed out. “We came down pretty hard. The locals are probably going to come looking sooner than later.”
“We’ll have to scuttle it,” Caurfo stated. “Dobbs? You got the charges?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Good. Take Tokkari and . . .”
Before Caurfo could finish his command, a deafening explosion ripped through the night air, followed moments later by a fireball that soared skyward and temporarily turned the night into day. Pieces of Kye-shiv started raining down with varying thud sounds around the landing site.
“Belay that order,” Caurfo said unnecessarily once the din died down.
“Hey, Kettle,” Haley said.
Kettle hadn’t noticed that Haley was right beside him. “Yeah?”
“I just realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“On our last four flights, two of them have exploded. That’s a horrible success rate.”
Kettle nodded. “At least there are no sharks this time.”
PART 2: CROSS-PURPOSES
For all their foibles and flaws, all their
ignorance, superstition and spite, humans are
not completely bereft of admirable qualities.
If nothing else, they are persistent. This is a trait
that is primal, encoded in ancient DNA and passed
down from parent to child over the millennia.
And it must be admired that when faced with meager
odds and burdened with irrefutable knowledge of
impending doom, the human spirit does not buckle.
On the contrary, it doubles down, puts shoulder
to the wind, and presses on.
Enoch Cud, from A Chronicle of Human Failures
2.1 SAELIKO
She sat in her prison cell, gnawed on a lump of raisin bread and brooded.
It was not long ago that she had had a clear objective to guide her actions by. The first step in achieving that objective had been to spark a mutiny against Janx, a maneuver that hadn’t gone as smoothly as she had hoped but had succeeded regardless. Step two: raise the red. Committing herself and her crew to piracy had been easy. They were women with a shared vision. They were adventurers building a beautiful future for themselves, a future filled with blood, booze, sex and untold riches. And yet, her harkering the Epoch to victory over the Triumph turned out to be the high point of an unexpectedly short career.
The rest of the story was inexplicable. Insane. Obscene. She was supposed to be the most feared harker in the entire Sollian. She was supposed to be the big fish in a small pond feasting on whoever and whatever she pleased. And then fate intervened. More precisely, fate had stomped in, plucked her out of the pond, threw her across three planets and made it explicitly clear that she was a very small tadpole in a vast ocean. Or eighteen oceans. She was fuzzy on the details.
She finished her raisin bread and cast her eyes on the rest of her meal. There was a yellow soup with a mystery vegetable floating in it, plus a slab of meat that she recalled from earlier experience tasted like nothing in particular. As technologically advanced as the Zodos were, they apparently hadn’t invented flavor yet. She decided to eat it anyway. Escaping would be more difficult if she was half starving.
Two bites into the meat, she heard multiple footsteps approaching. Her ears picked out the light click-clack of Dr. Tannishoy’s shoes. The rest sounded like soldiers.
“Hello, doctor,” Saeliko said without looking up.
“Time to go,” Eliska stated firmly.
This made the Saffisheen raise her head from her meal and brush her hair out of her face. Four soldiers surrounded the doctor, two on each side. One of them was holding wrist and ankle restraints. They were all wearing hard-shell armor.
“Where?”
“Stand up.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Stand up,” Eliska repeated. She sounded tired and stressed.
“And if I don’t?”
Two guards unclipped their lightning guns from their belt holsters and pointed them through the bars. Saeliko didn’t like that answer. She had been hoping to avoid getting electrocuted today.
“Stand up and let them cuff you.”
Saeliko stood up but didn’t approach the bars just yet. She gave a hard look to Eliska and said, “I’ll let them cuff me if you tell me nothing bad is going to happen.”
“Sorry?”
“If you’re planning to march me off to my execution, I’d rather stay here, thank you very much. You can shoot me in my cell.”
“Execution? What? No. We don’t execute people. We’re not savages.”
“And you’re not taking me to a dark room where your thugs can electrocute me for fun?”
“No! I promise nothing bad is going to happen.”
Saeliko nodded and walked to the bars. She allowed the guards to place the restraints around her wrists and ankles, and once this was complete, the cell door opened and the Saffisheen was guided out into the hallway, one soldier holding each arm.
“You’re being transferred,” Eliska said matter-of-factly once they were underway.
“What does that mean?” She shuffled her feet a little faster to keep up with the doctor. The shackles around her ankles weren’t overly cumbersome, but they were very effective and preventing quick locomotion.
“It means that I’ve been ordered to take you out of ARCOB to one of our civilian bases on the planet. It’s a research and development facility.”
“People are going to research me?”
“Yes.”
“Is that a euphemism for something else?”
“No.”
“I’m skeptical.”
“Don’t be.”
They walked into the elevator, where Eliska commanded Roy to take them up to the flight hangar.
“Leaving us already, Dr. Tannishoy?” Roy asked. His voice hinted at sadness. Saeliko still found the disembodied voice unnerving.
“Yes.”
“I’ll miss you greatly.”
“Thanks.”
“And you, Saeliko,” Roy added. “It was a pleasure making your acquaintance. I hope you have a pleasant voyage.”
Saeliko didn’t answer. She didn’t know the appropriate response when talking to a building.
“Dr. Tannishoy?”
“Yes, Roy?”
“I’ve cross-referenced your departure orders. You’ll be happy to know a Kye-shiv is fueled and waiting in Bay Six.”
“Thank you.”
“And one last thing, doctor.”
/>
“Yes?”
“Don’t trust the atoms.”
“Huh?”
“They make up everything.”
Eliska breathed out her nose and smirked. Saeliko didn’t understand why but decided not to ask.
Together they exited into a wide lobby with wide industrial-sized doors on the other side. Saeliko recognized the room and knew the Kye-shivs were stored on the other side.
While Saeliko possessed a healthy disdain for the Zodos, she had a metaphorical hard-on for their Kye-shivs. Like Roy or the lightning guns, she didn’t have a clue how they worked, but she was smart enough to recognize the potential military applications the Kye-shivs offered. Give her three Kye-shivs, the women to fly them, a barrel full of Zodo assault rifles and four-dozen battle-hardened pirates to ride in the back, and she could conquer the whole damn Sollian. And why stop there? The great powers of Erain were equipped to repel attacks from the land and sea, but they hadn’t considered that death might come from above.
Eliska led them into the hangar and immediately turned right, presumably toward the Kye-shiv waiting in Bay Six. Saeliko admired the nearest hulking metal beast and took in the sharp but seamless edges and menacing protrusions. She marveled at the enormous engines strapped to either side of the hull. She imagined fire blasting out the back of those engines like harnessed volcanoes.
She claimed a new life goal for herself right then and there. One day, she was going to have a Kye-shiv of her very own. She smiled at the thought, and the last vestiges of depression faded into nothingness.
“Keep moving,” the soldier on her left ordered. He jarred Saeliko forward by yanking sharply on her elbow and forcing her to perform a speedy shuffle-step to avoid being tripped by her ankle restraints.
“Careful,” she warned after regaining her balance. “You don’t want on my bad side.”
“What happens then?”
“Well, you won’t be able to kiss me, for starters.”
“Ha! Why’s that?”
She looked at him, smiled and whispered, “Because I’ll rip those fat lips right off your ugly face.”
His grin disappeared, and he nearly stopped walking. “Wow, you’re dark,” he stated. The soldier on Saeliko’s other side chuckled.
Eliska looked back and told the men to stop talking to the prisoner. They passed behind two more Kye-shivs and one empty bay in silence before they arrived at Bay Six. The doctor motioned for them to ascend the ramp into the back of the waiting craft. The Kye-shiv’s engines hadn’t been fired up yet, but the auxiliary systems had been engaged and the metal body hummed with life.
Saeliko allowed herself to be led into the rear compartment. They exited the bright light of the hangar and stepped into the dim confines of the ship, and it took her eyes a few moments to adjust. Then she noticed four more bodies already seated in chairs – two soldiers, and two familiar faces.
“Hi,” Dallas said. Beside him, Soup nodded a wordless greeting. Neither man smiled. Saeliko didn’t respond. She looked back at Eliska, who was now about halfway up the ramp, hoping that the doctor would provide some context to the situation. Eliska returned the stare without saying a word.
“Dr. Tannishoy!” a voice called out loudly. Saeliko glanced over Eliska’s shoulder and saw a stern woman in a grey uniform approach Bay Six.
Eliska turned around. “Yes?”
“Dr. Tannishoy,” the woman repeated. She was a big lady with pudgy cheeks. “There are some irregularities in your paperwork.” She held a device in her meaty hands. Saeliko had seen these devices used before. They were like books, but with only a single page, and the words and pictures scrolled up and down or side to side depending on how you wanted to look at them. Magical stuff, this Zodo tech.
“There shouldn’t be.” It wasn’t hard to detect the flecks of nervousness scratching at the doctor’s voice. Saeliko had spent enough time with Eliska previously to know that the doctor was hiding truth.
“I see the transfer orders here from the QM, and all the flight authorization info is here, but you’re missing ID verification in two places.”
“ID verification? What’s that?” Eliska walked down the ramp to have a look at the plump woman’s device.
“Look here. You need QM Brennov’s verified ID, here and here.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I suppose he must’ve forgotten.”
“That’s really not like him, Dr. Tannishoy. And in any case, I can’t let you leave until we have his authorization.”
“Well, we can’t contact him now. It’s just past zero five hundred. He’ll be asleep.”
“I can submit an urgent request to his office. His staff can provide the clearance, but they won’t be up yet either.”
“What about my authorization? I have Level Seven clearance.”
“Under normal circumstances, that would be sufficient, but you’ve got highly unusual cargo.”
“Cargo?”
“Off-planet non-Zodo personnel.”
“That’s hardly cargo. Besides, they’re under the jurisdiction of the science div . . .”
The two soldiers transported Saeliko further into the belly of the Kye-shiv and caused her to lose track of the discussion. They guided her to a seat facing Dallas and Soup, and once she was seated, they strapped her into the safety harness. That done, they attached her wrist cuffs to a metal ring that had been installed between her legs just under the seat. Outside, she could still see Eliska arguing with the woman who Saeliko assumed was the equivalent of a harbormaster. Even from a distance, Saeliko could see Eliska’s cheeks growing redder.
Satisfied that she wasn’t going anywhere, the soldiers left Saeliko alone and found their own seats. She looked at the two men across from her. “How’s your shoulder?” she asked Soup.
“Good.” He put his hand to the spot where she had stabbed him and massaged the muscle. “How’s your lung?”
“Can’t even see the scar.” She slid her eyes over to Dallas. “I heard you and Kettle carried me to safety back on the Skag.”
“Yep.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“I sometimes ask myself the same question.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Would you have done the same for me?”
She thought about it and wasn’t sure. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“At least you’re honest.”
Outside the Kye-shiv, a third participant had entered the conversation between Eliska and the harbormaster. Saeliko recognized him. She had tried to kick him in the face the last time they met.
Commander Saris took the device away from the chunky girl and began tapping on it. Eliska still looked antsy. She was tapping her hand against her leg subconsciously, a tell-tale sign her nerves were frayed.
“I’m not angry at you,” Soup said.
“What?”
“All of the things you did to me. To all of us. I’m not angry at you. I just wanted you to know that.”
“Are you telling me this because you mean it, or because you’re afraid of what I might do to you if I get these restraints off?”
Soup shook his head. “I’m serious. You treated us like disposable pawns back in the Sollian. You didn’t care if we lived or died. You tortured us and laughed at our pain. But I’m not angry. I don’t blame you or hate you because I understand why you did it. You’re a product of your time and place. You were trained to be the way you are, and not just by the teachers in that Saffisheen school or whatever it was; you were conditioned by all your experiences. And that means you’re not like us. You’re not wired the same as us. You don’t feel compassion or empathy the same way we do, if at all.”
“Huh.” She wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. She felt like telling him that he didn’t have the slightest clue of what Saffisheen training actually did to a person, but sensed that it wouldn’t be a productive direction to take the conversation in. S
he cast her green eyes on Dallas instead. “How about you, Dallas? Is that how you see me? Am I a symptom of a morally devoid society?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re not angry at me for towing Shen behind the Epoch for the sharks?”
“Don’t talk about Shen.” His eyes flared. Saeliko saw the fire burning beneath and took measure of Dallas’ weakness. She liked Dallas, as men went. He was strong, and he was brave. He wasn’t afraid of a good ol’ fashioned fist fight. But he also let his emotions get the better of him, and a smart opponent would take advantage of that.
“I didn’t kill her.” Saeliko decided to dig her claws into his emotional side. Better to confront him now rather than let old wounds fester. “You killed her,” she said. “The minute you started spilling secrets to her in bed, you signed her death warrant.”
“Don’t talk about Shen,” he repeated. “Leave her out of this.”
“You knew the rules. You knew I’d have to punish her when I found out. I had no choice. You knew that, Dallas. Was that part of your plan? Were you trying to get the stupid woman killed?”
“Stop talking.” Dallas stood up and loomed over Saeliko, chin twitching in anger. His fists were clenched and the muscles in his arms and shoulders tensed up. He bent over and brought his face closer to hers.
Saeliko looked up. “Are you going to hit me while I’m all chained up?” His expression didn’t change, and she understood that Dallas was seriously considering it. His baser instincts were scratching away at the more civilized sensibilities that were supposed to keep those instincts in check. “Do it,” she told him. “Get it out of your system. You’ll feel better.”
“She was a good woman,” Dallas said softly.
Saeliko answered in an equally soft voice. “She was a traitor. She was selfish, greedy and short-sighted. She got exactly what she deserved, and you’re lucky I didn’t cut you up and throw you in the water with her. But you don’t see that, do you? You still think she was a victim.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue three times. “Maybe you’re as dumb as she was.”
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