by Jake Elwood
O'Reilly stood with her people in a cluster at the top of the stairs. Hammett said, "Stand down for the moment. This bunch can come onto the bridge with me. No one else, though."
She nodded, and the guards edged backward onto the catwalk leading to the nose of the ship. Hammett was tempted to bring a couple of guards onto the bridge with him, but there simply wasn't room. He doubted he'd get all of his 'guests' into the tiny bridge at once.
He entered the bridge, then took his seat. Friesen, Fuller, and Steinfeld filled the back of the bridge. Vicente had never returned to the bridge, and Fuller sat at his station, which made enough room for Fortescue to squeeze in. The lieutenants gave up and waited outside.
"Have we made any progress on determining our position?" Hammett asked.
Hal turned in his seat. "I haven't found it in the atlas yet," he said, "but there's a fairly distinctive nebula just aft of us."
Hammett looked backward, and could see nothing but a row of vac suits. All four visitors gaped out through the aft windows. "Your windows are in terrible condition," Steinfeld said. "You should think about steelglass."
You should think about shutting up. "Does anyone recognize it?"
To his surprise, someone did. Fortescue said, "I think it's the Ballerina."
"Doesn't look like a ballerina to me," said Friesen.
"Aha," said Hal. He was looking at a red blur on his screen. "The Ballerina nebula. It's totally looks like a girl in a tutu from the other side." He rotated the image in his display. "Yup, that's it, all right." He glanced over his shoulder. "Good catch."
Fortescue inclined her head.
"We're quite close if we can see it with the naked eye," Hal said. "I think that star must be XC195." There was a long pause. "Oh, that's not good." He turned again in his chair, his face mournful. "We're a good two hundred light-years from home."
A long, uncomfortable silence fell over the bridge.
"Well, we can still make it," said Friesen. She patted her ample stomach. "Food might be getting a little thin by the time we get back, but some of us might even benefit from that." She looked at Hammett. "How far can this tub of yours jump?"
"It can't jump," Hammett said. "We can reach the nearest Gate in about five hundred years."
That made her eyes pop. "Well, what are we going to do?" Friesen looked from one officer to another, anger and fear twisting her features. "We can't just stay here!"
There isn't any point in asking, you fool. There aren't any suggestions to be made. We're trapped here, and demanding solutions from your officers isn't going to-
"Well," said Fortescue.
Every person on the bridge turned to look at her.
"The Manatee was carrying a Gate," she said. "In case the colonists disabled the Gate we came through." She gave Hammett an apologetic shrug. "We thought you might do that, Admiral."
Hammett barely heard her, his mind racing with the possibilities. The supply ship had a Gate! If the Gate could be deployed, it would link to the matching Gate near the Earth. Would it work that way? He wished he knew more about trans-dimensional physics. Was the other Gate attuned somehow to the Naxos system?
"What good does that do us?" said Friesen. "The Manatee is destroyed."
"Maybe," said Fortescue. "All we know for sure is that it was disabled."
"But it's back with all those aliens!" Friesen sputtered. "There were hundreds of them!"
A babble of voices broke out. Hammett spoke over all of them, drowning everyone out. "Commander." He looked at Fortescue. "Do you know what will happen if the Gate is deployed from here?"
"Well, how can it be deployed?" snapped Friesen. "It's surrounded by-"
Hammett gave her a hard look, and she went silent.
"It'll connect," Fortescue said. "It will take a while. Several hours, because of the distance. But it will connect."
Earth, connected directly to the Hive. A nightmare scenario even a short time ago, but now? With the Hive scattered, their settlement in ruins?
They would never be more ripe for attack.
"That's it, then," Hammett said. "We have to get back to the Manatee. We have to open that Gate."
Friesen started to argue, but Eddie was already reaching for the controls. Hal tilted his head to activate his implants, and murmured for a moment, then said, "They're disconnecting the Sgian Dubh now."
"Good," said Hammett. "Clear the bridge, please."
"Now, look here," said Friesen.
"No, Linda." It was Colonel Fuller who spoke, startling pretty much everyone. He rose from his seat and put a hand on Friesen's elbow. "Let the man do his job." He pushed her toward the exit.
Friesen planted her feet, resisting him. "But-"
Fuller looked at Hammett, gave him an apologetic smile, and said, "Admiral. I order you to fly us through the Gate and take us to the Manatee." He snapped his fingers in a parody of arrogance. "Now! That's an order!"
"Yes, Sir," said Hammett, smiling.
"Is that what you wanted?" Fuller said to Friesen. She didn't answer, but she let him push her toward the exit. The Spacecom officers, poker-faced, exited first to make room. A moment later, O'Reilly poked her head in.
"No more visitors," Hammett said.
"Right."
The stars moved as the ship swung around to point at the Gate, and Hammett felt a chill settle into his bones. I can't believe we're going back into that meat grinder. God help us all.
CHAPTER 21 - JANICE
The barn burned.
Oh, the stone walls were fireproof enough. In fact, the mortared stone that Janice crouched behind was still cool to the touch, and she pressed her cheek to the rock, wicking away some of the heat.
She was hot, drenched in sweat, her hair plastered to her forehead beneath the rim of her helmet, her hands slick on the rifle she held. Part of it was fear, mixed with a visceral excitement she hadn't expected.
The rest was from the fire. The roof of the barn was in flames above her. It roared, an unsettling, greedy sound she did her best to ignore. She couldn't fight the fire, and she couldn't leave the barn. So she told herself the inferno two whole meters away was unimportant. She had enough to do playing soldier. She wasn't going to play fire chief too.
She knelt on one side of the barn's broad entrance. There'd been a door, but it lay in scorched chunks on the ground now. Chiweto knelt on the other side of the entrance, his face shiny with sweat. Stewart was behind her, watching through a small window in the back wall, making sure the aliens didn't come at them from that side.
Ahead of her, across a short yard covered in dead grass, the farmhouse burned. That fire was past its peak now. For a while the flames had shot a good twenty meters into the air. It was high enough she could almost hope someone had seen it, and was sending help.
Except the farmyard was nestled down among the wrinkles in the land, well below the tops of the surrounding hills and ridges. This part of the valley was pretty much depopulated. No one was going to see anything.
The radio clipped around her ear would let her talk to Chiweto and Stewart, and that was it. The long-range gear was in the truck, or in the sergeant's backpack.
Janice wouldn't be calling for help any time soon.
Chiweto tensed, and Janice raised her own rifle. She didn't look where he was looking, somewhere off to her left. Her field of fire was to the right. The aliens liked to move simultaneously, to keep the humans from concentrating their fire. Chiweto took aim, then fired a quick three-round burst.
Something came around the side of an outbuilding, a spiky angular shape, and Janice fired three quick shots. The alien came across the yard toward her, and she fired another burst, then another. Chiweto shifted position, firing almost straight into the burning house. At least three aliens were on the move, then.
She unleashed another burst at the alien, saw the spark of a ricochet against an armored forelimb, and fired another burst as the alien changed direction. It fell back, skittering behind the outbuilding
, and Janice indulged herself in a moment of quiet satisfaction.
Except that the aliens likely had a plan. They'd sent out a well-armored commando to keep her busy while other aliens advanced. Whatever their strategy was, she was doing little enough to slow them down.
The outbuilding, a shed of some sort, was a flimsy-looking structure of wood. Janice poured half a dozen shots through the walls, hoping to catch that commando by surprise. She had little chance of harming it, but if she could keep the alien hugging the ground it could only help.
A line of white light seared its way across her vision, splitting the air between her and Chiweto. A stone cracked, and Stewart cried out. Janice pulled back from the doorway as the beam swept left and right. It blackened the stones where she'd rested her cheek just moments before, then vanished.
She turned to the back of the barn and felt her heart lurch in her chest. Stewart was down. The brave boy who'd managed to survive the attack on the hillside was flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling.
They'd lost their best marksman, too.
Then Stewart sat up. He stared at the blackened line that now decorated the back wall of the barn, then stared at Janice and Chiweto.
"Get over here," she hissed, and gestured at a spot beside here. He leaped forward, reaching her side in two terrified bounds, and stood with his back to the wall.
"They're shooting through the fire," Chiweto said. "They're behind the house."
Which meant the three of them couldn't shoot back—not with any real hope of hitting anything—until the fire died down.
"They're beside the barn." Stewart's voice came out as a frightened whisper, barely audible above the grumbling of the flames. He curled the fingers of one hand, pointing behind him. "I hear them."
Chiweto started to lean out, rifle rising, then flinched back as the heat weapon once again played across the front of the barn. Janice pulled back too. But that's what I'm supposed to do. They're providing cover fire. They fire the heat weapon blind to make us pull back, and then the alien outside-
The line of white fire disappeared and she rose to her feet, stepping out into the doorway of the barn. She found herself facing an alien commando at point-blank range. He was just rounding the corner of the barn, no more than three meters away, and he sprang at her as she started to fire.
There were no three-round bursts this time. She squeezed the trigger as fast as she could, firing shot after shot. The creature surged forward, those steel-clad forelimbs reached for her, and she hurled herself sideways. She landed hard on the floor of the barn, and Chiweto and Stewart poured a lethal barrage into the alien.
It fell twitching, dying in the middle of the barn floor, and both men ducked back into the corners. That was all the warning she got. The heat weapon was back, sizzling through the doorway. Janice lay beside the alien in the middle of the barn floor, completely exposed. She rolled onto her back, did her best to press herself into the dirt floor, and stared up, mesmerized, as the probing finger of white energy wobbled back and forth in the air above her.
The weapon stopped firing, Janice had a single moment of sweet relief, and then a fist-sized ember plunged from the burning roof, straight toward her face.
She shrieked and brought a hand up, batting at the lump of wood, feeling an instant of heat against the base of her thumb. The ember landed beside her, close enough that she could feel heat on the side of her neck. She rolled to her feet and sprang over to join Stewart beside the door.
"Your hair," he said, and slapped at the side of her jaw. Janice smelled burning hair and shrieked again, shifting the rifle to her left hand so she could bat at the side of her head with her right.
"Hold still, dammit. You're not helping." Stewart dropped his rifle, grabbed her by the collar with his left hand, and used his right hand to pinch out flames. Janice reached for the chin strap on her helmet, trying to open it one-handed.
"Better leave that on. There's more cinders falling."
As if to illustrate his point, a chunk of debris the size of a twin mattress plunged from the ceiling and engulfed the dead alien on the floor. The sound of the fire grew from a mumble to a roar as fresh air rushed in.
Stewart picked up his rifle. "If it keeps falling in little chunks, we might survive." A crackling sound came from directly above him, and he looked up. "Crap."
Janice was just starting to look up—not the best idea, since it exposed her face—when Stewart grabbed the edge of her armor just under her chin. A hard jerk brought her stumbling forward, and he hauled her across the open doorway to join Chiweto on the other side.
Janice said, "What the hell?"
The three of them were pressed close together in the corner beside the doorway. Stewart had to twist his head sideways to see past Janice's shoulder. "I thought that corner of the roof was going to-"
A rumble made Janice turn her head. She was just in time to see the far side of the roof collapse. The ends of burning beams tumbled down, creating a maelstrom all along the opposite wall. The spot where she'd been standing was completely engulfed in flames.
"I guess you're forgiven," she murmured.
Chiweto, looking straight up, said, "I think we'll be all right. The side should hold for a couple of minutes, unless something happens to-"
A concussion shook the ground, knocking Janice to her knees. A crack opened in the wall beside her, and she stared at it, trying to figure out what had just happened. Someone was shouting, but her overwhelmed mind couldn't process the words. Then hands grabbed her armor where it passed over the tops of her shoulders, and Stewart and Chiweto dragged her out of the barn.
The roof collapsed behind her. She didn't see it, but she heard a rumble, felt a wave of heat against the back of her neck, and watched clouds of sparks billow past her. She wanted to pat her hair at the back, make sure it wasn't burning, but holding onto her rifle seemed more important.
Directly in front of her, the house was almost fully consumed by flames. The aliens might already be able to see them through the sinking fire. She took a single step to the right, thinking to run around behind the barn, but Chiweto's arm stopped her.
"We need cover," she panted.
"Look," was all he said.
A line of shadow swept across the yard. Janice tilted her head back and gasped. A corvette filled the sky, hovering just a few meters above her head.
"Reinforcements are here," Chiweto said. "I guess we get to live."
CHAPTER 22 - KAUR
Make a hole, people."
Kaur stalked through the corridors of the Tomahawk, wrestling with impatience as sailors pressed themselves against the bulkheads. There was simply nowhere for the refugees to go to be out of the way, and she fought the urge to snap at people who took too long to get out of her path.
It wasn't as if she was in a hurry, really. Sure, a sense of urgency clawed at her, but there would be nothing for her to do when she reached her destination. She had nothing to do on the bridge, either. The Tomahawk was coasting up to the enemy Gate, but they wouldn't arrive for a good ten minutes.
And when they got there? She shrugged inwardly. The long-term plan was to figure out which way human space was, find a way to fix the distribution coupling, and start the long, long journey home.
Not that they'd make it. Starvation would finish them off long before they reached a friendly Gate. Unless she chose a subset of the crew to live, and condemned the rest to starvation or suicide.
With cannibalism, a greater portion of the crew could survive. It was an ugly thought, but to dismiss it out of hand was to condemn more of the crew to a slow death. So she had to consider it.
"Why the hell did I ever want command?" she muttered.
"Ma'am?" said a sailor.
"Nothing."
She needed to pop through the Gate, she supposed. See what had become of the Theseus and the Sgian Dubh. See if the far side of the Gate was any closer to human space.
Then pick a side, destroy the Gate, and start the
long, hopeless trek home.
At last she reached the door to the medical bay. It seemed wonderfully open at first glance, until she saw the bodies that covered the floor. Men and women stared up at her, faces tight with pain, or stoic, or filled with medicated bliss, or blank with unconsciousness. She paused for a moment, taking it all in. Then she worked her way forward, stepping carefully over arms and legs and torsos.
"What can I do for you, Captain?" Kaur didn't recognize the woman—she had to be the medical officer from the Gideon—but she spoke with the crisp authority of a doctor in her own environment.
"I'm looking for a pilot named Hardy. Probably your newest patient."
"He's back there." The doctor pointed at the back bulkhead. "Don't bother him." She turned away, kneeling to examine a young man on the floor.
Her utter disregard for the chain of command was … startling. Almost refreshing, so long as it didn't spread. Kaur delivered a mocking salute to the back of the woman's head, then picked her way to the back wall.
Hardy was unconscious, breathing with the aid of a respirator mask and a stimulator pack clipped to his chest. His face was dreadfully pale, and dark bruises filled the hollows around his eyes. His vac suit was gone, and his uniform. A thin blanket covered him. He seemed thin and frail without his clothes, and Kaur felt her heart go out to him. She had no idea how badly he might be hurt, and she looked around for the doctor. But the doctor was clearly busy, and so was her own medical officer, who knelt in the far corner.
"They're ignoring you," she whispered to Hardy. "That's good, right? You must be out of danger."
Or beyond help, said a cold voice in her mind. She stretched a hand toward Hardy, then hesitated, afraid to touch him, afraid to disturb him. He looked so vulnerable under the blanket. He was vulnerable without a vac suit. If the ship lost atmosphere, he was a dead man.
In fact, every patient in the medical bay was unprotected. The doctors, too. Kaur's was the only vac suit in the bay. She thought about ordering the doctors at least to suit up, but how much clumsier would they be in gloves and thick sleeves?