The rifle made a “blump” noise as it accelerated its charge out its long barrel. The ammunition spread out on impact, punching holes in the orangey-yellow plastic walls, but creating a small explosion when hitting the metal support beams. The pistol sounded like a higher pitched version of the rifle. Above them, the plastic ripped and tore as the soldiers tried to fire at them through the walls.
Suddenly, Awbee cried out in agony and slumped forward onto the floor, hitting her head hard on the deckplates.
“Mom!” Ralla yelled, diving to her side. Blood gushed from Awbee’s left leg. Ralla handed Thom the sidearm as she went to work making a tourniquet out of her belt. The older woman was alive, but unconscious.
Thom entered full adrenaline panic mode. The noise of the tiny explosions, the shouts from soldiers—all the chaos of battle seemed far away. They couldn’t go forward, and going back meant they’d be trapped. He peered the best he could around the corner, and still couldn’t see where the two soldiers had taken cover. He did see the effect his firing had on the wall he’d hit. Ralla looked up at him, terror in her eyes. He handed her back the pistol, swung the rifle over his right shoulder, and picked up Awbee. He put her over his left shoulder, unslung the rifle, and fired a stream of shots into the wall in front of them. The plastic tore away under its own tension, half melting in the process.
Thom made eye contact with Ralla, then stepped through the hole he’d made in the wall into a tastefully decorated living room. Thom stepped on and crushed a low green plastic coffee table, lost his footing, and crashed over the sofa behind it. He shot out the next wall, and then they were out onto the next street. He spun as he saw the two original soldiers and fired a few shots in their direction. They dove out of the way and out of sight down an alley.
Two more paces and a few more shots and they were through the next wall littered with terminals and desks, apparently an office. He stepped up to a solid jog. More shots and they were through the next wall. He could smell the burnt plastic as it clung to his hair and clothes each time they passed through one of his gun-made punctures.
It didn’t take long for the Pop soldiers to figure out what he was doing, and soon they were firing at them through the walls. The shots impacted around them, causing Thom and Ralla to duck involuntarily. One more building, a storage area, mostly empty. That next wall gone, and then the transport was in sight.
They had barely made it out of the final building when the alarms finally started to howl, red lights flashing along the walls. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Thom realized this wasn’t an alarm for the invasion. They were sealing the station. Ahead, the lock was closing. The forward lip jerked up a few inches from the deck around it. It wobbled for a moment, the internal gearing and motors struggling with their first motion in two decades.
“Go go go go!” he shouted over his shoulder. His legs were weak from the running and the extra weight of Awbee hanging across his shoulder. He threw away the rifle and got ready to do whatever he had to do get the elder Gattley on the other side of the lock. The watertight drawbridge was already at knee height. More steps, he thought. Keep running, keep running.
By the time he reached it, it was at waist height. He flopped Awbee onto the rising surface, and pushed her down below the line of gunfire. As the floor rose, her limp body started to slide down the increasing incline towards the pool. One problem at a time. He turned around and felt his heart stop.
Ralla was still in the building. She had been covering them. Thom looked frantically around for his discarded rifle. It had slid against the wall. Screaming for Ralla to hurry, he dove for the gun. The charge was nearly depleted. Ralla heard him and started running; Thom fired into the hole he had created in the building wall, and then towards the spaces between the buildings and the outer walls as he saw soldiers appear there. The rounds hit the permiglass, scoring it and causing a puff of smoke, but little else.
Ralla was running. Running and shouting. With the noise of the gunfire, the alarm, the grinding of the lock behind him, he couldn’t make out what she was saying. Then she pointed. The lock door was now head height. His head height. There was no way Ralla would be able to reach the edge by the time she got there. He leaped up and hung with one arm. The mechanism struggled for a moment, and then started to lift him off his feet. He motioned with the rifle for her to hurry. He fired off the remaining shots, wildly hitting the dome and buildings. Useless now, Thom dropped the empty rifle, holding out his hand ready to grab Ralla. Just a few paces away now, almost there. Almost there.
The look that crossed her face when she was shot was unmistakable. Thom took solace in the fact that it was a look of surprise for now, but he knew the pain would follow. The impact from the round knocked her forward, face first onto the deck. As she fell, she shouted, “GO!”
He wasn't sure how he didn't immediately run to her. It would have been so easy. He only held on with a few fingers, but he was already higher than he could jump even before she had gotten hit. To let go now would mean all three of them would be captured. She looked up at him, face bloodied. He could tell by her look. In the clamor he couldn’t hear her, but her mouth formed two words: “Save her.” Her face showed no fear, no pain, just resolve. If he let go he knew she would hurt him. Worse yet, she would hate him. Rounds started to impact the underside of the lock as it lifted him farther and farther away from her.
He nodded once, then swung up, getting a leg on the edge and pulling himself over. As the door passed 45 degrees, he stretched his neck up to peek over. She was surrounded by soldiers, grabbing her and pulling her to her feet. Her eyes locked on his. He knew he only had a moment, knew that he had to tell her something. That he’d come get her. That he didn’t want to leave her. More rounds started impacting around his head, hitting the lock and the ceiling above. He said the only words he could say, the only words that would sum up what he needed to tell her. Three words: I love you.
She closed her eyes as Thom slid down the lock door.
Awbee lay in a crumpled, bloodied pile at the bottom of the lock. One arm dangled over the edge into the water. After failing to find any controls to the lock, he carried her into the transport, kicked away the stairs, and sealed them in. The sensors told him there were just two other subs in the area. One was docked at the other end of the station; the other had been patrolling, but was now holding just above the station, waiting to pounce. It seemed like the enemy pilot figured that was the best place to cover any escape. He was mistaken.
Thom blew the ballast and the sub fell away from the station like it had been dropped. Instantly his console lit up with warnings that the other sub had locked on and was eminently firing weapons. Before his craft hit the seabed, Thom pushed the throttle to its maximum, launching them forward like a rocket. The supports for the station flashed by, close enough to touch. Then he was in the open, still accelerating. He blew the rest of the ballast and dove straight down.
By the time the other sub caught onto his tactic, the transport had disappeared into the Crevasse.
V
The forth punch put him on the floor. By that point, he wasn’t sure why he had remained standing for the two previous. There, among the stickiness and the stench and the filth, Thom decided that if this guy wanted to beat him to death, he’d be OK with it.
It had taken Thom and the unconscious Awbee three-and-a-half hours to get back to the Uni using full emergency speed. They weren’t followed; his depth and course had seen to that. A medical team was waiting for them on arrival, as he had requested. While Awbee was brought down to MedBay, Thom was rushed to the Bunker to brief the Captain. He told Thom he would personally brief the Proctor and the Council in the morning. It was little consolation to Thom that the Captain felt he had done the right thing, and congratulated him on making the right choice.
He made it all the way back to his cabin before the weight of what he had done hit him. He sat on the edge of his bed, shaking. As if in a daze, the world around him disappeared
as he relived the moments over and over. Her face. Her face as she fell. Her face as it looked up at him. He couldn’t come up with any reason why he hadn’t let go. She was right there, just a few strides away. He could have picked her up...
But no, even then. Even with the haze of shame and regret, some part of him knew that he had been too high. There is no way he could have jumped back up. Then they’d all be captives. That was so nearly a better option. But it didn’t matter. Not in the least.
He slid off his bed and sat on the floor, knees to his chest. He wanted to yell and cry and scream and weep. He wanted to go back to that moment they had been alone at the far end of the station. To touch her hand. Tell her that they should leave then. Now the tears came.
He staggered down to the bar a few hours later and buried himself in booze. He didn’t see the guy enter who hit him. Just the fist as it landed on his right eye. But as he fell off the back of the stool, mostly standing, he saw who it was. It was the blond guy. The guy who kissed Ralla. The guy she wore on her arm like a big dumb genetically engineered accessory. Thom knew Cern Hennorr, by look, reputation, and now by feel. The second punch was on the other side of the face, and he staggered back a step. The next was the gut. The one that put him on the floor was to the jaw. The guy was screaming at him, face flushed with furor and wrath. That part, at least, felt good.
At least they put her arm in a sling. It hurt brutally. She wasn’t sure what was in the ammunition they’d been using, but the pain it created was mind-numbing. That was probably the point.
From what Ralla could tell, and from the opinions of the scientists surrounding her, her wound wasn’t deep, though it would probably leave a scar across her shoulder blades and down her arm a bit. Surprisingly, she didn't care.
There were eight of them in one room of one of the dormitories. The bed had been removed and they all sat on the floor, shoulder to shoulder. There was a worn cyan carpet that did little to insulate them from the icy steel deckplates.
She leaned forward the best she could, having nearly blacked out the one time she’d leaned back against the wall. The others had tried to move so she could lie down, but she wouldn’t have any of it. There was barely enough space for them to be sitting as they were.
Over the next day they were allowed turns in the bathroom, supervised by an armed soldier, and served meals of whatever packaged food had been found by their captors. They could whisper, but if the soldiers heard them talking they’d be threatened at gunpoint. She heard shots down the hall at one point, and figured the threats were probably real.
The biggest problem was her layered linen indigo blouse and black cotton pants. She explained away her dressy clothing saying she was new to the station and had wanted to make a good impression. It was a bad lie, but under the circumstances no one thought to question it.
The second day they were ordered out of the room and down to the lock she and Thom had entered. She felt a twist in her stomach, hoping he had gotten away OK, that he had gotten her mom away OK. She was sure she would have heard it had the sub been destroyed near the station, that unmistakable sound of a sub imploding. But still, she wondered.
They entered a transport, which left and immediately docked to the side of another sub. She was unable to get a look at its outside, but from its cramped quarters and state of interior, she was pretty sure it wasn’t the Pop.
The hallways were narrow and the walls were covered with bare tubing and wires. The lighting fixtures were unadorned filaments that had gone out of style on the Uni decades earlier. It was a strange mixture of old and new. The deckplates had patches of rust, but they passed several rooms adorned with new looking equipment and terminals. Some bulkheads were even shiny. The best she could tell was that it was an old ship—or at least one hobbled together out of other, older ships—that had been refurbished.
They made it to this ship’s small mess, and were handcuffed to brightly polished benches. It surprised Ralla that they hadn’t seen anyone other than their captors. She was sure a ship of this one’s apparent size would have to have a crew of at least a hundred or more. Other captives filed in and were placed around the other five gleaming tables. She wasn’t sure the complement of the research station, but it would have to have been more than this. Maybe there was another sub, or this one was making multiple trips. She had no one to share her curiosity; their captors made it very clear that there was to be no talking. So they sat in silence on the cold benches, smelling food they weren’t having.
Then for the better part of a day, they sat. No food, no water. Bio breaks were done in shackles. She was glad she had used the facilities on the station. From what Ralla could guess it was in the evening when they finally made it to their destination. There was a disconcerting jolt that the four guards in the room must have been expecting, given their lack of surprise. As a group they were herded off the way they’d entered, but now exiting down a set of stairs where the transport sub had latched before. She concentrated on not losing her balance as she descended the soaked and slippery metal stairs. When she reached the deck, she took in her surroundings. It was awe-inspiring.
From what Ralla could tell, given the height and the curves, she was in the front portion of the interior of the Population, roughly where she and Thom had slept and seen the speech so many months before. It had been completely transformed into a portal for war. They stood on what had been the bottom deck. A colossal pool occupied the center, larger than anything on the Uni. There was an unobstructed view clear to the ceiling, more than twice the height you could see at any open part on the Uni. Every few stories, there was a “U” shaped floor with maintenance bays, launch bays, and rows upon rows of submarines. Attack subs, escorts, subs of different sizes and designs she’d never seen. She counted fifteen of these floors, with a least fifty subs per floor. And those were just the small ones.
Getting her first real glance of her “transport,” it seemed to be roughly corvette sized, with a crew of maybe 50 to 70, and that was the smallest sub she saw on the floor around the pool. There were half a dozen frigates, 100 to 150 crew, and a pair that were even larger.
None of those compared to the menacing submarine at the far end of the shipyard. It was all hard angles bristling with guns. Ralla guessed two rows of five corvette-sized subs could fit into the pool at the same time. The sub at the end of the shipyard looked almost too big to fit in the pool at all. Fear mixed with awe caused her to stop walking, and she was jabbed hard in the back by one of her captors.
Everywhere there was work being done on the subs, on platforms, but the space was so open, so cavernous, it was all faint and far away. At the end of the shipyard, where once there had been a view clear down to the other end of the Pop, there was now a bulkhead, floor to ceiling. The amount of metal, minerals, energy required for all this, in such a short time—Ralla could hardly fathom it. They were marching them across this space, in front of all this, for a reason. And it was working.
Ralla’s group entered a small elevator in the bulkhead that separated the shipyard with the rest of the interior of the ship. It rattled as it rose, and quickly lurched to a stop. The doors opposite the one they had entered opened to reveal the interior of the ship. As she suspected, it was as if a giant patchwork of metal had been sliced down into the Pop. Walkways just ended. Shops were split, the bulkhead as a new wall. Ralla could see cabins bifurcated high above by this new end to the living space. The light was bright, but there were oddly few people about. And that wasn’t the only thing that had changed since her last visit. New floors and platforms jutted out into the open down the length of the ship. Light squeezed past their staggered placing, casting sharp shadows that blanketed the floor.
Supports extruded out from bulkheads and hung haphazardly to any flat surface seemingly able to hold them. These arched up, connected with the new levels, then arched back down to the other side. She couldn’t see what was on the closest of these new levels, but those farther away appeared to have some greenery
and what could have been tents.
They crossed the park where she and Thom had done their research, the terminals now blank, and continued to the starboard side. Then countless corridors, all damp and poorly lit, before the group arrived at a space that was likely a ballroom in its previous life. Now, though, it was littered with cots. Rows and rows of cots. Worse, there were more people than cots, so the floor was covered in sitting, sleeping, and obviously distraught bodies. Ralla had her first moment of panic. Her breathing quickened. Her heart pounded. Her face flushed. These were Uni citizens. These were her people. And this was a jail. The faces nearest her were gaunt. Uniforms and clothing were soiled and torn. Some in the cots had blood on their clothes; others had more obvious injuries.
She saw few blankets, most covering unseen figures too still to be sleeping. Her sharp intake of breath went unnoticed as the others around her all processed the same thing.
For a brief moment, she had wished she had run to Thom when she had the chance. She saw him, hanging from one arm, being lifted from the deck. The anguish on his face as he was pulled away. Not for a second had she wanted him to do anything else. More than anything she hoped he understood that. Then she wondered, not for the first time, what he had said before he slid down the gate.
VI
Marines had found him still on the floor of the bar, bloodied, bruised, and unconscious. A med team had picked him up, cleaned him up in the Medbay, and sent him home. No sooner had he changed out of his sticky, bloody clothes than there was there a knock on his door. One of Jills’ assistants, after giving him a confused once over, informed him that the Proctor wanted to see him. The assistant neglected to say the entire Council would be there as well.
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