by M. D. Cooper
Kylie leant her back against the platform’s railing and ran her hands through her hair.
Kylie wiped her mouth, the thought of vomiting over the railing almost making it a reality.
Bubbs chuckled.
Kylie smiled.
Bubbs’ avatar sneered across the link and flexed a bicep.
Kylie looked over with a start and saw Raynes enter through the docking bay doors. “Hands up, Kylie Rhoads!”
“Relax, I didn’t bring any weapons,” Kylie said. She lifted her arms as requested anyway, then took a few steps forward, blocking the entrance to the freighter. It wasn’t a total lie; she didn’t have her weapons on her. They were tucked behind a loader a few meters away.
“Move away from the Winthrop!”
“Not until I get the cure you promised me,” Kylie shouted to Raynes as he strode toward her. “Why don’t you come over here? I promise I won’t bite.”
Raynes scoffed at her suggestion. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Do you think I am?” Kylie grinned.
“I do.” Raynes took a few more steps forward and stopped. “Funny…. Thought you’d look a little worse for wear.”
“I have a tough constitution.”
“It’s a shame,” Raynes said with a tilt of his head. Kylie could see his right-hand creep toward his left side—going for a hidden weapon, no doubt. “A shame that we couldn’t work together. Papote would’ve welcomed you with open arms.”
“I’d never work with the likes of them. I’ll put them in the ground. Just like I did my old man.” Kylie took a long stabilizing breath. “How you could live among these people and—”
“I hated every minute of it. These people lied to your father. Hid their tech, rejoiced when news of his death came. No one will miss them. And now it’s their lies that will be their ending.”
“What do you mean?” Kylie asked.
Raynes grinned like a madman. “The virus…it only attacks people with mods. There are enzymes in your body produced to deal with rejection, plus alterations to DNA to allow mods to work. The virus is only triggered if it finds those things. It will cleanse the impure from the human race!”
“How can you claim to want what’s best for humanity when you don’t even appreciate it. These people live hard lives, extracting the ores this system needs, supplying beer, grain, all of it. They don’t ask for much. They just ask to be able to live. It’s what we all want Raynes. Well, except….”
“Except?”
“I want to know your name. Who are you really?”
Raynes laughed. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
Kylie shrugged. “I might die anyway. I’m beginning to think you don’t have a cure.”
“Guilty as charged. You know…she wanted you out of the way, but I respected your name. I’m done with that now.”
Raynes gave a small grin before his hand darted inside his jacket and he drew a sidearm, firing on her, unbridled glee in his eyes. Kylie had been watching for such a move, and held her arms in front of her face, feeling a twinge of pain in her right forearm as the shots ricocheted off her flow armor.
Raynes’ eyes widened and then he glanced at his gun, a look of shock on his face. It had been worth getting shot at.
She took a step forward, and Raynes looked at the unmarred surface of her armor, then back at his gun once more.
“Well, shit.”
He unloaded his magazine on her as he backpedaled toward cover.
Bubbs said from her overwatch position.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from bringing a weapon,” Kylie called out, advancing on the stack of crates Raynes had ducked behind to reload. “Here’s the thing, I am my own weapon. I have armor you’ve never even imagined, nanotech from the golden age, a military-grade AI…and you are out of time.”
Kylie reached the stack of crates and pulled the top one off just as Raynes finished reloading his pistol. He got off one shot before she knocked it out of his hand and grabbed him by the throat.
“Your little reign of terror, Papote’s play here, it’s over. These people are free again.” Kylie threw him clear of the crates, then knelt with a knee on his chest, and punched him between the eyes.
Raynes’ head slammed into the deck, and he groaned. “You’ll never save them all. You might try, you might get some, but you’ll not win, Rhoads.”
“I win everyday people resist succumbing to assholes like you.” Kylie rose and took a step back.
“What are you doing?” Raynes’ eyes widened.
“Never trust a Rhoads,” Kylie said.
A single round fired from a position high on the freighter and struck Raynes’ head, blowing the top off, spraying bone, blood, and brains across the deck.
Kylie knelt back down and checked the man over, on the off-chance that he had brought a cure—not that she needed it, but she was curious. What she found instead was a small, oblong device with a readout indicating it was in standby mode.
Kylie pulled it out and flipped it over.
Marge said.
Huh. Interesting. Kylie couldn’t wait to see what was on that.
Shots streaked across the platform, over a dozen striking Kylie’s armor and knocking her down. Bubbs returned fire, giving Kylie enough cover to get back to the loader where she’d stashed her weapons.
She pulled a feed from Bubbs’ position and pushed out a cloud of nano. Two groups of soldiers in powered armor were advancing from the far side of the platform.
They must have been waiting in the wings, ready to help, but not close enough to save Raynes from Bubbs’ execution.
Once her nano was in the air, Kylie saw that four of the enemy carried large cases that she was certain would hold more of the weaponized gas.
“Let’s give ‘em hell, Dolph,” she whispered right before her flow armor cov
ered her head. Winter wouldn’t mind. In fact, Kylie had a feeling he’d appreciate the irony.
Kylie leant around the loader, which was being peppered with projectile fire, and fired two rail pellets at the first enemy she saw.
One shot missed, then the second hit, knocking the man back, and sending two others rushing for cover. A blue-white bolt of lightning streaked out from Bubbs and hit another enemy, burning a hole right through the target’s torso.
Kylie took a deep breath and turned to face the new threat. She rushed to cover behind a stack of hull plating, waited for the enemy to move closer, then eased around cover, firing a trio of rail pellets at the first enemy. He clutched his chest, and she vaulted over him and kicked the next attacker in the head, while firing on the third.
She continued her rush forward, slamming her shoulder into the third enemy right where her rounds had struck, and then heaved the woman to the side.
The armored Papote soldier lost her balance for a moment but managed to grasp the railing at the platform’s edge. She steadied herself, and raised her weapon to shoot at Kylie, who was now firing at the second attacker who had only received a kick in the head.
Kylie braced for the shots to hit her, when a hole appeared in the chest of the woman at the platform’s edge.
Kylie grinned as she fired another round into the last enemy in the trio that had attempted to flank her.
No one would escape. Everyone would die. Kylie wasn’t taking chances anymore.
Now, Rogers and Ricket just had to do their part.
DEFENSE
STELLAR DATE: 11.06.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Barbaric Queen, Platform 9, North Docks
REGION: Chimin-1, Hanoi System (independent)
Ricket sat at the scan and weapons console, pulling up scan of the space surrounding Chimin—which was almost entirely devoid of any traffic at all.
Nearby, Rogers slumped in the pilot’s chair, his hands hovering over the control console. He let out a low groan, his chest heaving as he drew in gasping breaths. “Hang in there, Rogers,” Ricket glanced at him, even when she didn’t want to.
Still, looking at Rogers was hard to do. His eyes hadn’t fared well. She wondered if it had something to do with the changes he’d been undergoing because of those damned gloves he wore to pilot the Barbaric Queen.
They’d hemorrhaged a lot and were little more than a pair of bloody white masses. If it wasn’t for how much pain he was in, she’d count them lucky that he didn’t need eyes to pilot the ship.
“I’ll be OK.” Rogers’ lips barely moved as he spoke, his words slurred. “Reserving my strength for the flight. I’ll be OK. Reserving my strength….” He repeated himself as if he hadn’t already said the same thing a few seconds ago, and a few minutes before that.
Despite the fact that Kylie and Ricket were on the mend, the cure hadn’t been tested on more vanilla humans. Ricket feared—almost to the point of being paralyzed—that the cure wouldn’t work, that Rogers would die, that everyone else would fall prey to this vile gas that Raynes had concocted.
And even if they did have a working cure, it was still of the utmost importance that Papote didn’t get their hands on it. They could spread death a lot faster than the Barbaric Queen could spread the cure.
Ricket scowled.
Ricket did. She just didn’t think she could stop it. Sure, maybe if she wanted to…. She just didn’t want to.
Ricket forced herself to focus on Rogers as he eased the Barbaric Queen out of the narrow berth in the North Docks.
“Good thing you’d reinitialized the reactors before we went to Chimin-5,” Ricket said.
She was amazed at how a man who could barely form a sentence was able to manage the massive starship with such ease.
I wonder if that’s a part of the changes he’s been undergoing, or if he’s always been this good.
She didn’t speak as he exited the docks and rotated the ship to obtain a clear vector for a longer burn, moving the Barbaric Queen above the bulk of the Chimin asteroids so they could get an unobstructed view of space surrounding them.
Ricket pulled up the dorsal cameras and watched Chimin-1 shrink behind them. That the last three intense days had taken place on those few small rocks adrift in the vastness of space was almost impossible to comprehend.
Laura announced.
Ricket put the scan data on the main display, glad to see only three ships, but less glad as she evaluated the enemy’s vessels. “Crap, that’s a two-klick cruiser and a pair of heavy destroyers. Not converted from civilian duty, either. Those are purpose-built warships.”
“Three.” Rogers raised his eyebrows. “Well, that’ll make things interesting. Will you do the talking for me?”
“Of course,” Ricket said as they picked up a transmission being broadcast at Chimin-1.
“I thought you were going to let me do the talking.” Ricket sighed, though glad to see him string a sentence together so well. Maybe a bit of action was just what the doctor ordered. Or would have, if she wasn’t unconscious.
“Sorry,” Rogers said with a dispassionate shrug. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Commander Moss’s laughter was as haughty as her words.
Ricket’s eyes bugged out of her head as Rogers cut the comms with Moss. “Wha
t the hell, Rogers? You couldn’t have played that a little closer to the chest?”
“My chest burns and my bones feel like they’re on the verge of snapping. If we’re going to do this, it has to be now.” Rogers’ fingers dance across his station.
* * * * *
Bubbs had volunteered to stay behind and keep watch over the Winthrop and the cases filled with gas canisters. Kylie suspected that the woman was hoping more of Raynes’ cronies would show up and she could beat them into bloody pulps the same way she had the others.
Kylie didn’t give it any further thought as the pinnace that Rogers had dispatched settled on the platform and lowered its ramp. She ran aboard and turned toward the cockpit. It was the first time she’d been aboard one of the ISF’s donated ships, and she was struck once more by how new everything looked.
Granted, the ships might actually be brand new. From what she’d learned, the ISF had far more equipment than they had people to use their toys.
Kylie ran past the cabins and the small galley and was nearly at the cockpit when Marge screamed in her head.
She spun just in time to see a figure step out of the galley and swing something—a heavy skillet if her eyes weren’t lying—right at her head.
The cookware hit Kylie square in the temple and she reeled backward, crashing into the cockpit door before sliding to the ground.
Her head throbbed, and she felt warm, sticky blood flow down the side of her face. Kylie blinked, trying to focus on the person standing before her, finally making out the grinning visage of Liberty.
“Miss me?” the woman hissed.
THE QUEEN
STELLAR DATE: 11.06.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Barbaric Queen
REGION: Chimin-1, Hanoi System (independent)