by M. D. Cooper
Levin drew back his leg to kick the cat, but the white and orange ball of fur leapt up, landing on the general’s thigh and sinking its claws in.
“Fucking thing!” Levin screamed and stumbled back as the cat sank its teeth into the man’s leg.
Paul brought a hand up to his mouth, covering a laugh as the general managed to prise the cat free—though the man fell in the process.
“Stupid thing,” Janice muttered and kicked the cat toward a railing that overlooked the passenger terminal’s atrium; the ball of fur shrieking as it went over the edge of the fifty-meter drop.
The general rose up and glared at everyone around him. “If anyone breathes a word of this to another living soul….”
“Word of what?” Drake asked, earning a suspicious glare from the general.
“He’s serious, sir. We won’t tell another living soul.” Alberta emphasized her statement by pushing Paul forward as they walked through the concourse toward the bays.
“My shuttle is this way.” Levin led the way.
A moment later, Alberta stepped out from behind Paul and shot General Levin square in the back with her sidearm. The blast flung him forward, and Janice turned to stare in horror at the guard.
“You were with us!” Janice shrieked after the moment of shock wore off. “You said you were with us!”
“I lied, ma’am. I’ll serve only Paul Rhoads, to the end.” Alberta swung the pistol toward Janice and pulled the trigger again.
“Alberta!” Paul shrieked and broke cover from the crates he had ducked behind.
He scurried toward his injured wife as Alberta and Drake fired on the three remaining guards Levin had traveled with.
Janice’s mouth spurted blood. “Don’t let the legacy die. Don’t hold what I did against me. Don’t….”
Rounds filled the air above them, and Paul flattened himself against the deck, an arm around his wife as all hell broke loose.
LAST CHANCES
STELLAR DATE: 12.22.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Starlight Station, Dante
REGION: Dante Velorum System, Fringe
Kylie drew her pistol and flushed a passel of nanoprobes around the door, taking in the scene on the concourse.
She stepped out and trained her gun on the woman who stood over Paul while he knelt beside his wife’s body.
“Drop it,” Kylie cried out. “Step away!”
“What the hell, Chassea?” the lone woman standing said, swinging her pistol toward Kylie. “You know I’m a better shot than you. What are you doing?”
“Stop! Both of you!” Paul raised his hands. “Alberta, that’s not Chassea. It’s Kylie, my sister. Kylie, Alberta here…she…she was just trying to save me.”
“By shooting your wife?” And here I thought my marriage to Grayson had been turbulent. “Though I guess I don’t blame her…Janice did shoot me.”
A look of confusion came over Paul. “Damn…right…how are you still alive?”
Kylie rapped a knuckle against her chest, which was covered only with the matte grey flow armor. “That tech you hate so much.”
Paul swallowed and nodded, glancing between the two women, neither of which had lowered their weapons.
“Janice was to hand you over to Orion, sir. Drake and I couldn’t let that happen,” Alberta said as she glanced down at the one dead man not wearing an Orion uniform and shook her head. “We saw through her lies when she approached us. The Revolution and Orion don’t mix, no matter how much Janice might have believed it.”
Kylie’s jaw tensed. “All I understand is that the ‘mission’ destroyed my family.” Her gaze shifted to Paul. “Our family. Our legacy could’ve been so much more. Peace, love, trust.”
Her brother looked away, turning back to his wife’s body.
“Alberta,” Kylie said with forced calm. “If you really believe in the Rhoads legacy, you have to let me take him. You can’t protect him against what is coming. Only I can.”
“And what’s coming, exactly?” Alberta asked, straightening her arm as she sighted on Kylie’s head.
“Me,” Kylie said and activated her flow armor, disappearing entirely.
Alberta spun about, looking for Kylie. She swept her gun across the concourse, but the panicked look on her face told Kylie that the woman was outclassed.
“Not a fair fight if I can’t see you.”
As Kylie approached Alberta, she saw Paul suddenly rise and sprint down the concourse.
Kylie stepped in close and grabbed Alberta’s outstretched arm with one hand, while the other clamped around the woman’s neck. Kylie flung her forward, driving the guard’s face into the deck.
Alberta cried out, but Kylie knelt on her back and grabbed her hair, slamming her face into the metal grating.
After one more blow, Kylie rose and trained her weapon on the woman as she backed away. Alberta rolled over, reaching for her pistol, but Kylie flipped her own weapon to its pulse setting and fired first.
Kylie ran down the concourse, reaching the bay Marge had identified. But when she arrived at the entrance, Paul’s shuttle was already taking off.
Kylie changed course and ran toward the ramp to the next level. It took two minutes at top speed to reach her ship, and all the while, she worried that she’d blown her chance. Paul was going to get away.
As she reached the Solidarity’s airlock, a small voice cried out from behind her.
Kylie spun inside the airlock, her hand hovering over the button. “Hurry up, Fizzle Pop! Move!”
The cat sprinted at full speed across the bay—far more quickly than she’d ever seen him run before.
Once inside the airlock, he skidded to a halt and stared up at her.
Kylie rolled her eyes as she slammed her fist against the panel and closed the airlock.
She reached the bridge a moment later and slid into the pilot’s seat as a message came in from the dockmaster’s office.
Kylie turned off the communication and fired the grav drive on full boost, tearing out of the docking bay—likely crumpling the bay’s rear bulkheads in the process.
Once in space, the ship’s scan suite came online, and the forward display highlighted all the ships in orbit of Dante.
“Fuck!” Kylie swore as a she saw a group of ships on approach. “Those look like Transcend hull profiles.”
Kylie struggled to breathe, remembering the utter chaos of the Transcend’s and ISF’s arrival at Silstrand. Memories of being trapped aboard her father’s ship, worried that her family was going to die flooded her mind.
If I lose Paul….
Marge said, highlighting a location on the display.
Kylie heard her, though it wasn’t anything she hadn’t thought of before.
Kylie called out on a band they’d established for emergencies.
A full minute ticked by before the response came.
Kylie nearly cried with joy at the sound of his voice, closing her eyes in relief.
DIE ANOTHER DAY
STELLAR DATE: 12.22.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Emergency Quarantine Area, New Roma, Dante
REGION: Dante Velorum System, Fringe
Once she reached the shore, Ricket was guided to a decontamination area, where her hair was cut off before she was scrubbed down with brushes and cold water. After that, she was given a series of pills large enough to choke an elephant.
At first, it was just the emergency crews with haz gear that were treating her, but then she noticed two other men in haz suits had appeared, holding guns.
Once she was clean, they directed her into the back of a police groundcar. No one had offered her any clothes, nor did they answer any of her demands. They drove her to a brick building not far away and pushed her into a basement room.
They closed the door, and Ricket backed into a corner, hunching down as she shivered uncontrollably.
Ricket wondered that, too. No one had even come to check on her, but she didn’t want to tell Kylie that something was wrong. The poor captain had enough on her plate without worrying about Ricket.
When the door opened half an hour later, Ricket didn’t bother lifting her head from where it rested on her knees. Though she did peer out between her legs to get a view of her visitor, only seeing a pair of black shoes and blue pants.
“Want to tell me who you are?” the police officer asked. “Someone saw you running from the hotel right before it blew—last one out, so far as we can tell. So why don’t you do us all a favor and tell us who you are? Who you’re working for.”
“It wasn’t me. I was trying to save everyone in that hotel.”
“Right.” The woman stifled a laugh. “Others saw you emerge from the lake, but the other woman who went in after you wasn’t so lucky. Did you kill her?”
“Can I get some clothes? I’m freezing in here.”
“Answer my questions, or we’ll pump enough air conditioning through here that you’ll turn into a snowflake. What’s it going to be?”
“Maybe I should talk to your superior officer about your treatment of victims, because I was hurt in that blast, probably more than most. I’m not the enemy, here.” Ricket glanced up, her body convulsing from the cold.
The officer squatted down in front of her. “Far as I can tell, you’re not one of us. You’re not from Dante, and you’re not with the Revolution Fleet. What that means is you’re not with the cause at all. I think you might be one of the others.”
Ricket didn’t answer, except for the chattering of her teeth.
The officer snorted and turned to walk out. She opened the door and addressed someone in the hall. “Keep her locked inside and turn the air conditioning up. We’ll find out what she knows, one way or another.”
The door slammed shut.
Suppressing her anger at the cop, Ricket rolled forward and balanced on her toes, summoning her strength as a cold blast of air conditioning poured down from the vents. The hair that the decontamination crew had roughly shorn off grew back out, long locks trailing down her back as she contained her anger at the people she’d tried to save—did save, with the disabling of four of the bombs.
Ricket crept over to the door and placed her hand against the lock, feeding a filament of nano into it.
Has he lost his mind?
Ricket smiled, even if she did shake her head. Rogers would never grow up, but she kind of liked him that way.
* * * * *
Ricket took a deep breath and pulled the door wide open. The two female guards stationed outside immediately turned their heads toward her. Ricket wasted no time in grabbing one by the head with both hands, while using her as support to kick the other in the throat.
The move took both of the guards down, and Ricket spun and kicked the first one in the head before kneeing the other in the face when the woman tried to rise. Then she grabbed their sidearms and ran from the building.
On the street, she wove through the thin crowds of people who were talking about the explosion. They gaped at the naked woman running past, but no one tried to stop her. As she raced through the city, she could hear the sounds of sirens, and their cadence spurred her on.
Ricket reached her top speed, leaping over a high wall to land on the roof of a groundcar. She sprang up from there, grabbed the edge of a building, and pulled herself onto the roof.
She ran along the low rooftops through a commercial district, jumping from building to building, her long, brown hair blowing behind her
as she sailed through the air.
Ricket could hear the chopper as well, and slid down a nearby fire escape, landing between two buildings. She took a moment to catch her breath, only to hear gunshots as a police car pulled up in one end of the narrow alley.
“Crap!” she swore, diving behind a dumpster for cover.
Ricket waited for a break in the fire and then raced down the alley, coming to a street with the soccer field Rogers mentioned on the other side.
Crowds were pointing up to the sky as a bright light flared above the clouds, and then suddenly, the belly of the Barbaric Queen broke through.
So low to the city, it looked massive…and beautiful, like a shark swimming amid a school of small fish. It turned, its thrusters slowing the vessel until it hovered on its grav drive just a few meters above the grass, the weight of the massive vessel driving a deep furrow into the field.
Ricket broke cover and ran for it. She pushed past the people standing in the street, screaming for them to move.
Behind her, she heard the squeal of tires screeching to a halt. Shots rang out, but by then, she was within the ship’s grav shield, and the rounds stopped well before they met their mark.
One of the ship’s lower airlocks opened, and Ricket made for it, leaping into the air and hooking an arm around the sill.
Her chest slammed into the hull, and she grunted from the pain, determined not to fall. Then something grabbed her arm, and she looked up to see Bubbs pulling her into the ship.
A moment later, she was lying on the deck as the airlock closed, and Bubbs was staring down at her.
“You’re…naked.”
“It’s the latest thing,” Ricket gasped as she rolled onto her knees and tried to control her breathing.