by T. G. Ayer
Nerishka chuckled as Sigurd reached the bay’s level and she dropped down beside the blonde.
“What’s so funny? You soft in the head as well as a psychotic killer?” the woman asked.
Nerishka shoved Sigurd toward the hatch. “Just talking to my AI about you. She’s a little worried you won’t make it to the bay in time.”
“What do you mean?” Sigurd squeaked, eyes large as she glanced over her shoulder even as she opened the hatch and slipped through.
Nerishka navigated the hatch and followed the blonde who had suddenly quickened her pace. “She says if you don’t move faster I’ll be forced to give you the serum before we get to the bay. Which I have no intention of doing.”
Instead of responding, Sigurd set off in a sprint down the hall. Nerishka grinned as she raced after her.
Sigurd skidded to a stop beside a wide doorway marked Bay 7B. She palmed the access panel and fled inside, Nerishka close on her heels. “Shut the door and jam the controls,” Nerishka ordered as she spotted the single shuttle in the bay, ramp open as though waiting for her.
Sigurd was shaking her head, even as she obeyed Nerishka. “It’s not going to work. Inanna has the overrides. Locking it won’t stop her if she wants in.”
Nerishka sighed with relief as the lights flickered, and the bay door lights began to flash.
Just as Nerishka began to activate the shuttle for departure, the exterior bay doors ground to a halt and the interior doors activated, beginning to slide open. She spotted Sigurd at the bay’s entrance, next to the control panel, yelling at Nerishka. “What about my antidote?”
Sigurd’s face was contorted with fear as she began to approach the craft. Nerishka rose from the small cockpit and walked to the shuttle’s entrance, ready to draw and fire on Sigurd if the woman got too close.
“There isn’t one,” Nerishka said, keeping an eye on the bay’s exterior door status.
“You tricked me?” Sigurd yelled, the fear on her face shifting to rage. “I helped you! Do you know what’s going to happen to me?”
The terror in the woman’s eyes triggered a wave of compassion in Nerishka. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“Because I won’t allow it,” said a voice from behind the blond. Nerishka froze as a blast from a pulse rifle hit Sigurd in the back, sending the blonde sprawling.
Nerishka’s flechette pistols were in her hands instantly, both aimed at the president who stood just inside the doorway, flanked by a pair of her cloaked guards, a pulse pistol in her hand.
“You didn’t need to do that. I forced her to help me,” Nerishka said.
“That’s irrelevant,” Inanna said, her face twisted with anger. “I expect total loyalty. Even if she helped under duress, she still betrayed her oath.”
Nerishka glanced at Sigurd’s still form, then at the president. Inanna’s face was a study in fury as she glared at the blonde sprawled on the bay floor.
“I suppose I should be flattered that Septhia sent their best to attempt to do away with me,” Inanna spat, her fury directed at Sigurd.
said Lyra drily.
Nerishka shifted, ready to dart into the shuttle as the president studied Sigurd. “You think I wouldn’t have found out what you were?” Inanna rasped, her voice vibrating with emotion.
“You were like a daughter to me, Sigurd,” Inanna all but whispered. “I trusted you. I was grooming you to take over from me someday.”
“Must have had something to do with that jump gate you were building,” Nerishka said.
Inanna started at the sound of Nerishka’s voice, as though she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. The president looked up. “What do you know about that?” she asked softly.
Nerishka shrugged. “Not much. Just that I blew it to smithereens.”
Inanna laughed. “You must be mistaken.”
“Not really.” Nerishka smiled innocently. “Yazata’s a field of debris right now. So is your gate.”
Inanna paled but she recovered quickly. “It doesn’t matter, Azag moved the research out to Sraosha. It continues unabated.”
“For someone who behaves as though she’s supremely intelligent, you’ve made some errors in who you should trust. Azag confirmed that he hadn’t moved the research yet. When we blew Yazata, we took it all out.”
Inanna’s eyes had narrowed, but she didn’t speak, so Nerishka continued, “You can’t hide anymore. There’s a flashing sign above your head and it’s not going anywhere. Sigurd’s people, my people, we all know what you were up to.”
Inanna glared at Nerishka, her attention fully off the injured Septhian spy. “Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do? Ayra is a sovereign system. We can do what we wish.”
Nerishka shrugged. “You’re talking to the wrong person. I’m not the one who makes the rules. Just a minion who pulls the trigger after it’s pointed in the right direction.”
Inanna didn’t respond. She remained perfectly still for a moment, then shifted her hand and fired her pulse pistol, sending a volley of shots at the open shuttle door.
The president’s guards joined in, and two shots hit Nerishka before she ducked out of the line of fire.
Nerishka raised her pistol but before she could get a shot off the outer bay doors exploded inward, the shockwave shoving the shuttle forward a meter, and throwing Nerishka to the ground.
Judith’s response of ‘Traffic’, was lost in a hail of weapons fire as more of Inanna’s guards poured through the inner doors and rained kinetic shots on the shuttle that had just blasted its way into the bay.
Out of the corner of her eye she watched the two guards who’d fired on her blasted to s
mithereens by Judith, who was hanging out of her shuttle’s door, whooping in delight as she rained shots down on the ASF soldiers.
Instead of running out, Inanna had taken a position behind a tool chest and was firing on the shuttle and then on Nerishka in tandem.
Judith took out another soldier, and Nerishka waited for a break in Inanna’s shots before rushing closer, ducking behind a stack of crates just in time. Inanna fired again, the hail of pulses knocking the top crate off the stack and onto Nerishka’s back. She shoved it away, cursing the president’s skill with a pulse weapon.
The woman was determined to kill Nerishka, and from the constant rain of weapons fire, she wasn’t about to stop until she’d finished the job.
Nerishka studied her surroundings, her gaze falling to the a-grav pad beneath the crates. She activated it, pushing them ahead of herself until she was a mere ten meters from Inanna. Nerishka was about to ease out and take a shot with her flechette pistol when two of the soldiers turned her way and sent a hail of pulse blasts at her.
She ducked back behind her crates, which were slowly being pummeled by pulse blasts. A quick glance around her revealed half a dozen more guards taking positions on a gantry above—barely held in check by Judith—and Sigurd only a few meters away on the right.
As she spoke, Lyra set the crane in motion, its long arm swinging toward Inanna. But the president simply sidestepped the crane-arm and continued shooting.
Sigurd was turning onto her side, taking slow ragged breaths. Nerishka duckwalked around the crate and took aim at Inanna; the president was firing on Dresden, who was near the shuttle Nerishka had been trying to steal.
He was peppering the guards with a railgun, reducing Inanna’s forces by half in moments, and even less when another shot from Judith took a soldier next to Inanna, ripping his neck to shreds.
Nerishka surged to her feet and aimed.
But before Nerishka could look around, pulse fire rippled past her, taking someone out, their body hitting the ground with a soft thud. Nerishka kept her eye on Inanna, refusing to allow anything to distract her.
Nerishka squeezed the trigger at the exact moment that Inanna spun and fired. The blast flung the flechette pistol right out of Nerishka’s fingers while Inanna gave a smirk of satisfaction.
Nerishka didn’t look to see if they’d proven fatal, instead sprinting around the crate and racing toward the president, ready to dispatch the queen bitch with the lightwand.
But before she reached Inanna, the gunfire had subsided, and the woman had hit the floor. Both the hairsticks had struck true, the first deep in the heart, the second impaling her through the throat.
Only then did Nerishka glance over her shoulder to see who had fallen behind her. “What the hell,” she muttered as she stared at Sigurd’s body, half her head blasted away, one eye staring sightlessly up at the bulkhead.
“She was about to shoot you through the head,” yelled Dresden. “Can we go now?”
Nerishka didn’t object.
She turned on her heel and raced for the shuttle, making it to the ramp alongside Dresden. The shuttle took off even before the ship’s door was securely shut and Nerishka lay on the deck floor, unmoving.
“Nishka!” Dresden yelled, racing to drop down beside her. “Lyra, was she hit? I didn’t see her get hit.”
Nerishka clicked her tongue and brush him away. “I’m fine. I just need a sec.”
Dresden’s brow furrowed and then he smirked. “Death Dealer losing her touch? This is just the kind of thing that can go viral if I were to recor—”
“You wish,” Nerishka muttered as she sat up, shutting the lightwand down and returning it to its holster. “I lost my flechette. I really really like that damned pistol.”
Judith burst out laughing from the shuttle’s cockpit. “You almost get your hand blasted off and all you can think of is your weapon?”
Apart from the busted cheek and lip—which were both easily fixed—Nerishka was OK. More than OK
Inanna was dead.
And Kelem was waiting for his antidote.
UNVEILING
STELLAR DATE: 10.21.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Ishtar Station
REGION: Ayra System (Independent)
Raz had supplied the shuttle with one of his fake idents, and as Judith flew close to the docks and bays at Ishtar Station’s north end, Lyra activated the new beacon and logged their departure from an unrelated docking bay.
Now Nerishka was back on the Teshub, standing over Kelem, arms wrapped around her body as she waited for him to come to.
Judith was in the room, moving with anxious energy, glancing at Kelem every few seconds, looking for the slightest change. Beyond the redhead, Dresden stood near the window in silence.
Raz had already filed their departure paperwork, and the Teshub was headed back to Nimrud Station, narrowly escaping the lockdown on Ishtar as the authorities desperately searched for their president’s killers.
Nerishka and her crew weren’t out of the woods yet, but she knew that they’d deal with any pursuit if it happened. No need to borrow trouble just yet.
The journey signaled the end of their temporary team and Nerishka recognized the disappointment she felt. She’d denied it to begin with, but denial took too much mental effort, and in the end, she’d given in.
Nerishka didn’t reply.
said Lyra.
Lyra sounded as though she was going to continue her train of thought but Kelem’s voice cut her off. “I’m back,” he said, his voice husky. “This dying thing’s a piece of cake.”
The team burst out laughing. Trust Kelem to make even death look like a joke. Judith and Dresden hovered around the patient and Nerishka stepped away, withdrawing from the room to give the team their private time.
Nerishka was in her cabin, making a half-hearted attempt at folding a pair of pants when Dresden’s voice caught her unawares.
“Going somewhere?” he asked from the doorway.
Nerishka straightened as she looked over at him. She owed him that confession and she had a feeling he’d come to collect on that rain check.
“I’ll have to report in to Jeriah personally after all this. You know the deal,” she said, giving him a rueful smile.
He moved into the room and settled against the wide window that displayed the small blue dot that was Xerxes in the distance. He folded his arms, muscles bulging as he studied Nerishka’s face.
He had that look. The one that said he wasn�
�t moving until she told him what he wanted to know.
Nerishka tossed the pants into her suitcase and moved toward the window. “Suppose it’s that time, huh?”
“You are on a clock, if I'm not mistaken. You said we’d get to go over this when the mission was done.”
Nerishka nodded and shifted her gaze away from his face. If she looked at him she’d never be able to tell him the truth.
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Pretty sure a simple conversation would have worked. I would have been fine if that’s what you’d wanted.”
She glanced over at him, unable to keep the pain from her eyes.
Dresden chuckled. “You didn’t want it?”
She shook her head. “Not in the slightest. But I had no choice. Your life was in danger.”
“Care to clarify?” Dresden said, his tone a little harder.
He’d be bristling now, ever the man who can take care of himself. She sighed. “Jeriah insisted I cut ties after the mission to Methus.”
“That clusterfuck with Olit and the team?”
Nerishka nodded. “Olit almost died. Jeriah went ballistic, came down hard on inter-agent relationships. Pretty much ordered me to choose: you or my position with the Hand. Given how I got into the organization, departure isn’t actually an option.”
“Still,” Dresden growled, sidestepping the circumstances surrounding Nerishka’s enlistment in the Hand. “She had no right to do that.”
Nerishka shrugged. “She was hurting. Olit nearly died. She took it hard. And then she ended it with Olit.”
“So, she spread the misery around?”
“She meant well. She felt that emotional attachment can compromise both mission and operative.” Nerishka sighed. “Didn’t you get the memo?” she asked, glanced at him with a sad smile.
“I got it. I figured that was all Jeriah. She’s not above such ultimatums. Olit? I admit I didn’t know about her.” Dresden pursed his lips.
“Then you left the Hand.”
“That wasn’t why I left.”
Nerishka felt his confession like a kick in the gut. She swallowed hard. “You left because I took off.”