by V. M. Law
The four of them were fanned out in a formation that reminded Kasey of old movies, black and white ones that survived in ancient formats and could be viewed at museums that she and her grandfather frequented. From behind her cover—an overturned computer bank with a gaping hole in its screen that left her with a sore shoulder after the strenuous labor of turning it on its side—Kasey could see how foolish their obstacle course was, how easily conquered.
Above the maze, booby trapped by Ajax and Gustav, the security feed played incessantly, showing the progress of the MarsForm security army that moved through the halls. They marched up the ship and into the highest reaches, where Bridge Command looked down on the space-borne city of towers that speckled the surface of the massive freighter. Now, not a person in the bridge had their gaze fixed on the windshield, but all eyes instead focused on the gigantic monitor that showed the movement of exactly thirty-two armed security officers in two formations.
She rested her brow on the scope of her rifle, knowing its cool touch would be a distant memory as soon as the incoming army arrived at the bridge. I am going to shoot a human, she thought, unable to place the feeling that accompanied the thought, though knowing that her excitement grew.
“They’re here,” Ajax said in a preposterous whisper, as if the army on the other side of the locked bridge doors would hear his warning.
A loud screeching sound came from across the killing field, behind the overturned maze of computer banks that the four had constructed with no small amount of effort. They were drilling. Three minutes, five at the most, according to Gustav.
***
Kasey imagined that when the shooting started, she would adapt to the situation at hand, conforming to the needs of her circumstances as she had done for most of her life. As the soldiers poured through the obstacles they had erected, however, the explosions of proximity mines, concussion grenades, flashers, all grew to a rumbling chorus, harmonized by the high pitched screams of the faceless victims of their subtle traps.
The screams did not unnerve her. She heard the deathly cries of those who were unable to escape Europa. She remembered the way Edgar screamed—not with fear or pain, but with rage—as a ray of alien light pierced his torso and he fell amongst the other dead. What did unnerve her was the sheer volume of displaced air that rushed to envelope her as the trip wires triggered, the fatal buttons compressed.
As the latter half of the MarsForm army stormed through the barricades, impiously hurdling the limbs and screaming torsos of their comrades, Kasey leveled her firearm at the opening in the shooting wall and depressed the trigger, holding it down, feeling the vibration of its kickback in her hands and the warmth of its shot on her face. Feeling the primordial scream of a human at war ravage her throat.
The others followed suit, abandoning their plan of stealth and deceit in favor of Kasey’s primeval destruction. The four of them fired until their guns overheated, or ran out of ammo, and dropped them to the floor in exchange for a freshly loaded one, each combatant shooting through their stockpiles of weapons.
Bullets flew back at them, pinging off the metal and seeming insignificant next to the blazing light of lasers that flew across the bridge. Smoke from all around, rising out of computer circuits and flaming grenade holes, mingled at the ceiling until it began to fill up the room.
She did not know how much time had passed. When her final gun was spent and its hollow clanging sounded out in the oppressive silence of a recently finished battle, she dropped it to the floor. Closing her eyes, not wanting her last moments to be spoiled by a soldier’s sneer, she waited for the blast of heat that would immolate her innards, throw her back against the wall and send her to a death beside her compatriots.
She waited, and felt only the harsh blow of something much harder than a fist slamming against her nose, then the warmth of blood pouring, combined with scent of copper, of old, dirt piping in her grandfather’s farm house, then the pink light of unconsciousness as she lay on her back, staring at a floro light through closed eyelids.
Chapter 21
When she came to, she found her arms fastened tightly in her chair and the grim smirk of a career soldier staring back at her as he diligently polished his pistol, running a chamois cloth over its reflective surface until it shone beneath the pale lights of the reactivated ship. Amidst the corpses of the battle, still strewn about the killing floor, his smile seemed ghastly, disgusting, something to fear. Llewellyn Mantiss, Ajax, and Gustav were in similar situations, bound with metal chains and ropes, facing the windshield on the bridge of the Age and looking at the man standing before them who shifted his gaze between the four of them as if deciding which chicken to butcher first. Behind his head, Neptune hung, vast and oceanic.
“You are all probably wondering why I took you alive.” He sneered, revealing a gold tooth that added to his hideous aura. “I’m wondering that myself, when I look around and see all these dead boys lying on the ground.”
The man strolled with ambivalence, unmindful of the destruction wrought around him, until he came to a stop at the arm of a soldier that had been solidly attached to that soldier’s torso until a few hours ago. As he picked it up and waved it at the four of them, reprimanding them for their insolence, Kasey had occasion to wonder whether or not the owner of that arm still drew breath.
“This arm belonged to one of my boys. Rogers. It says it right here, Rogers. I didn’t know Rogers, but I sure as hell wish you didn’t kill him.” Now he turned directly to Kasey. “Do you know why I wish you didn’t kill him?”
He waited for Kasey to respond, seeming to single her out. Taking slow, strolling steps, he drew closer to her, staring at Kasey until she felt rage enough to gouge his eyes out. When he stood a few paces away, his calm façade fell away and he slammed the severed arm on the ground. “Because he was my fucking man. Not yours. Mine.”
Kasey wanted to conceal the wave of trembling nervousness that blossomed in her stomach, not knowing how this deranged individual would react to any sign of weakness.
With renewed calm, he continued, now turning his attention to Mantiss. “I don’t like it when people kill my men because it makes me look like a terrible commander, and no one would dare call Rostov anything but great, wouldn’t you agree?”
Mantiss nodded in affirmation, drawing a strained laugh from their captor. Ajax, the furthest from Kasey, stared intently at the captain, and each time the man had his back to Ajax, he fidgeted with his hands behind his back, tensing his muscles slightly, so subtly that only Kasey could see that the contours of his shirt rose and fell as he worked something in his fingers.
His ties are loose. We’re not dead yet, Kasey thought.
She called out for the captain’s attention as he turned, delaying his pendulum-like motion for a few more seconds as Ajax worked his bonds.
“You didn’t kill us because you want to torture us.” Her voice sounded small, resigned to a damnable fate.
“Torture you? Girl, I don’t want to torture you—the twentieth century was a long time ago.” He pulled up a chair of his own—a broken computer monitor on its side—and continued talking after sitting directly in front of Kasey. “I don’t need to torture you to get what I want. I just need some of this!”
His demeanor brightened as he revealed from his satchel a syringe with translucent contents that the four of them instantly knew was Tellidol.
“This stuff will get you talking, girl. This stuff will let you let me know, what it is exactly we are doing out here, in the outermost reaches of the human landscape, approaching a base that has not functioned in over a century, on the bridge of a stolen ship that belongs to the company that puts food on my table.”
From so close, Kasey could smell synthetic coffee and the coppery scent of blood that rose from the man’s pores. Ajax looked at her, imploring her to take as much of his time as she could manage. The rising and falling of his shirt sleeves increased in frequency and intensity, and from Kasey’s angle, it looked as if h
e was mostly free.
“You see, what’s your name?” He waited for an answer, and Kasey let the silence hang for a second longer than she should have.
“Kasey.”
“You see, Kasey, I have the rest of my boys on the star runner already, and they’re itching to get home. This was a really bad trip for them. I am willing to wager that if I turned one of them loose on you, I wouldn’t need this syringe. So tell me. Do you want the syringe? Or some twentieth century treatment?”
Kasey glared at him, anxious as each second languished past.
He reached out his forefinger, and with a sickening smile that spread across his pock marked face, he stroked Kasey’s chin, slowly dragging his finger along the line of her jaw. “Twentieth century, it is,” he said, his voice melting in Kasey’s ears.
With a rapid motion of his left arm, like a judge slamming a gavel, he brought his fist down onto the gash in Kasey’s thigh. Pain shot from the wound as blood spilt from the cauterized scar, overpowering Kasey’s senses and sending her into a fit of pain. She gritted her teeth, trying to trap the shout of pain that moved from her core to her throat, coagulating in a knot until it burst forth in an unformed mass of sound.
She rocked back in her chair, feeling gravity pull her down as she reached the apex of the chair’s lean and continued tilting back. The three men remained quiet; only Llewellyn showed any sign of cracking at Rostov’s brutality, and as Kasey fell to the floor, she averted her eyes from his, not wanting to see her pain reflected in his stare.
Rostov laughed, extending his hand. “Would you like some help? I see you are rather tied up at the moment. I guess I’ll leave you there.”
He began pacing, addressing the four of them in a loud, echoing voice. “I have kept you alive because I cannot help but find my curiosity stoked at a stolen MarsForm freighter appearing out here in the orbit of Neptune.”
He turned an inquisitive glance to Ajax that melted into a smile as he approached the renegade captain. “I am here for Neptune! I am here to find out the great mystery that has rocked the human world—or what’s left of it at least.”
He knelt down on one knee right in front of where Ajax sat restrained. “You really did steal the show, Hardmason. Stealing a deep space freighter! I guess you had some assistance from the Ides, but it still stands a remarkable feat. You managed to steal a freighter from directly under Farrow’s nose, and you made it all the way to Neptune without being stopped.”
He ceased his congratulations and his mien shifted at once into a dark glower. “So what are we going to find when we hit the surface, Hardmason? Because we are touching down, and with a force much larger than this.”
“There’s a great whorehouse on the far side. That’s where we were heading.”
Rostov affected a cheap laugh, artificial and cold. “I see.” He pulled a pistol from a concealed holster and activated it. The pulsing sound of electricity filled the room, amplified by the stillness the production of the gun brought about.
“So shoot me. I’m the only one who knows how many Ascendants are down there. I’m the only one who could even point you to the front fucking door,” he said, craning his neck forward until the contour of the veins in his neck became apparent. “So shoot me.”
Without a word, Rostov dropped the pistol, which had been leveled firmly at Ajax’s heart, and fired a blazing blue laser into his foot that left a black spot in Kasey’s vision when the glare abated. Ajax screamed, as Kasey had done, and she imagined the forlorn look of captured convicts that must be hanging about them. Only Gustav remained unwounded, and his good fortune in the preceding affairs that led her to the cold steel of the bridge floor made her despise his presence, as if he knew everything ahead of time, always knowing where to position himself so as to escape with the least physical harm.
“That felt wonderful, didn’t it?” Rostov asked, cheery again as Ajax’s blood pooled against the soles of his shoes.
Ajax’s screaming subsided into a series a panting breaths, painful and strenuous. Rostov stood before him, looked at the pistol in his hands, and leveled it at Kasey. “How many Ascendants are on Neptune, how are they organized, and where is their lair?” His eyes had the dull sheen of a viper as he asked the questions in a polite manner, raising his inflection and his eyebrows as if he spoke with a temperamental child. “Three.”
Ajax held his resolve, meeting his adversary’s gaze with determination. Mantiss screamed at him to just say it, tell them before he shoots her. Gustav stared at Ajax, studying how his cohort would meet the challenge, and Kasey did nothing but count her breaths and stare into the terrible emptiness of the gun’s barrel, wondering if the light show blinded its victims when they stared directly at it, like the sun.
“Two.”
Ajax continued to stare and Kasey knew with a fatal certainty that Ajax would not open his mouth to save her. Two more breaths, now, she thought.
“One.”
A deafening roar shattered the tension of the moment and sent Kasey into a well of confusion that ran so deep that she believed herself dead, and gave into the hypnotic, steadfast roar that seemed to never end.
She closed her eyes, comfortable on the floor and feeling no more pain in her leg.
Chapter 22
The screams of a man’s voice pierced her solace. She did not recognize the voice at first, completely unmindful of Rostov’s presence, before realizing that the tortured scream she heard through the veil of death that shrouded her came from his choked and gurgling throat.
She felt a thud on the floor beside her, and the warmth of blood splash on her face. When she opened her eyes, Rostov writhed on the floor, clutching his neck and kicking his heels against the computer monitor he had been sitting on. Smoke tickled her nose and a sickening grumble rose from somewhere in the Age, somewhere far off, making Kasey think of twisting steel. Before she registered the stare of a slaughtered animal in Rostov’s eyes, Llewellyn Mantiss grabbed him by the lapel and thrust a knife into the man’s stomach. Mantiss turned the blade, stolid, unmerciful as Rostov’s scream became more strangled and eventually gave way to a stream of black blood that poured through his teeth, which remained bared in his frozen face after the final air bubble escaped his lungs.
She felt the knife nick her wrist and heard a rushed apology from Mantiss, who immediately jumped over to Ajax, cutting his almost-loose ties and moving onto Gustav. Alarms blared and the computer bleated out haphazard statements that were barely comprehensible in the din that rose all around.
The door opened. “Boss, Leviathan’s been hit,” one soldier said, falling silent as he took in the expanding blood puddle that flowed from his commander. His partner looked steadily at his commander’s pistol, which Ajax gripped firmly with two hands, keeping the sights trained on the two new comers.
“Drop your weapons!” he screamed.
The first soldier to walk in, the one who ran his mouth before evaluating the situation in the room he barged into, attempted raising his gun, succeeding only in drawing a burst of fire from the pistol in Ajax’s hands.
His partner, the silent one, dropped his weapon and began reaching his hands above his head when Ajax shot him once in the center of the forehead. No one complained, or questioned his morals. They instead stood in a semi circle, looking at the carnage before them and listening to the sounds of more soldiers approaching.
Kasey picked up the dead soldier’s gun.
“The airlocks are compromised. I say again, the airlocks are compromised. Decompression occurring in three boarding chambers. Decompression occurring in five boarding chambers. Decompression occurring in—” the computer continued speaking, the count of decompressed chambers increasing, its voice sounding weaker and more distorted than it did when Kasey shot through Patsy.
“We need to get off the ship,” Gustav screamed over the blaring alarms.
“What about Charybdis? It’s in the holds!” Ajax responded.
“If we’re going to contain the damag
e, Patsy needs to boot the Leviathan.”
“Patsy, we need you. You have to boot the docking vessel and seal off the whole quarter. The entire portside aft bay.”
Kasey leveled her new rifle at what remained of the computer bank labyrinth as the sounds of footsteps coming through the doors on the other side grew louder. When the first soldier came into view, she compressed the trigger, bracing for the recoil, holding the trigger down until a pile of bodies began to form at the maze’s exit. Llewellyn grabbed the other rifle, and joined the shooting.
“If I eject the docking vessel, the engines will be damaged, and may not be repairable.”
“What happened?” Kasey screamed to Mantiss as they continued their volley.
“I don’t know. A ray gun of some sort, from the surface. It leveled the Leviathan.” He cast his gaze down the barrel of his rifle and placed a shot in the chest of a soldier who barreled over the pile of bodies, dropping him as he screamed in pain. The flood of incoming soldiers began to slow, turning into a trickle.
“Patsy!” Ajax screamed. “If you don’t boot that damn ship, nothing will be repairable.”
“The landing modules will not function. We will have to enact an emergency landing protocol,” the computer warned.
“Just do it!”
Ajax leveled his pistol at the gap in their obstacle, as did Gustav, and the four of them continued their earlier fight until the trickle of soldiers coming into the bridge stopped entirely. When the shooting ceased, eleven more bodies lay on their pile, smoke curling from their wounds as their incapacitated groans cried for help that would not come.