Kicking Ashe

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Shan did not know how she planned to survive, but he did know what he needed to do, if they managed to evade the two killing blows. Her track would bring them close to the ships’ vulnerable under bellies. He prepped his firing solutions.

  Ashe dropped their forward speed some more and the Zelk ships responded eagerly.

  He learned forward, his eyes on his screens, his fingers on his fire controls.

  His ship kicked forward a bit. As if they’d found more power. He felt the Zelk straining toward them. Felt them closing, slowly closing. They weren’t even yet, but in seconds they’d be able to lance—

  She throttled back hard. The ship shuddered. Other alarms registered screaming protests. They passed between the two ships as the lances tracked toward them. One scraped across the side of his ship. One ship tried to angle toward them. Instead the two lances tangled, twisted with loud shrieks of protest.

  A chunk of metal spiraled toward them. Fire licked its side, almost obscuring the Zelk symbols.

  Their tail dropped.

  Pushed the nose up, pointed right where it needed to be.

  He fired a spread toward their exposed bellies. All shots stabbed into the Zelk craft, blooming into bigger and bigger explosions as they triggered secondary explosions. His ship dropped position again, turned to evade as fire and debris tumbled in every direction.

  He felt a sudden jolt, as if they passed through something solid. His ship slowed, so did the metal tumbling toward them. All of it unnaturally slow. Even his thoughts, reactions felt slow.

  A large chunk seemed drawn to their nose, on a path for the view screen. He braced. Not sure it would hold. Seemed to take forever.

  It reached the shields. Passed through them.

  Reached point of impact—came through the ship’s skin as if it weren’t there, through him.

  Most disconcerting. He turned—it felt slower than slow—watched it pass out of his sight on the other side of the bridge. More pieces followed it through the ship, through him. Around him.

  One passed Ashe. Slow. So slow. Her mouth opened. Seemed to take a small eternity. If she spoke, he didn’t hear—

  “Cra-a-a-ap.”

  The word came to him in pieces, took forever for all the short word to reach his ears.

  His alarms squeezed out, sluggish and discordant.

  More impacts. He made a slow trip against the straps holding him in the sling. Then longer for the recoil against the seatback.

  More warnings sounded.

  A slow motion ship report scrolled down the systems screen.

  Attitude control gone.

  Forward weapons down.

  Atmosphere breach on lower deck.

  Inertial dampeners partially off line.

  Helm not responding.

  Steam streamed from all sides, obscuring much, heightening the sense of slow time by the way it crept toward him…

  Felt the slow roll as he lost control of ship’s movement.

  Another prolonged slam against the straps.

  Then the long slow roll the other direction. The measured slam against the seat back.

  A hit from a new direction and then sudden, swift drop into a deep, dark void.

  SIX

  The clawing climb back to awareness was very déjà vu—no, that wasn’t right. Déjà vu was the familiar that wasn’t familiar. This was not only familiar, she’d been here, done this, was so over it. The hiss of released pressure told her that it wasn’t exactly the same. Not a pit, but a ship. As if he’d been waiting, Lurch fed her the ship’s damage report. A bit surprised to get it, cause her last memory was of them getting a serious ass kicking. She studied the report cause it was inside her head and she didn’t have to open her eyes to do it. And it took her mind off the places that hurt.

  Not that the report was good news. The pass through slow time had been a bitch, but the slam of fast time? Beyond. We kind of misjudged that last time zone. Memo to self: don’t ever do that again.

  She cranked up one eyelid to half-mast and took a peek. Oh yeah, hadn’t wanted to see that. Various warning lights painted red onto the drifting smoke and jets of steam that alternately hid and revealed twisted chunks of metal hanging down. The tidy bridge wasn’t tidy, actually wasn’t really a bridge anymore. A pity she’d been driving for the hard landing. Shan wasn’t going to be happy about his bent bird. Shan. She grabbed at the straps that held her in the bent and crooked chair.

  He is fine.

  Drones moved to erase her aches and pains, though at a slower rate than normal. He’d had to use a fair bit of them to patch through a connection to what was left of the ship’s systems.

  Are you all right?

  I am well. He also managed to sound a bit peeved.

  She should have asked about him first. She got that. And it sucked to have your life dependent on such a fragile container as a human body. She’d thought that together they were almost invincible. Now she felt like a bug trying to outrun a big boot. Her eyes stung and her lungs burned from the smoke filtering onto the damaged bridge. She rubbed her eyes, but it didn’t help.

  Am I crooked or is he?

  I believe it is the ship that is askew. Crashing against terra firma can cause—

  —askew-ness? She wasn’t surprised when he declined to respond to that. She felt for the strap release and this time got it to let her go. It dumped her down on the decking. She slid into Shan’s chair. Almost slid past it, but she managed to grab the back. It shifted. He groaned.

  She scrambled up, her feet slipping on some chemical leaking from a busted panel, used his chair to block gravity’s desire to slam her into an instrumentation panel. Found his pulse. A bit thready. Can you help? It was an honest inquiry, given the state of their drone supply. Seemed unfair to hog the healing though. Would Lurch give up some for Shan? Lights flickered at the point of contact. In the private place in her head, Ashe was impressed. For someone who lived microscopic, he did magnanimous better than she did.

  I could only spare a few. It will take more time.

  Do I want to spend that time finding a way out of here? The slam against terra firma was a clue they weren’t in space anymore. Now it seemed like a good idea to figure out which terra firma they’d made extreme contact with.

  There is a breathable atmosphere, though it is not ideal. Compounds detected could indicate an old war or a regeneration cycle.

  Like terra forming?

  Possibly.

  Life signs?

  Nothing the damaged sensors are detecting. Range is severely limited.

  Which didn’t mean there was nothing was out there. And it could—and probably would—get worse with Time messing them around. At least he didn’t throw any pithy family sayings at her. Neither wanted to think about the impossible or how much longer it could take with time shifting like quicksand. Are we still being stalked by the time quake?

  We appear to be in the aftershock phase, though I suspect it will be back.

  Ashe wasn’t quite sure what the sudden accent was there on the last two words and felt his sigh whisper through her. Not-so-great grandma would have gotten the joke. Without the explanation which of course totally killed it dead. I’m sorry. That she’d missed that old vid? Or that she wasn’t not-so-great grandma? She wasn’t sure.

  You have no need to be.

  So why did she feel the estrangement between them like a headache that refused to ease? She knew she needed to let it go. So what if he should have told her he started the Time Base? It was water under a bridge somewhere. If the Base or the bridge still existed. It was, she knew, her jealousy that kept getting in the way. He was the bigger man, or bigger nanite. She even knew it wasn’t about what he had and hadn’t told her. It was her. Not-so-great grandma. What Ashe felt from Lurch about her. That he liked her better even though she was long gone. Ashe was the inferior version. Better than nothing, but not as good as the original host. Lurch had been the one sure thing in her life and now he wasn’t. But she could get
over it. Of course, be easier if they weren’t lost in time—

  The bridge escape hatch is too damaged to use, but there is another a few meters along the passage outside that hatchway.

  Relieved at the distraction from going nowhere thoughts, Ashe eased Shan’s neck into a better position. He already looked better, the cuts starting to fade. She got her bearings, then let gravity have its way with her. Luckily it was a short trip to the hatch. No time to get up a lot of speed, since objects loomed out of the gloom in places they weren’t supposed to. She ducked to avoid a sagging panel, then almost shot out the hatch—except it was jammed halfway open and her body exceeded the gap by just enough. The parts of her that made contact with metal weren’t happy about it, but it could have been worse. She squeezed into the gap and pushed, managed to widen it enough to slip out without leaving those bits of her behind.

  The lighting was worse in the passage and the acrid smell of singed metal mingled with spilled fuel, making war with what oxygen there was. Her eyes and throat burned, but the nanites in her system helped ease both as much as they could. Lurch boosted her eyesight, but it was still creepy feeling her way through the murk and damage with only the mournful blink of the emergency lights as company. Lurch’s ship schematic helped some. Not that the interior matched it post crash. At least the outlines were still there. Just jumbled. She crawled over a big piece of something. The tilt of the ship kept her mostly against the bulkhead, and she was able to drop down on buckled decking.

  The emergency hatch should be just ahead to your left.

  The schematic in her head tightened on the spot, showed her the dimensions and mechanism controls. Ashe shifted some debris and found a position that let her use gravity and the bulkhead to steady her, as she compared reality with the schematic. The release mechanism looked undamaged—she manipulated it. Not a huge surprise it didn’t respond. There’d been some serious—not to mention unnatural—torque going on during their spin through time and space.

  She crouched, bracing her hand against the bulkhead and tried the manual release cover. It didn’t budge.

  There is another escape hatch further along the passage, past where it bends.

  Ashe assessed what she could of this so-called passage. The bend was hard to find when the passage appeared filled with debris, changing it to a blockage. Let’s see, climb a metal debris slide or try to get this one open? Not even a real question. She stood, got a grip on the jambs, and kicked the hatch cover. The whole ship shifted, the angle sharpening.

  You did not do that. The ship is settling.

  Her mind believed him, the rest of her, not so much. She bent and tried the cover again. This time it came loose. She tossed it aside. Shifted so her foot wasn’t on the hatch itself. Pulled her weapon, used the other hand to grasp the release. It took two tries before she decided that the angle was wrong for good leverage. She moved as much as she could and tried again. With a shriek of protesting metal, followed by the sullen hiss of pressure releasing, a hatch-sized crack appeared in the bulkhead.

  The explosive release did not discharge.

  No kidding. Ashe turned until her back was against the bulkhead, then, still clutching the weapon to her chest, hit the hatch with her heel. Good thing her uniform was back online. The soft Keltinarian sandals would have been as useless as bare feet. Still felt the jolt of it to the roots of her teeth. Gritted those teeth and did it again. And once more—

  It gave, the explosion muffled, though Ashe felt the heat of it for an instant, before the hatch fell away with a clatter. Followed by the racket of metal sliding against metal, a brief silence then a thud against what she assumed was ground. Cold, dank air rushed into the ship through the opening, a shock after the heat and humidity inside the hull. Goosebumps sprouted on her skin, though her suit systems quickly adjusted to compensate for the temperature change. Welcome back suit.

  Ashe, still clutching the weapon, leaned forward to take a cautious look. Thoughts and breathing stalled at the same moment. Blinked once, then again. It didn’t help. She eased into the opening and stared at the city spread out for her study.

  The dead city.

  She didn’t need the utter silence to tell her it was dead. Her gaze traced the line of buildings, gray, formless, with blank, broken windows. The sullen sky, the heavy, dark clouds lit by occasional and dispirited lightning, created a somber backdrop for the dispirited skyline. There were signs nature had tried to take it back. Stark branches reached toward the sky and into the streets at the city’s edge. Dark stuff crawled out of long cracks in masonry where it had withered in place, defeated by whatever or whoever it was that had killed this place.

  Ashe had thought that hovering on time’s plain between an incoming tsunami and her disrupter bomb had been bad, possibly the worst life could dish out. She’d been wrong. This bleak, nearly dead place was—her brain stalled, failing to find suitable adjectives. What if Time weren’t schooling her but dumping her? What if they were not Time’s agents, but time debris? What if—

  Don’t do this to yourself, Ashe.

  She sighed, a deep one that reached down to her cold toes. “I really, really need a vacation.” The sound of her voice in the deep silence was almost obscene. The debris field around the ship sifted some more, as if in response to the sound.

  We are so hosed.

  I will admit to being…disconcerted.

  Ashe almost smiled at his understatement. He was the master of them.

  What if we apologized? Told Time we’re really, really sorry? That we don’t do it again?

  It couldn’t hurt. Delivering it could be a problem.

  There was that. She hesitated, not sure she wanted to know. How long can we survive this? The air had an acrid, nasty taste to it, left an oily residue in her mouth.

  Before Lurch could formulate an answer—or a comforting non-answer—the metal under her foot vibrated, followed by the clank of booted feet against metal. It seemed that he-of-the-bent-bird was awake. What, she wondered, would she see in his eyes this time around?

  At least your shields are online if he decides to shoot you.

  It was a bright spot. She considered for a moment. It was the only bright spot.

  * * * *

  Shan woke expecting pain—no, he’d not expected to wake at all, or if he still existed it would be in an after life he had not wholly believed in. Not that he was sure this wasn’t an after life, though waking seemed wrong for the concept. Didn’t one pass into an after life?

  He did feel, well, better than he had in some time. He breathed out, felt the straps pull tight across his chest. One did not expect straps in an after life. Had he dreamed the crash? Details were sketchy and confused, could be a dream—he opened his eyes to a shattered bridge filled with drifting smoke, and the somber flash of emergency lights. Inhaled the stench of scorched fuel and singed wires. No dream. And no contact with ship’s systems through the link. Not a surprise. Had some emergency power—Ashe…

  He twisted toward the co-pilot seat. It was off kilter but empty, the straps hanging off the sides, the clasp undone. A positive sign.

  “I really, really need a vacation.”

  An even more positive sign, despite the shock in a tone hollowed by the outer passage. That shock had him wrestling with his straps, anxious to get to her. Dim, but natural light gave him a murky look into the passage through the partially opened hatch, but she was out of sight. He did not like it when she was out of his sight.

  The latch holding the straps across his chest finally gave, dropping him onto the sloping deck. His boots were designed to resist gravity, to cling to the decking despite spilled compounds from broken lines, though it was by no means a perfect interface, when put into real world practice. They slowed him enough to avoid the worst obstacles and kept him from slamming into the partially open hatch. The passage had also sustained heavy damage, the angle of the ship more pronounced out here. The acrid bite of smoke and fuel was heavier, too, though a current of air fr
om the open escape hatch brought newer, though not fresher, air filled with unfamiliar smells that stung his nostrils. The bright note in the otherwise nasty mix was Ashe, though her scent was tinged with worry and weary.

  This passageway banded the bridge on three sides, though a sphere did not, technically, have sides. Call it a three quarter oval then, with access ladders to the lower decks. The curved corridor rose at the same slope as the decking inside the bridge. Without an interior walk through, and an exterior walk around, it was hard to be sure, but he had some hope they could access the single landing bay and its in-atmosphere craft. Since he’d lacked time to activate a distress beacon, they’d need it and its additional emergency supplies stowed in that bay while they considered options. If they had options.

  Ahead of him, through the dull pulse of emergency lighting, he found the rectangle of the open emergency escape hatch and headed for it. Something moved, shifted in the shadows by the door. Ashe. He knew she was vertical and mobile, but visual confirmation helped ease a tightness he had not realized gripped his chest.

  She’d crashed his ship, though he could concede she’d had help. He waited for anger or even annoyed, but relief still dominated. While it remained difficult to wrap his brain around time events, he could not deny what his eyes had seen. Or not worry that she’d vanish as abruptly and mysteriously as she’d appeared. He worked his way toward her, scrambling over shifting debris, as the gray light coming in the hatch increased his ability to assess the mess that had been his ship. Beyond her the passage angled up and out of sight, tumbled debris filling it almost to the top. He doubted they’d be able to access the lower ship that direction. And if they slammed into the ground at their current angle, there might not be a lot of lower ship to access.

  Ashe leaned against the bulkhead, watching his approach, though there was not enough light for him to parse her expression. As he drew close, she straightened, standing with ease despite the angle of the deck. Her head tipped to one side.