Last Flight of the Acheron

by Rick Partlow

  “I’ve never been disappointed in you, Sandi,” she insisted, and I heard something in her words that might have been pain, but it was buried so deep beneath decades of hard-ass bravado that I couldn’t be sure. “The situation with your father is complicated…”

  “Mother,” I interrupted her, taking advantage of the fact that I could get away with it for the moment, “I’m sure you didn’t call me here to talk about Dad. I have to report to my ship in less than forty-eight hours, and after that I’m not going to see a gravity well for six months unless I have to make an emergency landing on one. So why did you send for me?”

  “The war isn’t going well,” she said bluntly, never one to beat around the bush with idle conversation. “And it’s only going to get worse.”

  That set me back, and I felt a frown tugging my face downward.

  “I thought all we’d done was raid a few outposts.” I shook my head. “Everyone says nothing has really happened yet.”

  “Everything is classified.” She stepped around the desk, closer to me. I had the sense she wanted to touch me, but she didn’t. “The attacks haven’t gone well. We haven’t lost any capital ships yet, but the attrition rate among assault shuttle pilots has been…” I could see her swallow hard. “…alarming.”

  The climate control shipboard was always set at almost-too-cold, but I still felt a thin trickle of sweat running down my back.

  “Are we going to lose?” The question wrenched itself out of my mouth.

  “Not as long as we have ships like the Midway and the Jutland and the Yorktown to defend the core systems,” she said with an air of confidence that would have sounded more at home in a staff briefing. Then the bluster faltered for a moment. “It’s going to be ugly. We both leave on combat patrol in a few days…I just wanted…”

  She trailed off.

  “You wanted absolution,” I finished for her. I don’t know how I should have reacted to what she was saying, but I know how I did. I was furious, anger burning inside my stomach, the heat twisting my innards. “You wanted to bring me here and try to make everything that’s been wrong the last ten years right all of a sudden, so when I get killed, you won’t feel guilty.”

  Some part of me, some tiny part that was still coherent and still thinking straight, was screaming in vain, telling me I was making a mistake. But she was trapped in a sound-proof room deep inside me, and I didn’t listen. It was too late anyway.

  “God damn it, you self-centered little bitch!” Mother had thrown her hands up and turned away and I braced myself for the storm, feeling a perverse sense of gratification that I’d gotten under her skin for once.

  But then she stopped and seemed to sag, despite the lack of gravity.

  “Sandi,” she said, her voice quavering with an obvious effort to control herself, “I don’t want what might be our last time together to be an argument.”

  “Why should this time be different from any other?” I wondered, the cynicism dripping off the words. “Can I be dismissed?”

  “Get out.”

  Her voice was hoarse, whether with fury or regret I couldn’t tell and didn’t care.

  I found Ash waiting by D’Agostino’s desk, apparently not interested in whatever diversion they’d found for him.

  “Let’s go,” I told him, wishing it was possible to stride angrily wearing those damned stupid sticky plates. “I want to get drunk.”

  “I don’t think we have time to get down to Mars,” he protested, hurriedly following me.

  “They have bars on Deimos, don’t they?” I demanded, eyes fixed straight ahead as I traced a path back towards the docking bay.

  “I’m pretty sure, yeah,” he admitted from somewhere behind me.

  “Good. Then I want to get drunk.”

  ***

  I woke up to the unfamiliar sensation of warm skin against mine, of a strong, male arm cradling my shoulders, and I nearly bolted upright in bed before everything rushed back over me like a wave. For a second, I’d thought I’d dreamed it, or, given how much I’d had to drink, hallucinated it. Slowly and carefully, I shifted my position, turning over on the cushioning bicep, and saw Ash sleeping beside me. Snoring beside me, loud as a horse, actually.

  No, it was no dream, no hallucination. The orbital transfer pod had deposited us back in the docking bay on Deimos less than two hours after we’d left the Midway, and I remembered pausing there just outside the service lock where we’d disembarked, looking through the thick, transplas shielding down at the rest of the bay carved into the rock of the Martian moon. There were a half dozen Fleet assault shuttles docked there as well, cold grey daggers of BiPhase Carbide armor, looking deadly and dangerous and suddenly, to me, so very vulnerable.

  There were exactly three bars on Deimos Station including the Officers’ Club and NCO Club, which left us with the third, a lame, kitschy place decorated in a fashion about fifty years old as a style choice. It was called “Good Times,” which showed a lack of both imagination and taste, and it served the cheapest sort of fabricated booze. But there weren’t any superior officers around to get in trouble with, so “Good Times” was it.

  At least they had live bartenders and not some touch screen with an automated dispenser.

  “Tequila,” I told the woman. “Two shots and keep them coming.”

  She was impossibly tall and I thought she must have been a Martian native. She nodded down to me and went to retrieve a pair of glasses.

  “You drinking two at a time?” Ash asked, eyes wide as he watched the tall woman set down two full shot glasses of what was probably incredibly cheap tequila.

  I almost laughed. He was cute and clueless, like a puppy. It was enough to make me forget how furious I was at Mother, and at myself.

  “You’re drinking with me, Ensign Carpenter.” I grabbed one of the two shots and set it in front of him on the fake-wood bar. It thumped with a hollow, plastic sound.

  “Sandi,” he protested, holding up his hands, palms-out, “I’m not much of a drinker…”

  “I know exactly how much of a drinker you’re not, Ash,” I reminded him, cocking an eyebrow.

  He laughed softly, self-deprecatingly, and I knew he was thinking about last summer break. Neither of us had a home to return to for time off school, so we always volunteered for off-season training and work-study programs, which meant we’d spent very little time unsupervised. Last summer, though, we’d wound up with a whole day to ourselves waiting for a flight out of the Sydney spaceport and we’d found a bar. Well, honestly, it was Sydney so it didn’t take that much effort.

  It hadn’t ended well for either of us; I’d gotten into a fight with some skank and he’d thrown up all over the bathroom.

  “What happened in there with your mom?” he asked me, picking up the glass and eyeing the amber liquid doubtfully.

  “What always happens with Mom?” I shrugged. I tossed back the shot, feeling a sour burning down my throat and into my gut. I set the glass down and gestured to him.

  He sighed and took a deep breath, then downed the shot. He made a face, but kept it down and smacked the glass on the bar defiantly.

  “Shit,” he said, gasping like his breath was on fire. “That’s fuckin’ horrible.”

  “Yeah, it’s not the best,” I agreed. “Fill ‘em up,” I waved at the bartender. There was one other person at the bar, a civilian who might have been a contractor, but he was cradling a tall glass of beer and looked half asleep, so we were pretty much the only customers demanding attention.

  The Martian grabbed a dispenser nozzle and poured more of the alcohol into the glasses, eyeing our ranks.

  “Early for a couple of new Ensigns to be hitting it this hard,” she murmured.

  “Well, according to my mother, who happens to be an Admiral,” I told her, pausing in the middle of a sentence to down the new shot, “assault shuttle pilots have a life expectancy of somewhere between zero and five seconds in combat.” I motioned for Ash to take his second shot. “So what diff
erence does it make?”

  “Your mom said that?” Ash demanded, gulping down the drink reflexively, as if he didn’t realize he was doing it until the fire hit his gut.

  “No shit she did,” I spat. “She brought me here to try to make everything right because I’m going to go off somewhere and get my ass killed fighting the Tahni and she didn’t want to have to feel guilty about not speaking to me more than half a dozen times the last four years.”

  “I can see where that might upset you,” the bartender acknowledged, refilling the glasses. Her voice reminded me of my second therapist.

  “She thinks we’re gonna’ die?” Ash’s voice squeaked a little at the tail end of the sentence, and I understood why. It’s one thing to know that you’re flying into combat, it’s another to have someone who should know tell you that you’re probably already dead.

  “Yeah, so drink up.” Shot number three. It tasted much smoother this time, and I had the slurred thought that maybe she’d switched to higher-quality tequila.

  “Eat, drink and be merry,” the Martian bartender quoted while Ash drank, “for tomorrow we die.”

  “Not tomorrow,” Ash corrected her, his voice not quite slurred but quieter than usual. “Probably in a couple weeks, though.”

  I found myself staring at him, noticing maybe for the first time the strong cut of his jaw. Everything seemed to have a thin film of unreality over it, and for just a moment, I let myself forget that Ash and I had been friends for four years. Suddenly, he was just a man, and an attractive, strong, sensitive one at that.

  There was a full glass in front of me. I drained it, then I grabbed Ash by the shoulder, turned him around and kissed him. It felt good. I knew he hadn’t had a girlfriend since he started the Academy, and I hadn’t had time for boys the last four years, but it felt natural. He seemed a bit shocked at first, but he was a guy; he rolled with it, and in a second, his hands were around my hips.

  “We got a room here, right?” I asked, breaking off and whispering it in his ear, then giving into an impulse to nibble his earlobe.

  “Two,” he confirmed breathlessly, his eyes wide. “Through tomorrow anyway.”

  I kissed him again, then grabbed his hand and started tugging him away from the bar.

  “We’ll only need one.”

  And the rest, as they say, was history.

  If I was being honest, it was very enjoyable history and for someone who was out of practice and probably buzzing pretty hard, Ash acquitted himself very well. I closed my eyes and stifled a moan. What the hell was I doing? He was my best friend, pretty close to my only friend, and I’d fucked things up by…well, by fucking things up.

  Did I really have to sabotage every good thing in my life? What if he got all possessive now and started treating me like his girlfriend and not his friend? Or even worse, what if he decided I was too screwed in the head to be his girlfriend or his friend?

  Should I wake him up and ask him? Maybe he was still drunk. Would he even remember this? Maybe I could sneak out, go to the room I had reserved for me and pretend it didn’t happen, and maybe Ash would do the same thing.

  I did groan then, in misery. No, this was Ash. He’d want to talk about it, because that’s the kind of guy he was. He always wanted to talk about things, to figure them out. I just liked to let them go and not think so much, but damn it, he always wanted to talk. He’d sure as hell want to talk about this.

  Just wake him up then, I reasoned. Get it over with, find out now whether things were really bad.

  “Fuck it,” I mumbled. I rolled over and shook his shoulder.

  He moaned incoherently, his eyes not opening. I shook again.

  “Ash,” I said insistently.

  He blinked hesitantly awake, then saw me in the dim glow of the chemical ghostlights that lined the floor. He smiled and I felt something melt inside me and suddenly I couldn’t remember what I’d intended to say.

  “Hey,” he murmured and leaned over to kiss me, a hand going to my left breast.

  I felt his body moving against me and I was about to just forget about everything else and go with the moment…and then the light panels in the Guest Officers’ Quarters room flashed red and the alarm klaxons sounded from the speakers in the ceiling and the ones in the hall and everywhere within earshot of our room, insistent and blaring and I tumbled off the bed, grabbing for my clothes by instinct as my head whipped around, looking instinctively for a threat.

  “This is not a drill!” A live voice echoed in the speakers and in the hallway and in my ear bud, a voice near to panic. “All personnel to combat stations! This is not a drill! All personnel to combat stations! There are multiple enemy incursions in Martian orbit!”

  Then there was a shudder, a vibration that went through the whole station, one that could only be made by a multi-megaton fusion warhead. And if we could feel it all the way in here…

  The alarm klaxon continued warbling, but the voice had ceased. I grabbed my ‘link off the nightstand beside the bed, but there was no signal from the base’s local net.

  “Shit!” Ash was beside me, dressing frantically, though I hadn’t even noticed him getting up.

  His eyes were wide, his face pale, and I felt as if mine had to be a reflection of it.

  “It’s the Tahni,” I said, my voice a hoarse rasp, unable to draw a full breath. “They’re here.”

  We both headed for the door, into a corridor full of men and women running awkwardly in the low gravity, most following the holographic display on the wall pointing towards the emergency shelters. Ash took the lead, imposing his larger form like a battering ram to clear the way, and in seconds we were at a crossroads, where the corridor to the left went deeper into the station, towards the shelter, while the one to the right led to the hangar bay.

  Ash looked a question at me, and I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “The assault shuttles,” I said, nodding. “Let’s go.”

  Eat, drink and be merry, that bartender had said, for tomorrow we die.

  It was tomorrow.

  Chapter Three

  I wasn’t sure if the elevators were working, and there was a line of about twenty people waiting for them anyway, so Ash and I bypassed them for the transit tubes. They were what passed for a staircase in low-gravity places like this, and I used to play in them when Mom was stationed here…and get into all kinds of trouble sticking my nose into places I didn’t belong. On ships, they were vertical, padded and outfitted with straps to pull yourself along in zero gravity. On low-grav moons and asteroids like Deimos, they were slanted at about a forty-five-degree angle, the surface roughened to help the sticky-plates, and right now they were nearly abandoned, since most of the personnel on board Deimos were heading for the shelters and the ones who’d been on duty were either at combat stations or maybe stuck…or dead.

  Going down the slope was kind of like cross-country skiing without the skis. I had a lot of experience at it and I still had to shut out everything else and concentrate on keeping my balance; Ash almost busted his ass twice on the way down from the Guest Officers’ Quarters. I felt like it was getting harder to breathe, and I wondered if it was my imagination or if the air circulators weren’t working right. When we emerged out of the transit tube hub on its last level, and could finally see the damage the blast we’d felt had done, I was pretty sure it was the circulators.

  The hangar on Deimos was huge on both sides of the airlocks, the largest I’d ever seen except for Luna, stretching out nearly two kilometers wide and two hundred meters deep in front of us, dug right out of the regolith. Half of it was devoted to twenty cargo locks, each ten meters wide and a hundred meters apart, that could match right up to the bays of heavy lift shuttles, with loading tracks that led back to freight elevators, while the other half was reserved for dozens of smaller personnel locks serving orbital transfer vehicles, landers, and those six assault shuttles.

  I stopped in my tracks, the breath going out of me when I saw it. The whole left si
de of the hangar, the side that serviced cargo craft, was buried under thousands of tons of regolith just in front of the cargo handling tracks. The emergency seals had slammed down where the pressure hull had been breached, but even from back at the transit tube hub, I could tell that some of the seals had been blocked by the wreckage and the fallen debris. Alarms were blaring and dust and flecks of buildfoam were twisting around in crazy, horizontal tornados as breathable air made a break for the insatiable vacuum, and I could see workers scrambling around in pressure suits trying frantically to clear the wreckage to seal off the breaches.

  I thought about the people who’d been in those ships, or unloading cargo and I wanted to curse, but I couldn’t get it past the lump in my throat.

  “The assault shuttles are still there,” Ash said, his voice grim and a look of resolve on his face. He pointed down the row of airlocks to a section of cracked and splintering transplas. “Let’s get to them before the Tahni finish this place off.”

  The shuttles were lined up one after another in a tight formation, serviced by a consecutive series of airlocks connected by extendable docking umbilicals, and as we made our way through the emergency workers running from one disaster to another, I saw that Ash’s pronouncement about the shuttles might have been overly optimistic. The ships were there, but they were not all intact. Two of them, the ones arrayed closest to the cargo side of the bay, had large chunks taken out of their portside hulls all the way through to the interior of the cabins. They were likely unflyable, since the sections of hull that had been damaged had, I knew from our training, contained power conduits to the cockpits and control leads to the weapons pods.

  The next pair in line had some surface scoring near the cockpit and pitting and gouging on the portside wings; they wouldn’t be safe to land in an atmosphere, but they might be good to go in vacuum, assuming the maneuvering thrusters were still operable. But the last two had barely been touched and it was those I headed for, with Ash following in an awkward ice-skating step.