by Sara King
Indeed, as night fell, they could see ship after ship explode in the atmosphere and hurtle into the sea. Dallas sat down on the edge of the wall, back to the ocean, and stared up in awe.
“I wonder if they’re Xenith or Utopian,” Dallas said, watching the streaks of fire trace across the sky. She longed to be up there, a part of the show.
“What does it matter?!” Stuart cried. “Dallas, it’s not safe up here!”
“Who do you think is winning?”
“Dallas, any minute now one of those ships is gonna land on us!”
Dallas’s eyes were fixed to the sky. “We’ll be dead whether we’re on the roof or a couple floors down. Besides, it’s not the ships we need to be worried about. It’s the Utopis who get through their lines.” She turned to Stuart. “They’re the ones that are gonna start blasting holes in the—
Even as she spoke, a fighter screamed past, blowing apart a section of the Wall a half-mile from where they stood. Two Xenith gunships followed it, making the entire island rumble as they shot overhead. A few moments later, she heard the telltale sound of a fighter engine exploding.
“Dallas, please come back inside…” Stuart whined
“Stop being an old fiddlestick,” Dallas ordered, jumping lightly off of the wall. “Come here.”
Stuart glanced at the sky cautiously. “Why?” He stayed firmly hunkered behind the wall.
“Because sooner or later, we’re gonna be up there ourselves. I want to show you something.”
“Dallas, I really think we should—”
“Come here, Stuart.” She stomped a foot and pointed at the stone floor beside her.
“Okay.” He ran to stand beside her, head low, as if the terrain between the wall and where she stood was somehow more likely to get hit with laser fire.
“Look up there.” She pointed at what looked like a wispy cloud blotting the stars.
“What is it?” Stuart said.
“That’s our blockade. Depending on how close it is, I’d say a few hundred thousand ships, at least. Those big bright spots are carriers. I’m counting five of them, but there’s probably more hanging back in the debris field. The Utopia wasn’t taking its chances.” She turned to him. “Just what did Ragnar send to them, anyhow?”
Stuart winced. “I’m not sure. It would’ve been nice if he wasn’t so thorough, though.”
“What are you talking about?” Dallas demanded. “This is great!” She lay down on the stone, hands under her head.
“Dallas, people are dying up there.”
“Not that,” she said, disgusted. “The number of ships. We couldn’t have asked for better odds.”
Stuart stared at her as if she had lost her mind.
Dallas sighed and explained. “To a point, the more ships a fleet has, the better its odds of winning. But it’s a bell curve. After a certain point, the bigger the fleet, the less coordinated, the less maneuverable, and the less efficient. Especially against a very small number of fast enemy ships. It creates confusion. Pilots are afraid to fire because they aren’t sure they’re not friendlies.”
“So you’re saying a fleet of three could take out a fleet of a thousand?”
Dallas scoffed. “No. It just takes longer to kill them.”
“Oh.” Stuart stared at the sky. “Do you think you can get us out of here?”
Dallas closed her eyes, breathing in the ocean breeze. She could taste that fight. All the way down here, and she could taste it.
“Dallas?”
“Of course I can fly us through that.”
Stuart cleared his throat, sounding embarrassed. “Uh, Dallas, I meant to tell you earlier, but I was kinda fibbing a little back there, about helping you. I mean, if you let me back in, I’ll be able to help a little bit, but it would mostly be you. I just said all that stuff to keep the others off your back. If you don’t think you can handle it, we’ll just have to find another way off the planet.”
“Oh, like hell,” Dallas laughed. “You couldn’t keep me away from that fight with a flesh-seeker.”
Stuart fidgeted with a piece of moss he’d picked from a stone crack, then licked his lips. “I guess what I’m trying to say is you don’t need to take me again. I couldn’t really help that much. I was being selfish, giving you an excuse to…” He cleared his throat again. “I spent all day thinking about it. I mean, I can help, but what I did was wrong. That’s not something I should bribe you into. I just got a taste of—” He bit his lip. “It was so wonderful to have you—” He cleared his throat again. “What I’m saying is I just really hoped—”
Dallas gasped in happiness as another ship tumbled out of the sky. “Look at that one. Wow, he must’ve had combustibles aboard. Sweet.”
Stuart frowned at her, then up at the sky. For a long moment, he just glanced between the two of them, then he blurted, “You do realize we’re trying to head home, not go down in a glorious ball of flames, right?”
“Oh sure,” Dallas said. Even as she said it, she felt a nervous flutter in her stomach. Was she about to get them all killed? She shook that thought from her head and said, “Just keep looking for Rabbit. I don’t want to leave him until we have to.”
“Ragnar’s working on that right now.” Stuart came closer, his body close enough to touch. Tentatively, he managed, “So what I was trying to say earlier—” He hesitated and licked his lips. “I mean. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want you to feel forced into anything…”
“I think that one’s using that new experimental particle dissimilation cannon,” she said, pointing. “You can tell the dissim from the blackmatter by the way the ships glow green before they explode.”
For a long time, Stuart said nothing. When Dallas looked back, he was staring at her. “What?” she asked.
“Are you sure you want me back in your head, Dallas? I, uh, don’t want to inconvenience you, and I was kind of stretching the truth earlier. I really shouldn’t have done that. You don’t need me.”
“Oh, phooey,” Dallas said, waving off his blubbering. “Of course I want you back.”
Stuart stared at her, looking dumbfounded. “You…do?”
“Sure!” Dallas gave his current body an appraising glance in between explosions. “Wouldn’t be too upset if you brought him along, though. Looks like he might be good in bed.”
Immediately, Stuart said, “He’s not. He’s mean and selfish and always finishes in a couple minutes.”
Dallas burst into delighted laughter. “I meant for you, nincompoop. So you could be good in bed.”
“Oh.” Stuart blushed in the darkness. “Athenais might not like that.”
“Athenais can go jump out an airlock. I’m the captain of Retribution. If I say we bring him along, we bring him.”
“But it feels…wrong,” Stuart said. “To use a host for my own sexual gratification.”
“You said he was an asshole, right?”
“Yes, but…”
“If he’s an asshole, then he deserves to be taught a little—look at that!” Dallas’s eyes widened as one of the cruisers in the blockade cloud exploded, sending a sphere of shrapnel and fire out in all directions. Some of the indistinguishable fighters got hit by the debris, setting off a chain reaction of explosions that lit up the night.
“One point for the good guys,” Dallas said, grinning.
“I wouldn’t exactly call Juno’s forces the good guys,” Stuart said.
“Yeah, but you’ve gotta root for one of them, and the Utopia fired me, so screw them.”
“Juno tried to feed you to a five hundred pound shark,” Stuart reminded her.
“At least she would have given me a harpoon. That’s a lot less humiliating than getting fired. You ever been fired, Stu?”
Stuart shook his head.
She grunted, making a disgusted face. “Well, when you get fired, there’s no ‘I don’t think so, punk, stab, stab, stab!’ It’s just boom, get out, we don’t care you just spent the last fifteen
years of your life working for us, you’re not wanted here anymore. They had a new captain in command of my ship before it was even official.”
“Well, your ‘good guys’ are losing, nonetheless,” Stuart said. “Ragnar thinks Juno’s gonna surrender in the next few hours. From what he’s been able to learn, they’ve had fifty percent losses in the first twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, bummer.” Dallas was disappointed. “I was hoping it would last a bit longer than that.” She went back to gazing at the stars, watching the explosions. After a few moments, she felt Stuart sit down beside her.
“Dallas?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you really think I’d be good in bed?”
Now there was an idea. She turned back to him, grinning. “You wanna find out?”
Stuart flinched away from her. “What, here?” Stuart gestured at the sky, sounding horrified.
“Why not? It’d be romantic.” She gestured up at the explosions. “Think of it as candlelight.”
“For some reason, the threat of getting skewered by falling shrapnel doesn’t seem all that romantic.”
“You’re just a worrywart.” She wiggled closer, throwing a leg over his thigh and touching his chest. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”
The suzait swallowed, hard, and Dallas noticed he was suddenly sweating. “But,” Stuart stammered, “…I don’t…I can’t…I wouldn’t…”
“Shut up and kiss me,” she said. “All those explosions are making me horny.”
“Dallas, this is hardly the place to have a reproductive breakdown. What if somebody comes up the stairs and—”
She grabbed the back of his head and ended his objection with a kiss. A real one, this time.
Fairy’s Glory Days
The next morning, the island-wide intercom came on, startling them awake.
“People of Xenith. I am Colonel Harriet Burkes. I represent the Unified Utopian Systems and will be in charge of converting this planet to civilization. We have pacified the resistance here and have taken its leaders into custody for questioning. You will see troops of Utopian forces patrolling the hallways and are ordered to go about your business when they pass. Any violence or harassment toward them will be punishable by immediate use of force, namely execution, as we are all much too tired to continue to deal with your brainwashed, moronic horseshit.
The woman on the intercom took a breath, then cleared her throat and continued. As evening falls, if you look up, you will see a cloud covering a good part of the night sky. That is our fleet. Admiral Redstone has secured your sector. Any traffic in or out will be shot down, and any survivors executed. Any attempts at escape will result in immediate execution. All military forces of Xenith will be deported or executed, depending on our mood. Any civilian resistance will result in execution. Like I said before, we are all too tired to deal with your crap.
We will be conducting an investigation of Xenith’s non-combative citizenry on an individual basis. We will be taking roll and creating an identification database. Retina, voice, fingerprint, and DNA samples will be taken from every citizen. If you do not surrender yourself to the rolls, we will assume you are part of the resistance and we will execute you. I will return with more specific instructions this evening.”
Dallas sat up, grabbing her shirt. “Did she say anything about Utopian citizens?”
“I don’t think so,” Stuart said. “But she did use ‘execute’ like four or five times.”
“Breathing will result in execution,” Dallas mimicked, giggling.
Athenais burst through the hatch, panting. “You hear that? Juno’s finally surrendered after wasting all that—” Then she gave them a stunned look. “Did you two just screw while we were getting attacked?”
Stuart cleared his throat and pulled on his pants. “We were just watching the stars,” he babbled, much too defensively.
“So what if we were?” Dallas demanded, bodily pulling the suzait back down to the stone with her. “Go find your own rooftop, you one-armed leprechaun.”
Athenais stared at Dallas, then at Stuart. Finally, she seemed to shake herself and said, “Okay lovebirds, get dressed. We’re gonna go have a chat with this Colonel Burkes, see if she’ll clear us for takeoff.”
“We are?” Dallas couldn’t hide her disappointment.
“What, you’d rather see us try to bash our way through their blockade?” Athenais scoffed. “Ragnar and I will be waiting back in the storeroom.” She hurried back down the ladder, slamming the hatch behind her.
“You know, she kind of stands out with those fingers sticking out of her shoulder like that,” Dallas said, squinting at the hatch. “I wonder what she tells people, when they ask.”
“Maybe she says it’s a birth defect.”
“If it was me, I’d cover it up.” Dallas wrinkled her nose. “Why’s it taking so long for her arm to grow back? I saw her head put itself back together in a couple minutes.”
“My guess is because her arm is currently nine miles under the ocean floor, whereas the remains of her head were readily available. So basically her body’s got to start from scratch.”
As she pulled on her pants, Dallas looked up at him, grinning. “So’d you like it?”
Stuart hesitated above her. “The physical connection was satisfying, though I’m not sure I got the technique down quite right. The motor patterns were foreign to me. I think I should spend some time on research, maybe ask Ragnar or Howlen. They could guide me through the process—”
“Eww,” Dallas said, waving off the idea. “Ew ew.” She shook her head, trying to get rid of the idea of Stuart asking Tommy about rhythm. Well, you see, worm, there’s a certain percentage of times that the depth must be offset by cant, which in turn must be balanced with speed and resistance… She shook her head again, trying to force that image into the netherworld. “Just say yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Good. We’ll do it again sometime.”
“Uhhhh, okay,” the suzait stammered.
“Damn straight. Now let’s go.” She turned and led him to the hatch. Back at the storeroom, Tommy was still comatose, his eyes staring straight ahead exactly as they had left him. Dallas squatted in front of him, peering into his face. “Tommy? You in there?” She waved a hand in front of his eyes, which didn’t even blink.
“We should probably leave him,” Ragnar said. “There’s been no change at all.”
“Why isn’t he blinking?” Dallas asked, poking at his eyeball. “Seems like they’re gonna dry out.” She frowned at the little indentation her finger was making in the lens and got closer, peering into the wide-open pupil. They were so dilated, in fact, that there was almost no color showing, just black… She poked it again. “Hey Tommy. Wake up, man.”
Giving her a nervous look, Stuart said, “Uh, Dallas, maybe you shouldn’t be doing that…”
Dallas poked the colonel’s other eye, amazed at the way the whole thing moved in towards the nose. She hadn’t realized that eyes could do that. She wondered if hers did that, too…
“Fairy, damn it, we’ve got more important things to do,” Athenais snapped, grabbing her arm and jerking her away from the colonel. “Look at him. He’s just a vegetable.”
Dallas stood up, straightening for a fight. “We’re not leaving him,” she pronounced.
“Yes, we already discussed this,” Athenais growled. “I was just trying to get you to stop poking him in the eye like a retarded orangutan.”
Dallas flushed. “So what are we going to do now?”
“Ragnar and I are going to go speak with Burkes. You and Stuart are taking Tommy to Retribution.”
Dallas stared. “What? Won’t they have it under guard?”
“Yes.”
“So what do we do with the guards?”
“Kill them.”
Both Dallas and Stuart balked. “Kill them? Is that really a good idea? They’re just soldiers…”
“Do you want to get off of this planet alive, Fairy?”
“Well…yes…”
“Then I suggest you stop acting like a chickenshit. Both of you.” The pirate’s last was aimed at Stuart. Athenais shoved the compression pistol at her. “Use this. Next time you shoot it, hold it with both hands and put your weight into it. Recoil isn’t so bad as long as you brace yourself first.”
Dallas stared at the gun, which felt like it weighed a hundred pounds in her hands. “What about you and Ragnar? Usually you guys do this kind of stuff.”
“We’re going to be practicing our diplomacy,” Athenais said.
Somehow, Dallas didn’t like the sound of that. She and Stuart shared a worried look. “Uh, Athenais,” Stuart began, “maybe Dallas and I should go inst—”
“No,” Athenais interrupted, cutting him off, “you will get the ship ready for when we come back.”
Dallas gave Athenais and Ragnar a surprised look. “You think you can talk her into opening a path for us?”
“Something like that,” the pirate agreed. “Now go.”
“But…if we kill the guards, won’t that ruin our chances of getting free passage?”
“Fairy, don’t worry about it.” Athenais’s words had a ring of finality to it.
“And what if you don’t show up?” Stuart asked. “How long should we wait?”
“You wait until we get back,” Athenais said.
“But what if you don’t—”
“We’re coming back,” Athenais snarled. “Damn it, Fairy, are you trying to jinx us?!”
“Sorry.” Dallas glanced at Stuart. “You ready?”
“Don’t forget the Colonel,” Athenais said. “If, that is, you’re still insisting on taking him.”
“What about Rabbit?” Dallas asked. “Is he coming?”
“I think he’s hiding out on the west side of the island,” Ragnar said. “I’ve tried to make contact, but he hasn’t come out of his hole. I think he’s hedging his bets.”
“So we’re just gonna leave him?” Dallas cried.
“Look,” Athenais said, “Unless you want to get on the intercom and tell him we’re about to leave, there’s no way to get word out to him. Now grab the Colonel and go. We’re on a schedule, here.”