by Hugo Huesca
Clarke’s eyes darted up as he sprayed the sealing foam all over Julia’s leg. Her eyes were unfocused with panic and pain, but she still breathed. Her blood obscured her wound, hiding its severity, but vacuum would kill her faster. Clarke sprayed the entire bottle, until no more blood came out, and the suit’s leg was halfway covered in the brownish foam, which solidified in seconds.
Julia’s gasped for air in perfect silence. Her hands brushed against her helmet, still in panic’s throes. Clarke pushed them away.
“Easy, it’s alright,” he mouthed at her, hoping she’d read his lips.
Julia tried to undo her straps. Clarke pushed her hands away once more and set to work on treating her wound. The sealing foam also worked on the human body, but if the wound was severe, the life expectancy of the wounded was still measured in minutes.
I need to stop the bleeding, Clarke thought.
All pressure suits had a mechanism to reduce blood flow to a body part in an emergency, meant to keep a sailor from bleeding out until atmosphere was reestablished and medics could get to him.
Clarke pressed a button and a switch on Julia’s waist, and another one just above her right knee. As he worked, he had to swathe away spheres of blood that threatened to smack against his visor.
Julia tensed and howled in silent pain as her suit’s fabric compressed around her thigh. Clarke glanced with worry at the foam, hoping the suit wouldn’t tear a new leak. Otherwise, he’d need to find another med-kit, fast.
The foam held.
“It hurts, but it’ll keep you alive,” Clarke told Julia.
Unless the shock killed her.
Her body relaxed, though she was in visible agony. She asked him a question that he couldn’t hear.
“Stay here, alright?” he asked, praying she’d understand him. She was scared and hurt. He couldn’t stay by her side. The ship had lost acceleration and power, and Beowulf needed both before the SA had time to finish the job. “You’ll be fine.”
Clarke hoped he wasn’t lying to her. She shook her head, frantically, while he kicked his way to Pascari.
Clarke reached him just as the man finished unstrapping. Clarke pressed his visor against Pascari’s, and both men found face to face.
“I need your help,” Clarke said.
They checked on Navathe. Her suit had no visible leaks, and no visible wounds. All damage, if any, was internal. She could still die from a hemorrhage, and Clarke wouldn’t know it until it was too late, but it was all he could do under the circumstances.
Navathe’s eyes half-parted, and she shook weakly in her straps. Clarke shook his head at Pascari. The safest place for the Captain, at the moment, was her g-seat.
They pressed their visors together once again. Pascari’s voice came distant and distorted, like trying to hear someone through a phone line with terrible signal.
“We’re fucked, aren’t we?”
“Probably,” Clarke said. There was no point in lying to the EIF man. “But I’m still playing it out.”
Pascari nodded. “What’s the plan?” he said.
Outside, Clarke knew the gunboat was still firing at the Beowulf. Without power for damage readouts, there was no way to know if the ship was Alcubierre-capable. The only proof they had that the Drive still worked was the fact they hadn’t blown up in a huge nuclear blast.
The ship rattled again, silently. Clarke wondered which part of it had received the barrage, this time.
“We need to restore power,” Clarke said, “make sure we’re still on course for the Alcubierre point, and input Antonov’s coordinates into the nav-computer.”
That meant going to engineering and navigation, located in opposite directions from each other, and in different decks.
“I’ll check on the engines,” said Pascari. “You know how to fly a ship?”
“Yes,” lied Clarke. He knew enough to activate the Drive and input the coordinates. It’d have to be enough.
Just as Pascari would have to be enough to restore ship’s power. If the engines had been hit, there was nothing a single man could do to fix them.
“You have the coordinates?” asked Clarke.
Pascari shook his head, rattling his visor against Clarke’s. “Antonov shared them with Julia. You’ll need to bring her.”
“She’s badly hurt,” said Clarke. “Moving her could kill her.”
“All EIF members know the risk when we sign up, Clarke,” Pascari told him. “Ask Julia. Let her decide for herself.”
Clarke hated that Pascari had a point. Without adding anything else, he kicked his way to Julia. He already knew the answer she’d give, but he asked her anyway, after warning her about the risks.
“Let’s go,” she said, her voice hanging by a thread. “We’re not dead yet. We can still fight.”
You want to be a martyr? Clarke thought with desperation. But he undid her straps and carried her broken body out of the bridge, kicking and pushing himself through the walkways of Beowulf, using his flashlight to part the darkness.
Behind him, Pascari followed, his gaze glued on Julia, but his expression hard, as if he was a statue. The man headed for an airlock that would take him to engineering.
“Good luck,” Clark said, though only he heard his own words.
The same barrage that had caught the bridge had reached navigation and killed the pilot. Clarke looked away from the carnage and focused on the computer systems. It seemed intact, but there was no way to know for sure until power came back.
If it came back.
“How are you holding up?” Clarke asked Julia, pressing his visor against hers. The distance between them reminded him of happier times, times when her half-closed eyes had meant pleasure and tiredness, instead of pain and fear.
“It fucking hurts,” Julia said. She tried to move, winced, and gave up. “Antonov’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“He knew the risks.”
Did he? Clarke thought. Did any of you?
The EIF branch in Jagal had never faced space combat before. They knew nothing of the threat of silent death. Nothing about how it felt to see your friends die in front of you when their suits sprang a leak. They hadn’t heard their Captain announce their point defenses had failed and that cannon-fire impact was imminent.
Now they know.
Julia’s hand grabbed his and pressed. Too weak. Clarke told himself it was their gauntlets.
“I’m scared, Joseph,” she said, a tiny confession that made his heart skip a beat. Julia wasn’t the scared type. She’d never admit to weakness.
“Don’t be,” he said. “Hold on a little longer. You’ll be fine.”
He combed his brain, looking for a solution, a magic plan that would save her. The EIF fleet was too far away, even if they made it. He’d need to find a part of the ship still pressurized and treat her there. Maybe the med-bay had tools that would let him operate without being a doctor.
Power came back on without warning. The sudden flash of light made Clarke wince and curse loudly. Communications came back on.
“We got lucky,” Pascari said, “the engines aren’t hit, I only had to reboot the generator. I’m coming to you, Clarke, it’s your turn now. How’s Julia?”
“Holding on,” Clarke said.
“Julia’s fine, Stefan,” Julia said. She strained to give her voice a strong edge, like she wasn’t hurt at all. “Focus on your duty.”
Clarke realized that, with Antonov dead and Navathe out of commission, Julia was the de facto commander of the Beowulf. And even though she was wounded, she was making an effort to regain control.
“What are you looking at?” Julia told Clarke. “Go figure out what’s going on.”
“Yes, sir,” Clarke said, automatically. He connected his wristband to the nav-computer and loaded a stream of status updates.
He was about to list Beowulf’s damaged systems, but he realized it’d be faster to say which ones still worked. “Alcubierre Drive is onlin
e, as is navigation.”
They’d have to make the trip to the Independence fleet without life-support, and with no fuel to decelerate.
“The gunboat?”
Clarke checked the computer log.
“We’re away from its kill-zone,” said Clarke, “for the time being. They had to slingshot with New Angeles’ gravity themselves to shoot us in the first place, so we have a lead now. At our current speeds…they’ll catch up with us in six hours. The Vortex is not chasing after us. It seems they’re headed straight for Dione.”
“Fuckers,” Pascari said. “They plan on beating us to the punch even if we survive.”
“How long until we can jump?” asked Julia.
“Nine hours,” said Clarke. “We lost much of our velocity during the maneuver.”
“We’ve enough fuel to accelerate past the gunboat’s six hour window?” asked Julia.
Clarke could see the direction she was about to take, and he didn’t like it one bit. “You’re hurt,” he said, “burning gs could kill you, Julia.”
“It could,” said Julia, “but the SA will. It’s just a leg, Joseph, I can take it.”
She flashed him a confident smile that both of them knew was a lie.
There was no use arguing with her. She was right. If Beowulf didn’t accelerate, hard, its pursuer would get it in range again, and the ship wouldn’t survive another round of railgun fire.
Clarke still didn’t like it.
He doubled over the holo and keyed the necessary commands. Julia floated next to him when he was done and added the coordinates where Beowulf should dissolve its energy-density ring.
“Strap in,” Clarke said, after they were done. Navigation had four g-seats, enough for the three of them.
Pascari arrived after Clarke had finished helping Julia with her straps. The two men took position at each side of her without saying another word.
“Alright,” said Julia, “let’s do it, before my courage fails. Punch it, Joseph.”
“Your courage has never been in question,” Pascari told her.
A part of Clarke hated the man for putting into words what he could only think. Clarke shook his head. Focus. His finger hovered over the controls.
An incoming transmission lit up a warning next the holo button. It was coming from the gunboat.
“Ignore them,” advised Pascari. “Don’t give them the pleasure.”
“Patch them through,” said Julia, “I want to hear the voice of the asshole that shot us. I want them to know they failed, and we’re still alive.”
Her voice cracked at the end. Clarke shot her a worried glance, but did as she asked. He, himself, wanted to see the face of the man or woman who had shot them without even a warning.
“Beowulf, you’re still there?” asked a man’s voice. There was no image, just audio. Whoever he was, he wouldn’t give Clarke the satisfaction of remembering his face. “Amazing. You EIF are like roaches, you know. At least, you made for good target practice.”
“What do you want?” Julia snapped.
“Surrender, Beowulf, you’re badly hurt. My systems can see you limping about, but we both know you won’t hold out much longer. You must’ve wounded on board. Turn back. Surrender. We’ll give medical attention to all our prisoners.”
Julia needs a hospital, Clarke thought. Maybe if we turn back, the SA can save her in time.
Even Julia, with all her courage, seemed to falter. Her eyes met with Clarke’s, searching for something he doubted he could give her.
They could save their lives, but lose Dione, and Isabella Reiner. Daneel Hirsen would spend the following months waiting for an extraction that would never arrive.
Perhaps it was for the best. History was full of revolutions that could’ve been, but failed at the last second, due to a small, but critical failure, at some crucial point. No one remembered those failed revolutions. The ones people remembered were those where blood flowed out of Earth’s ports and drowned thousands.
Maybe, by accepting defeat, they’d spare the Edge death and destruction unlike anything it had ever seen before.
They only had to accept the SA’s terms and turn back.
Isabella and Hirsen would be captured, and they’d disappear inside Tal-Kader’s dungeons forever. The SA would remain in Tal-Kader’s grasp, and they’d gladly sell the Edge away in exchange for Earth’s hyperdrive technology. The Edge would become a servant once more, a slave hooked up to a machine that extracted its oryza-flavored blood until there was nothing else to consume.
Reiner’s dream would die, like it should have, a long time ago.
A burning hatred took hold of Clarke.
He had allowed Tal-Kader to destroy enough dreams for a lifetime.
No more. Not as long as this ship can fly.
Whatever Julia was looking for in his eyes, suddenly she’d found it. “Gunboat, go fuck yourself, and fuck your employers,” she said.
Clarke cut the connection.
“Punch it, Clarke!”
His hand was already on the controls before he’d realized what he was doing. The Beowulf’s hull rumbled as its weakened structure tried to remain whole. Clarke could almost feel the heat exploding out of the ship, the oryza accelerating them at a fraction of the speed of light.
The force that threw him into his seat threatened to leave him unconscious. He fought it. He needed to be awake to activate the Alcubierre Drive. Just a couple more hours.
Julia died well before that. Clarke only realized it after the energy-density ring was already up and he was free to check on her. She hadn’t said a word, not uttered a single complaint.
That’s the problem with people with causes. Sometimes they die and leave you to carry the torch.
17
Chapter Seventeen
Delagarza
Dealing with Edith Sharpe turned out to be harder than Delagarza expected. It wasn’t because she was hard to find—it only took him a couple days to download her entire schedule for the month. It was the way he couldn’t convince himself to do it.
Day and night cycles passed one after the other, making no difference to Delagarza, who had control over his tiny capsule’s LEDs. He spent the hours looking at holos of Sharpe, pouring over her scant public appearances, studying every tiny detail about her body language.
Am I really going to turn this woman over to the enforcers? He thought, once, while watching an old recording of her manning an understaffed soup kitchen. The question gave him a headache.
His entire life, Delagarza had spent looking after himself. That’s how he had survived for so long. Even before Dione.
If he didn’t trade Sharpe for his freedom, he’d leave himself at the mercy of Major Strauze and Krieger. The decision was clear. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to make the call. The list of unanswered calls and messages, mostly from Charleton and Cooke, grew with every passing day he remained in hiding. That became his daily routine. Smoking a cigarette by the hotel’s tiny synthetic garden, drinking shitty coffee, looking at Sharpe’s file, ignoring his friends’ calls, another cigarette…
His dreams got worse as time went by, and harder to remember. The headaches grew in intensity, and an oppressive sense took permanent hold at the back of his mind. He was trapped, but he couldn’t leave the safety of his capsule. He was sure they were waiting for him outside.
I’m going insane, he told himself. Perhaps the smart play would be to schedule a meeting with a psychiatrist and get himself committed.
It took him a minute to find a psychiatrist’s number. His hand hovered above it, like a man with a gun over his head trying to convince himself to pull the trigger.
He added a command to the holo and made the call.
“Hello?” answered a woman’s voice. A receptionist. “This is San Jeronimo Clinic, how can we help you?”
“Evening,” said Delagarza. “I’m looking for Dr. Edith Sharpe. The name’s Samuel Delagarza. Can I schedule a meeting with her? It’s kinda important.�
�
“Could you elaborate, please?”
I need to decide if her life is worth risking my own.
“I’m a journalist. I’d like to interview her.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Delagarza, Dr. Sharpe’s schedule is swamped. Unless you’re an investor, I’m afraid we can’t fit you in this month. Is next month okay to you?”
Delagarza cut the connection. Of course Sharpe was swamped, the woman basically ran the clinic herself.
He pulled her day-to-day schedule and studied it.
The next day, he had checked out of his capsule, after taking a much-needed shower and a shave. He had a cigarette in his lips and a fresh battery pack in his reg-suit. He even got himself a haircut.
It was like going on a date, only the other person had no idea. The creepy kind of date, then.
Dr. Edith Sharpe liked to treat herself to a meal in a fast food stall a block away from her clinic every couple weeks. Delagarza found her there, her back to him, sitting in a stool in front of the stall. The smell of spicy Pakistani food reached Delagarza and made his mouth water.
He sat next to Sharpe.
“Any recommendations?” he asked her casually. “It’s my first time.”
She blinked, once, before realizing he was talking to her. Then, she flashed him a polite smile and said:
“You won’t want anything too spicy, then. Try the Lahori beef karahi. Rajpar’s tandoori naan is fresh today.”
I have no idea what any of that is. “I’ll have one of those,” Delagarza told Rajpar.
Sharpe nodded and went back to her own food.
What am I doing? Delagarza thought. He had no idea what he’d hoped to achieve. Was he really trying to convince himself he should get this woman killed?
It had been easy to toy with the idea inside his capsule when she was but a bunch of ones and zeroes. Seeing her face to face…it had been a mistake.
I can still go away, call Krieger, negotiate a deal.
Rajpar served him a bowl of meat and sauce mixed with herbs. Delagarza’s brain interpreted it as a kind of meaty salad. It tasted much better than it looked.