by M. R. Forbes
What would be the point of resisting, anyway? Packard had told her she was going to get out of here. Go free.
No. Not free. There was a price to pay to get out of Hell. She would be beholden to whoever Clyo worked for, individuals that she knew absolutely nothing about. Was that better than staying down here? Was that better than being dead?
The devil you know?
She returned to her mattress, lying down on it, arms at her sides.
“Thank you,” Clyo said, approaching her. She climbed up onto the mattress before lowering herself on top of Abbey’s hips. “This will hurt. My weight will keep you from convulsing too wildly and harming yourself.”
Abbey didn’t like the sound of that.
“Stay calm,” Clyo said, leaning forward so that they were embracing like lovers before moving her hand toward Abbey’s neck.
Abbey glanced over. She could see the device better now. It was black metal, wrapped partially around a clear cylinder filled with what appeared to be blood. Two needle tips extended from a flat surface.
Whatever it was for, she didn’t want any part of it.
She never had. She just wanted to get the woman close. The only way to take her was to take her by surprise.
She closed her eyes as she jerked her head up, slamming Clyo in the nose with her forehead. She could hear it crack and feel it crumble beneath the blow, causing Clyo to cry out, distracted by the sudden pain. Abbey grabbed the woman’s wrists, pulling them away and forcing the woman further down on top of her. She got a face full of blood as she rolled them both to the side and off the mattress, coming down on top of the other woman before trying to crawl away.
Clyo recovered quickly, grabbing Abbey by the leg as she lunged for the washer. She fell a little bit short of the machine, looking back and lashing out the woman with her feet. Her blows landed on the softsuit, the light armor easily absorbing the attack and giving Clyo the edge once more. The woman pulled Abbey to her, holding her down and climbing onto her back.
“I told you it was easier if you didn’t resist,” Clyo said. Then she jabbed the device into Abbey’s neck.
Abbey felt a sudden coldness at the site, as though the tip of the device was frozen despite the heat. It lasted a second or two before starting to burn. Clyo placed herself across the top of her then, her mouth right beside Abbey’s ear.
“Be glad they want you, Cage, or I would gladly cut your throat for what you just did to me.”
Abbey blinked her eyes. Everything was turning cold again. She had thought it would be a blessing to feel after all of these days in Hell. It turned out she was wrong.
Her muscles began to spasm, her arms and legs convulsing, pushing her up and back, sending her to rock against Clyo’s weight. The other woman held her down, shifting to cradle her neck as she bounced and writhed, the coldness spreading across her skin and diving deeper into her lungs. What had the woman done to her? What the frag was going on?
She clenched her teeth. She had to get away.
Her body spasmed again, her arm slamming itself into the ground, so hard it left a crack in the stone. What? That wasn’t possible. Was it? She bucked again, noticing that Clyo was struggling to keep her down. She was getting dizzy. The room was starting to spin. Her entire body was cold, so cold there were bumps on her arms.
Focus, damn it.
Her arm shook as she fought to bring it under control. She would only have one chance. She rocked it back, hitting Clyo solidly in the ribs. The strike would have done nothing before, but now? Now it hit with enough force that the softsuit couldn’t absorb it, and she felt the bones break beneath the blow, right before Clyo was thrown from her, back onto the mattress and into the wall.
She was free. She reached out, clawing her way forward, half a meter to the washer. She grabbed the panel, tearing it away, reaching in and taking hold of the shiv. Clyo was coming at her again, more prepared now. There were three of the woman behind her, holding out their hands as if they could grab her from two meters away.
She felt something touching her, pulling at her, bringing her toward Clyo though she was still out of range. Everything was spinning and blurry. Was any of this real? She turned over onto her back again, using her feet to try to push herself away from the woman and fighting the grip that had taken hold of her.
“No wonder they want you,” Clyo said. “Too bad. They should have sent someone else if they wanted a demon like you alive.”
Whatever was pulling at her subsided, and Abbey suddenly felt something choking her. She gasped, trying to draw air and finding that none would come, her esophagus constricted by an immediate pressure.
“They’ll understand it was an accident. You put up such a fight; it was either you or me. Self-preservation, Cage.”
Abbey stared at the blurred vision of Clyo, feeling more and more lightheaded with each passing second. Her entire body was shaking and rubbery, each motion exaggerated and difficult to control. She had thought she would be thankful to die after spending a month down here. Now she realized that she was just as dumb as the others on Level Twenty, living in Hell but still wanting to live.
And this bitch was trying to take that away.
She growled softly, concentrating on bringing her arm forward. It moved at her command, and as it extended she opened her hand, throwing the shiv, hurtling it toward Clyo.
The other woman clearly wasn’t expecting it. She jerked, the pressure against Abbey’s neck immediately vanishing as her hand moved toward the shaped crystal. She managed to get it into the blade’s trajectory, but it didn’t matter. It sliced right through the palm of her hand, cutting in, powering through the bone and exploding out the other side. It finally came to rest buried deep in her neck.
She gasped, reaching up to try to pull it out, her face wearing an expression of disbelief. Then she stumbled and fell onto the mattress and didn’t move again.
Abbey picked herself up, turning toward Packard. The Warden had a look of fear in his eyes. He hadn’t expected her to survive the fight. He put his hand to the control panel, unlocking the cell door. He tried to duck under it as it slid open, eager to put it back between them.
She couldn’t reach him in time. Not in this state. She reached out anyway, grabbing for him, wishing she could pull him back.
His forward momentum stopped. Then he was headed her way, falling over backward and coming to rest on the ground right in front of her. She reached down, putting her hand on his neck and squeezing.
“Lieutenant,” he gasped. “Wait.”
“Who?” she asked. It was the only thing she was able to say. Her entire body hurt, and she could barely see at all.
He made gurgling, choking noises, unable to answer her question. She tried to ease up her grip, but her muscles spasmed again, forcing her to grip him harder. She felt his spine break beneath her fingers, and she knew he was dead.
She picked herself up, turning toward the open door to her cell and trying to walk to it. Her legs struggled to carry her, and she fell over three times before she reached the threshold. Where was she going? She wasn’t sure. To Gant’s cell, maybe. She needed help.
She used the frame to pull herself back up. She took another step and stumbled again. She heard a buzzing noise but wasn’t able to place it, realizing too late that it was coming from her bracelet. She was on lockdown. She wasn’t supposed to be out of her cell.
She didn’t have the strength or energy or mental presence to throw herself back into her module. A moment later, the bracelet began sending thousands of volts of energy coursing through her body.
Everything went dark.
20
Captain Issiasi of the Republic Intergalactic Navy stared out into the blackness of space, her large, oblong eyes focusing with an acuity that was beyond unaugmented human capability. A small, dark planet sat off the starboard bow of her battleship, the Charis. It was a Fringe planet known as Seta, a newer terraforming project that was still in Stage One and therefore lightly po
pulated. The billowing clouds from the massive machines on the surface were visible to anyone. The machines themselves were visible only to her and the other four Rudin who complemented the ship’s crew.
“We have uncovered the path of the disterium trail, Captain,” her First Officer, Commander Dorn said, adjusting the main projection at the front of the bridge to show a map of nearby space. A thin, translucent red overlay appeared on it, showing the direction that the FTL traveling vessel had been moving in.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Issiasi said, shifting her eyes until she found a second, much smaller vessel within her fleet of nine ships. An unarmed support patroller, the Hound Class sensor ship Bose would be able to detect traces of passing ships across a much wider field than the Charis’ limited scanners. “Commander Sixiy, please confirm.”
“Confirmed, Captain,” the Plixian replied. “Forensic results suggest a single ship matching the engine profile of the incursion two EW past.”
Issiasi tapped her beak in a tight cadence. It was as she had started to fear the moment she saw the trail was leading back into the Outworlds. The ship that had entered Republic space earlier had now left it.
The ship that was suspected to be involved in the destruction of Eagan Heavyworks and the theft of two of the most powerful starships ever built.
“Can we date it, Commander?” she asked.
“We are already processing,” Sixiy replied. “We will have results in three EH.”
Issiasi leaned down on her tentacles, taking a more relaxed, patient posture. They had dropped from FTL when the Bose had detected the emissions, an immediate pause to their overall mission of patrolling a long stretch of the Fringe. Space was a very big place, and it was often difficult to come upon ships in the act of passing from one side to the other, but the very understanding that the potential existed was enough to cause all but the most hardened or desperate to try. Especially when Republic sensor nets and passing Hound class ships would at the very least be able to track speed and vector and make a judgment of destination from there. While plenty of ships crossed the Fringe, it was rare that they managed to accomplish more than a little black market trading without being hunted down.
“Then we must wait,” Issiassi said. “I want to know where we believe that ship was headed. Command will want to know as well.”
“Aye, Captain,” Sixiy said.
Whoever was on that ship, they had successfully run that gauntlet, slipping through the cracks of the Republic’s patrols and making it to Feru unpursued. The fact that her ship had been the first to notice them made her consider that it was at least partially her fault that they had gotten away with it. At the same time, she didn’t feel remorse the way a Terran might. She had followed her orders to the letter. If they did not prevent this tragedy, better orders would need to be provided.
In the meantime, she would report in on anything out of the ordinary, as she had been ordered to do. She knew how badly the Republic wanted to catch up to the thieves, not only to mete justice for the death of thousands but perhaps more importantly to recover the stolen vessels. It may have seemed a cold motivation to some, but the Republic was home to hundreds of worlds, and billions of intelligent individuals. A few thousand was sad, but also barely a single star in the entirety of the universe.
She put her attention back on the planet, watching the terraformer do its work of emitting a breathable atmosphere around it. Another Terran planet, no doubt. There were so many of them compared to the other races. She wondered when they might terraform another Rudin world, one that was predominantly oceanic. She had heard there was a company interested in investing in such a venture, but it was difficult to find Rudin with enough spirit of adventure to want to head off-world.
Her internal musing was brought to an abrupt end by a split-second flash of orange light out of the viewport to her right. By the time she shifted her attention there, the Bose was already nothing more than a battered mess of bent framing, twisted metal, and expanding debris.
“Shields up,” she shouted, opening the fleet-wide communications channel. “Full power. All ships, red alert. Battle stations.”
The Charis shuddered as something slammed into the side of it before the shields could be raised.
“We’re hit,” Commander Dorn said. “Decks four through twelve.”
“Rerouting shields,” Ensign Praan said. “Weapons systems online.”
“Who are we going to shoot at?” Ensign Sia said. “There’s nothing-”
One moment the scanners were clear. The next, a dot had appeared on them, a ship materializing from the black. It was small and sleek, the front of it suggestive of a hungry animal. Issiasi recognized it immediately as the Brimstone.
“Fire at will,” she said. “Ensign Sia, send an emergency message to Command. The Brimstone has been located off the planet Seta.”
“Aye, Captain,” the ensign replied, turning in his seat to send the transmission.
The Brimstone jerked forward, accelerating at sublight speed faster than any ship she had ever seen before, moving from one end of the fleet to the other as lasers and missiles flashed through the area where she had just been.
“Stay on target,” Issiasi said. “Come about, thirty degrees.”
The Charis began to turn while the other ships in the fleet started to spread away from one another. The Brimstone fired a single projectile that was barely visible as it crossed the distance from the ship to its destination. An instant flare of white light was followed by the silent explosion of the Locus, one of three smaller cruisers in the fleet.
“One hit,” Dorn said. “She punched right through the shields with one hit.”
“Remain focused,” Issiasi said. “Fire.”
The Charis opened fire, sending a dozen lasers lancing out from her port side. They slapped against the Brimstone, creating a flare of light around the ship as the shields absorbed the energy of the attack. The other ships in the fleet were moving into position, but before they could fire the Brimstone had moved again, flashing from one side of the fight to another, sending a second projectile out and destroying another cruiser.
“Send retreat coordinates to the fleet,” Issiasi said. “This is a fight we cannot win.”
“Aye, Captain,” Ensign Sia said.
“Fifteen seconds to FTL,” Commander Dorn said.
It felt like an eternity.
The Brimstone was facing their way and bringing her weapons to bear.
“Ten seconds,” Dorn said.
Two torpedos burst from the front of the starship, reaching a half cee in less than a second and slamming into either end of the Charis a half second after that. Between the impact velocity and the explosive warhead each weapon carried, there was nothing the battleship could do to defend itself.
The Charis rocked from the impact, warning tones blaring at the death of a dozen systems. Issiasi began to rise from the deck, the gravity generators losing power, right before the force against the inner part of the ship shoved it against the outer part of the ship, and the entire thing bent and burned and crumbled, leaving her dead before she could even consider chattering her beak in fear.
21
Captain Olus Mann sat back in his chair, watching the projection of Mars Eagan’s lifestream for what was probably the hundredth time. He had already captured every detail of the two perpetrators who had attacked the Director of Eagan Heavyworks, extracting their profiles from the projection and passing all of the data back to the OSI Command Center on Earth, but no matter how many times he watched the recording he still felt like something was out of place.
Of course, the data profile on the man and woman who had attacked Mars had turned up nothing. That was no surprise, considering the two were Outworlders. He had held a distant hope that maybe one of them was a defector, but could hardly allow himself to be disappointed when that didn’t work out.
He leaned forward, waving his hand to move more quickly through the stream. He paused it at the same p
lace every time, in the split-second when the ring station’s shuttle was picked up by a larger, cloaked starship. She hadn’t gotten a look at the outside of the craft, but there was a sliver of the interior hold visible through the shuttle’s viewport, and he had spent most of the last week picking it apart bit by bit for even the smallest clue that might lead him to it. It was likely an Outworld vessel as well, meaning there would be nothing to match it in the Republic archives. Then again, if even one scrap of it was of Republic origin, he might be able to trace it back. That was part of what his department did, after all.
He spent a few more minutes staring at it before forwarding ahead again. For some reason, Mars Eagan had given him more of her stream than he needed, allowing him a peek inside her private life after she had been rescued. To prove her innocence or to cover her guilt? It followed her as she was brought home, in full detail as she took comm after comm, immediately getting to work on shoring up the stability of her company and getting Republic Command involved.
She had even requested him by name.
That surprised him. Then again, what was the old saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? He didn’t trust the woman, and for as much as he supposed the stream was supposed to earn his confidence, every time he watched it he felt a little less so.
Not that Mars Eagan cared. His investigators had turned up nothing suspicious from her end, other than the fact that she was still alive. Everything was exactly as the woman had claimed it would be, which only unsettled him more.
It was too clean. Too perfect. Like the uncanny valley of the most humanoid of bots, it was so believable it was unbelievable. Nobody was that spotless, least of all the Director of an arms manufacturing corporation. Unless he had proof of something, there was nothing he could do.
A chirp from the pin in his collar signaled him that he was receiving a communication. He closed Mars Eagan’s projection and replaced it with the incoming transmission.