by Elliott Kay
Sanjay’s voice ran through the background, but it was difficult to make out. Veronica picked up her description: “Yeah, they’re forming up around Beowulf. They must be leaving the Fleet battleship behind for some reason. They must be planning an FTL jump as soon as they get past lunar orbit.”
“That won’t take long,” Lynette muttered. She looked to the exit, thinking over the way back to her ship. The restaurant was adjacent to the spaceport, but it didn’t offer a lot of straight lines along the way. They’d also have to wait through the lifts.
She looked to her left again. The balcony offered a nice view. “You know where we are?”
“Yes.”
“Tell Sanjay to pick us up.”
“Wait, what?” asked Veronica over the holocom—and Elise at her side.
Another voice carried through over the same channel: “On it!” Sanjay declared.
“Mr. Liu, we sincerely apologize, but this is a Union defense emergency. And it’s on Minos, so our business would be disrupted, anyway.” She dropped her napkin on the table and stood from her seat. “Thank you so much for your time and your consideration.”
Liu stood out of reflexive politeness.
Lynette didn’t wait for handshakes or goodbyes. Elise followed her to the balcony with a look over her shoulder. “We hope you’ll consider the Phoenix again in the future!” she called back to their abandoned client.
Patrons and servers out on the balcony remained as calm and pleasant as ever. A mild breeze drifted through the evening air. The string quartet played on. Lynette and Elise were immediately out of place given the urgency of their stride.
“Did you tell him to call you sometime?” Lynette asked, going straight for the rail.
“To call the ship. As a business. Not me,” Elise replied. “Although he seems like a nice man. Very charming.”
“So ask him out.”
“I wasn’t sure which of us he was interested in.”
“You can have him.” Lynette turned to the patrons seated back to back at tables beside the balcony rail. “Excuse me, I need to get by. I have to rescue my boyfriend from aliens.”
“I’m sorry, what?” asked a surprised woman.
“Who the hell are you?” snapped the man beside her.
Warm air and the steady roar of engines drowned out the rest like a wave against a surf break. Patrons yelped and ducked away as Phoenix floated level with the balcony rail, then rose a few meters to drop the starboard gangway over one of the tables.
“Sorry,” said Lynette. “That’s my ride.” She stepped up onto a now vacant chair and then the table to get to the gangway.
“You are such a showoff,” Elise declared, following close behind.
“You’re just pissed ‘cause we didn’t get to stay for dessert.”
“Or dinner. Or appetizers. And now if we come back we’ll have to pay damages for this.” At the hatch, Elise looked back to the restaurant as the gangway retracted. Though the ship’s antigrav engines didn’t put out much more than a breeze, the initial rush of air from its arrival left all manner of tablewares strewn about the balcony. Those patrons who hadn’t reached the doors stood against the windows with disheveled hair and frayed nerves.
Elise shook her head. “This is exactly how I picture your wedding reception someday,” she said. “Right before everything catches fire.”
By the time Lynette made it to the short stairwell to the yacht’s bridge, she heard and felt the main thrusters rumble to life. The noise and vibrations, even if mild, told her plenty. Phoenix had been built for comfort and serenity. Artificial gravity and other dampening systems gave the ship an incredible ability to absorb and mask shocks and sudden movement. Lynette could only hear the engine going like this when they ran it up fast.
She found Veronica in the captain’s chair and Sanjay at the helm. Val sat in the chair beside the helm watching for traffic and communications. The main display over the canopy showed traffic lanes and ships’ positions within the nearest few light-seconds. Lynette took in the information quickly, barely noticing the flashing light in the foreground and the loud chatter at Val’s station until the gunner turned it off.
“Wow, they’re cranky,” Val laughed.
“They get like that when you tell them you’re leaving rather than asking permission first,” said Veronica.
Lynette dismissed every other concern to focus on the naval formation far ahead. “We’re not gonna meet up in time,” she said.
“Not so much, but it’ll be close.” Veronica started to rise, but Lynette’s hand on her shoulder kept her in place. It wasn’t worth the shuffle now. “They’ll be gone in a few minutes.”
“Sanjay, keep us on their tail,” said Lynette. “Val, send a message to Beowulf with our Guild Reserve identification. Tell them we’re answering the call-up and we’ll catch up as best we can.”
“On it,” Val acknowledged.
“You know they didn’t actually call anyone up, right? It was a standby notification,” said Veronica.
“Yeah, we’re gonna play dumb about that part.”
“’We,’ huh?”
“Okay, I’ll be the dummy. Sanjay, let’s follow their path right to their FTL jump point.”
“Sure,” he said. “Then what?”
“Then we jump after ‘em.”
“Oh, it’s that simple now? You want me to jump blind?”
“Not blind. We’ll know their starting point and we know where they’re going, more or less. All we have to do is plug in the variables.”
“And if we wind up going past the formation and drop out of FTL closer to Minos?” asked Veronica. At the helm, Sanjay turned around to look at the XO with a frown. Veronica sighed. “Right. Of course we’ll drop out closer to Minos.”
“I dunno, if that’s Branch running the show he’s pretty gutsy,” said Lynette. “For all I know we’ll drop out of FTL right in the middle of the formation.”
* * *
“How’s your head? Do you feel okay?” Tanner leaned in to look at the bandage over Olivia’s wound.
“I think so,” said Olivia. She sat on the deck with her back against the bulkhead, squeezed in like the rest. The constant slight left-to-right motion of her head wasn’t out of the ordinary. The vibrations of the Vanguard prevented anyone from being entirely still. “The meds kicked in. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Not yet. There isn’t room in here to do much. Keep an eye out in here, I guess. We’ve all gotta take care of each other. You did all you needed to already.”
Olivia glanced from left to right, with Nigel on one side and Kim to the other crammed in shoulder to shoulder. “I don’t feel like I was much help.”
“No. You were fine,” said Tanner. “Getting a little freaked out is natural. The important thing was you listened and you kept moving. When somebody loses it and doesn’t cooperate the whole group can fall apart. You did a lot by sticking with the crew. It sets an example. It matters.”
“I didn’t feel like I was setting any example,” she said skeptically.
“Never does feel that way,” said Tanner.
“Where are we going? Back to the city?” she asked. Others looked up with much the same question. “Aren’t they being attacked?”
“We’ll be nearby, but we’re not jumping into that mess. I made arrangements to get us off this rock. Hopefully they’re still good. Far as I’m concerned, it’s time to go home.”
Tanner smiled as best he could. He looked to Nigel and asked, “You okay?” and got a nod. He looked to Kim to ask the same.
Kim frowned. “I don’t think we’re gonna get full class credit.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it, nor was he the only one. Tanner picked his way through the passenger bay, grabbing one handhold and then the next to keep from stumbling. A few steps brought him over to Antonio and Naomi. Bags of artifacts and research gear sat between them, crammed in along with the shields and bits of armor taken from the sentinels.
“Hey. You did good. You both did real good,” he told them.
“Thanks,” said Antonio. “I’m sorry. About before.”
“I already forgot whatever you’re talking about,” Tanner replied.
“What about you?” asked Naomi. “Are you okay?”
“I bottle up all my breakdowns and save them for when the shooting stops. Find me after this shit is over. I’m sure I’ll be a mess by then.”
This time, his attempt at humor didn’t fly. Naomi looked like she’d been kicked in the gut. “Tanner, I’m sorry I—”
“No. Stop. None of this is on you. Whatever happens, blame the people who actually did it. Blame the bad guys. It’s not on you.”
“Hey, Malone,” spoke up Solanke. Tanner turned around to find him slumped in the door gunner’s rig opposite Naomi and Antonio. He looked exhausted, but his wound had been dressed properly. He hadn’t lost too much blood to function—or to think. “Heard you before. About getting off this rock. Where are we going? It can’t be the spaceport.”
“No. No, it’s not.”
“Okay. So?”
Tanner hesitated. Having returned Olivia’s coat, Solanke now sported an undershirt revealing a unit tattoo on his shoulder. His fatigue pants and boots put forth another reminder of his allegiances. “It’s complicated,” said Tanner.
“Yeah? How complicated?”
“Hard to say. I’m kinda hoping the whole ‘aliens trying to kill us’ thing is enough to make up for it.”
Solanke’s eyes drifted to the laser repeater slung back up behind the closed bulkhead. “Guess we’ll see, huh?”
He felt the Vanguard abruptly slow down and gain altitude. Everyone felt it. “Tanner, you’d better get up here,” called Gina.
She was only two steps away through an open partition between the cockpit and the cabin. Outside the canopy, Tanner saw low and dark clouds of ash hanging in the night sky. The desert still stretched out below, with the outskirts of Anchorside up ahead. Most of the skyline sat in darkness. Flashes of laser fire, Minoan beam weapons, and explosions provided most of the light. Other skirmishes dotted the landscape below.
A screen in the center of the cockpit controls presented a better picture of the chaos. Markers and text noted the importance of the scene, where laser fire from a small compound of single and two-story buildings barely held off a team of Minoan raiders.
“That’s where we’re going, right?” asked Gina.
* * *
The masonry walls and front façade of Allen’s Salvage held up well against the enemy’s beam weapons. They weren’t impervious, but they didn’t break or crumble for the yellow blasts any more easily than they yielded to lasers. Local stone was good for that. It was about the only good news in the fight so far.
The windows were gone. Power was out, not that anyone wanted the lights on to make the enemy’s job easier. An explosion in the little bodega across the street had gutted the place minutes ago. Ordinarily, the garden plot separating the grocery from the street might provide an open killing ground for the defenders at Allen’s. The enemy’s big, incredibly effective shields all but negated that advantage.
With a small squad of enemy raiders steadily moving in, Chen stopped dreading a flanking maneuver. Whether there were more bad guys coming around the back or through the salvage yard seemed irrelevant. The frontal assault would be effective enough. In the time since he’d seen the armored enemy in action at the chip plant, he’d sent word to his people to prioritize kinetic weapons. Only one had turned up at Allen’s, and it was already in burnt pieces along with its owner on the floor.
Chen crouched beneath the windowsill, trying to lay down suppressive fire with quick blasts in the hopes of at least slowing them until someone else could do some good. John and Emily kept up their end, looking for decent targets with rifles that weren’t exactly up to military grade. Finally, Emily tagged one enemy in the head over his shield. The raider collapsed and tugged his shield down with him.
“Yes! Good shot,” Chen cheered. “Do it again!”
“I’m taking the opening,” declared John. He had one grenade. The raiders hesitated, looking down at their fallen comrade on reflex. It was as good a moment as any. John hooked it over the windowsill hard—only to be cut down by a yellow ray of light that sent him falling backward in a trail of sickening smoke.
“John! Shit!” Chen ducked as the grenade went off short of its targets. The blast provided only a tiny break in the firefight. Chen squandered half of it by looking at his dead friend.
“Chen, we gotta keep shooting!” declared Emily.
He forced himself back up and poked his rifle over the windowsill. The enemy wasn’t getting any sloppier. If anything from the grenade had gotten through their shields, Chen couldn’t tell. The enemy closed ranks, eliminating the gap in their line, and stepped forward again. And again. Firing all the time.
The front office lay in ruins. Only the walls and minor wreckage from the furniture and the countertop still stood. It grew harder to breathe. Chen knew their position was untenable from the first shots, but he didn’t see any other choice. More people than Chen, Emily, and their fallen comrades in the front office hid at Allen’s. The location was too valuable to give up considering who and what it held. Lives took priority. Chen didn’t see a way to save them.
They could run out through the back, try to play cat and mouse in the salvage yard, but that would leave the others at risk. No one else even had guns.
He kept shooting. The enemy drew closer. “C’mon, think. Think!” Chen growled at himself as he fired. Another of the enemy went down, clipped in the arm from a lucky shot. The line paused again.
Something rose up behind the line of shields, with a dark and jagged outline too tall and too broad to be human. Even with the danger of an approaching enemy and an ongoing gunfight, Chen felt an all new sense of alarm. The red glowing lines on the silhouette’s head confirmed his fears.
“Get back,” Chen warned. “Get away from the window!”
Emily ducked away to the right. Chen flattened himself to the left. A wide, red laser blast burned straight through the masonry along the top half of the windowsill, sweeping across in a sustained beam. The laser dug a wide line into the floor behind them, too, kicking up more smoke and debris as tiles split and popped under the intense heat.
As soon as the beam died, Chen forced himself up to return fire. He snapped off a shot at the stone man’s head, catching it along the side. It didn’t seem to care. The line of raiders behind their shields made another step forward as Emily added her gun to the defense.
Another step. They reached the edge of the street.
Rapid laser fire from above tore through the line. The blasts cut the formation apart in a rush as some aircraft passed overhead. As Chen had seen at the chip plant, the enemy armor had its limits. A powerful enough laser could still overwhelm. Raiders flailed and fell as the soil burst around them under the heat of the blasts.
The aircraft swept over Allen’s, taking a turn nearby from the sound of things as Chen and Emily heard more laser fire and even a couple of explosions. “I don’t believe it,” said Chen. “Are they actually defending the neighborhoods?”
“Those guys in Precision have to show they’re earning their money somehow, right?” Emily suggested. “Even if it’s only for PR, I’ll take it.”
“Yeah, but now they’re gonna wonder who was shooting back out of this place. And why we have guns in the first place.” He turned his head as the noise from the aircraft’s thrusters came closer—much closer. “Shit, are they landing in the yard?”
“You’ve gotta go,” Emily urged. “They can’t find you here.”
“We’ve both gotta go.”
“You know I can’t leave.” She nodded her head toward the street. “Take off. I’ll say the guys jumped into the office when the shooting started and I don’t know them,” she said with a wave at the bodies of their friends. “I don’t like it, but it might work. If
they catch you here, they’ll tear the place apart. You can hide easier on your own, anyway. Go.”
Biting back a curse, Chen rose up to jump over the ruined windowsill. Then he saw that stone man rise up from among the fallen bodies across the street with its face glowing a fierce red all over again. “Get down!” Chen yelled, diving to the floor.
Another sustained blast cut through the office. The beam ran higher than its mark, but it still did plenty of damage to their surroundings. As soon as the blast ended, Chen looked up to find the stone man charging in.
It was seemingly laser-proof and looked like it outweighed Chen by at least a factor of three or four. He didn’t know how to begin to fight that. “Run through the back,” said Chen. “We’ve gotta draw it off. Run!”
They passed the wreckage of the front counter and the shelves behind it. The stone man came on, kicking through the remaining half-meter of the windowsill with ease. It saw Chen as they reached the doorway, ensuring it would have his trail.
The door flew open violently before Emily hit the handle. Someone stepped in with a gun up at his shoulder. “Get down!” he bellowed, stepping right past the pair.
The stranger fired a quick burst of bullets past their heads. He walked forward, again and again. Chen stumbled and fell to his side, but in the flickering light of burning furniture he recognized the shooter as his Diamondback put out another quick burst.
Tanner fired steadily. Bullets sparked and ricocheted off its head and chest. Each burst seemed ineffective until something in that glowing face popped and sparked. Amid half a dozen bursts, one bullet made it through the gap. The stone man jerked wildly, staggering backward until the head exploded in a red flash and a shower of rock and dust. The body fell to the floor with a crash.
“Holy fuck. That worked,” Tanner breathed.
“Jesus, where the hell did you come from?” asked Chen. He picked himself up off the floor, looking back to the fallen enemy to make sure it wouldn’t get up again.
“The dig site. These guys came down on us earlier in the night. We had to fight our way out. Are you okay?”