Spectra Arise Trilogy

by Tammy Salyer

  The Nova is surprisingly small, only about two meters in length, cylindrical in shape and narrow enough that two grown men could reach around it by linking their arms. The housing is a dark, burnished steel divided into two segments. I know from the schematics that Rajcik had obtained before the operation that the bigger segment contains the triggering mechanisms. The missile seems so small and nonthreatening that it’s hard to imagine it could ever cause the devastation we’d been warned of. Taking careful aim from inside the cab, I wait for the crane to descend farther. When I pick off Fedchenko, I don’t want the thing falling.

  Tock, tock! I double tap him in the head and as predicted, his body hurls forward, shorting out the crane’s circuit board and sending the Nova into a fast descent. It lands squarely on the cart. With Fedchenko, MacCready, and Ortiz down, that leaves Yadav and Thompson, along with Rajcik.

  The sound of someone running and then—holyshit!—a grenade lands nearly in my lap. I fling myself back through the cab door, landing next to the tug and tucking myself into a tight ball. KURRUMPPFFF! The blast goes right over the top of me, bursting outward and upward. With my position compromised, I geronimo out from behind the ruined vehicle straight for the cover of the four-wheeled cart sitting between me and the Temptation.

  Reaching relative safety, I squeeze myself against one of the rear wheels, keeping my carbine at shoulder level. On the other side of the cart, the Temptation sits on the bay floor like a menacing predator, loading ramp still open and engines still cycling up. Approximately six meters of open bay lie between it and me. If my guess is correct, my three ex-shipmates are now all aboard, waiting for me to expose myself.

  I just start to catch my breath when the cart begins to roll slowly toward the ship. Shit! Must be controlled by remote. All Rajcik has to do is direct it onto the Temptation, launch, and he’s free.

  Not if I stop him.

  I fire into the vehicle’s tires, first the rear, then the front. Its engine continues to strain against the drag, so I grab a metal rod lying in a tool bin mounted on its side and thrust it into the cart’s local control box. Sparks erupt in my face, momentarily blinding me and dotting my skin with burning pinpricks. One side of its wheels makes another half revolution, forcing it into a lopsided turn, and with a whining buzz, it dies. With smug self-satisfaction, I imagine Rajcik inside the ship, wondering how he’s going to get the Nova on board. He can’t get a shot at me from the ship, and wouldn’t want to fire at the Nova anyway. With the bomb as my cover, I’m at the perfect position to ghost anyone who shows so much as an arm outside the loading ramp. David and Karl should be at the MCACS by now. I have maybe five minutes left before they launch and then I’ll be stranded on the Fortress with Corps fighters guaranteed to be on their way. My momentary smugness disappears like an empty promise. I need to get the hell of out here.

  As I gauge my chances of making it back to the service tunnel, the hydraulic hum of the Temptation’s ramp catches my attention. In an eternity that lasts maybe ten seconds, it climbs back up into the ship’s belly and seals shut. He’s leaving! Relief pours over me like a shower of hot sand, instantly filling me with a crazy excitement, as if maybe this will all be over soon. Rajcik might get away, but at least he’s not taking his lethal payload with him.

  It’s time for me to go. Standing and setting my sights on nothing but the service tunnel entrance, I’m preparing to run like hell when my guts explode in a white-hot nebula of pain. It’s as if a phosphorous grenade has just detonated inside my torso. It isn’t until I clutch my stomach, my carbine falling from my hands, that I hear the pistol report.

  I didn’t know it was possible to feel this much pain, and I suddenly understand what it’s like to wish to be dead. Then it gets worse. Every thought, every instinct for survival, every driving force that’s ever gotten me from one second to the next is suddenly wiped away by pure, visceral agony. All I’m capable of is standing, motionless, my hands gripped to my torso while blood backs up behind them and then starts to stream over the top in a crimson waterfall. A hand clamps onto my shoulder, twirls me around, and Rajcik leers down at me. The look on his face is a demented mixture of serenity and rage.

  “Aly, you just never quit, do you?”

  I’m stunned, my guts bubbling, unable to speak.

  He looks at the disabled cart carrying the dormant Nova, then back at me. “Still,” he begins, his tone strangely magnanimous, “a lot of useless people will have you to thank for not being blown into oblivion. Too bad they’ll never know, huh?”

  Desperately, I look to where my carbine landed, but I’ll never reach it before he shoots me again. My hands are plastered to my burning belly, the hot blood continuing to seep between my fingers like grisly lava. With tremendous effort, I reach up and jerk his hand violently from my shoulder, not wanting him to touch me. The movement takes the last of my strength. I would crumple to the floor except for his fist that flies out and squeezes painfully around my throat, cutting off the air I can’t draw anyway because of the pain in my guts. Blood drips from his nose from where David had head-butted him, forming a gory mustache, which streaks down his jaw line. Holding me up and staring coldly into my eyes, he casually licks it from his lips as if savoring the taste. Before I can struggle, he jerks me forward and throws me into the floor like an empty sack.

  I land on my back and draw air through my clenched teeth. It hurts. He stands above me, glaring. I try to tell him to rot in hell, but a spark of pain shoots from my belly up into my chest and I writhe on the floor, feeling my face contort from the agony. Drawing up into a fetal position, I’m helpless to do anything but watch as he opens a compartment on the Nova’s sleek black housing and reaches inside.

  Squinting my eyelids against the hot tears welling up, I hear him chuckle. His face grows deadly serious as he leans down over me. “I want you to know something, Aly. You’re going to die right here on this floor. When this detonates, your body is going to be the first thing it destroys. You’ll disintegrate and be blasted into space like so much human waste.”

  An uncontrollable shudder, not of fear but of pain, wracks me and makes him pause. He squats down and leans forward, pressing the barrel of his pistol against the floor as a prop. My eyes pick out the fact that he has blood caked under his thumbnail.

  “In another nine minutes and thirty seconds, you won’t feel a thing,” he continues. “But when I find your brother, if he and your new friends manage to get away, he’s going to feel a lot. His suffering is going to make what you’re going through right now seem pleasant. That’s my parting promise to you.” He gives me a last look of almost fraternal pity, then stands up and walks across the bay to his ship. As he climbs back into the Temptation’s cockpit hatch, which he’d used to exit the ship and sneak up on me, the station’s inner airlock doors engage and begin to part, allowing the ship to enter the launch tracks. Rajcik is going to escape, and I can do nothing to stop him now.

  I need to warn the others. “Vitruzzi, if you’re listening, get out of here. The Nova…” My throat convulses and I start to cough, another eruption of blood spurting from my ruined stomach. Getting it under control, I finish, “Get out of here. It’s counting down.”

  There’s no response, but I’m not going to die here on this floor. I won’t give Rajcik the satisfaction. I might, just might, be able to make it to the MCACS. It’s an impossible lie, but the thought gives me the motivation I need. I know it doesn’t matter, but I don’t want to be next to that thing when it blows. Trying to direct my attention away from the molten pain in my guts, I grab the sidewall of the cart’s tire, reach for my carbine, and drag my body up into a standing position. Once on my feet and forced to hold my own weight up, pain and nausea twist through me in a secondary explosion. I double over, vomiting bright red blood, and see more blood pattering out of the hole in my torso and onto my boots. I’m not sure if the amount coming from my throat or out of my stomach is more disturbing. The red is so bright, glowing as if it really is c
omposed of phosphorous.

  The Temptation starts rolling down the launch tunnel. In seconds, the doors close behind it. It’s just me and the bomb now, and I can feel my strength evaporating like so much smoke. Have to push hard, get away.

  Staggering, I make it across the bay to the service entrance and lean against the smooth metal walls, already needing to rest. The corridor seems to be an endless tunnel blurring in and out of clarity. Slumping against the wall, feeling my insides leaking out, I search for the strength to start walking, or crawling, to the other end. The hatch is down there, and if I can get to the hatch, I can get away from the Nova.

  The lights on the ceiling waver and pulse, getting darker with each beat. I’ve been standing here for less than five seconds, but it might as well be five years. I don’t think I can make it.

  My arms feel heavy and begin to go numb. Ordering myself to move forward, I push one leg out. As I rest my weight on it, it feels odd, as if my knees aren’t bending the right way. I lean onto the leg anyway, grateful that it holds my weight, and will the next one forward. Something clanks beside me, but it sounds tinny and far away. Distractedly, my brain records that I’ve dropped the carbine. I can’t pick it up—too weak. If I bend over I’ll fall and that will be it.

  Another step, then another. I stumble and brace against the wall with both hands. They leave a wide swath of blood behind. Not good. Warmth is spreading down my hip and thigh. I’m not going to look, just keep walking.

  The pulsing lights are getting much darker. A couple more beats and I won’t be able to see at all. Is this what dying feels like? Just blacking out and not waking up?

  I trip over my own feet once more. But this time, my hands just slide along the metal corridor wall, the blood making them slick. I hit like a dropped corpse, my face banging into the grated floor. Its coldness presses into my cheek. It’s not refreshing. It hurts.

  Come on, Aly, come on. You got to keep moving.

  Reaching out and digging my fingers into the grated floor, I grab and pull with all the strength I have left. I make about five centimeters. Just need a break. A short break.

  I rest my cheek on the floor again. Air rushes up through the small squares made by the grate. There’s an oily, faintly burned odor to it. My eyes fall closed.

  Something wakes me up, or pulls me out of unconsciousness, I can’t tell which. Noise. Clattering…no, tromping. Boots. They’re moving fast. I just hope whoever it is kills me quickly. I don’t care, just let me sleep.

  “Aly? ALY! Oh shit!”

  The runner’s speed increases, and then I see Strahan’s face above me. “Get…out. Nova…run,” I whisper, feeling blood that had started to dry cracking on my lips.

  “Jesus, Aly. I’m going to get you out of here! You’re not dead yet!”

  Yes, I am, I try to whisper, but then he’s picking me up, and the radiation from a thousand suns bursts through me. And it all goes black.

  * * *

  Shrieking alarms and lights. My eyes flutter open, everything around me in chaos. The only pain I feel is my splitting eardrums, as if the nerves in them are being ripped from my cranium. A voice, “ohmygod, it’s going to hit us,” filled with terror, “HOLD ONTO SOMETHING!” A giant CRAAAASH! and the sense of being hurled through space, as if gravity suddenly changed direction, everything around me flying through the air. As the world drains into darkness again, all I feel is relief.

  * * *

  People speaking, murmurs that I can’t understand. Then, something warm against my cheek, like breath. “Hang on, Aly. You’re going to make it. You’re strong. Strongest person I’ve ever met.” David? No. Strahan.

  * * *

  Later.

  There’s a sound, a low-key beep going off in a constant rhythm. Kinda soothing. I listen for a while before realizing I’m awake. How long have I been unconscious? It’s too much effort to open my eyes. Just lay here. Beep…beep…beep. Eventually, the sound becomes annoying.

  “Can someone turn that off?”

  Air exchangers whispering. Pain everywhere. My nose, my throat, my chin, my guts. My eyes flicker open inside a dim room. In my peripheral vision, I see stands loaded with hanging bags of blood, saline, and other liquids, tubes dangling everywhere, connected to my body in different places. Thankfully, I sense drugs doing their work, dulling out everything, making the pain just an unwelcome visitor, not part of me.

  A silhouette looms next to me. “I told you you weren’t dead.”

  “Where’s David?” I don’t recognize my own voice. I sound like a breathless crow.

  “He’s okay. He’s in the other med-station.”

  “…see him.”

  “Not yet. You’ve got to stay still for now. V says you’ve just started to recover. You need to rest, recuperate.”

  I have no strength to argue, even if I want to. “Thirsty.”

  “Aly, you’ve been shot in the stomach, so I can’t give you anything to drink. But here.” He rubs blessedly cool ice over my lips. The room seems as if it isn’t there, just a gray backdrop. The only thing that comes into focus is Strahan.

  “…crazy to come back for me.”

  “Yeah. You’re rubbing off on me.”

  My eyelids start to rebel and slide closed. I sense him still standing next to me and I force them back open. His hands rest on the gurney, his features arranged intently, concerned, maybe even a little afraid.

  “Karl.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I…owe you.”

  A tragic grin spreads across his lips and his moist eyes gleam. “Not this time. We’re even.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Days, maybe a week go by; I’m too in and out of it to be completely sure. I start waking up more and more, longer each time, my body healing while its monuments to pain shrink in achingly slow decrements. Almost every time I open my eyes, Strahan is there, asking me how I am, if he can get me anything. Vitruzzi monitors every pump, tube, and screen attached to me with clockwork diligence. Everyone visits. By the time we arrive at Agate Beach, most of my many questions are answered.

  Why had Strahan come back for me? And how had we made it back to the MCACS before either Vitruzzi launched or the Fortress blew?

  On our way back toward Agate Beach, I’m itching for another shot of morphine, sweating like a leaky faucet from the recurrent spasms of pain in my insides, when Desto comes by and fills in that part of the story for me.

  About the same time I had persuaded Strahan and David to make a run for it back to the Sphynx, Desto finally managed to get back down to the seventh-floor hangar but was cornered by a security squad in one of the weapons labs.

  “I had to duck behind the door too fast and it tore my mic right off. Couldn’t transmit and tell you what happened. The security squad had me covered. There was no way I was leaving that lab the way I came in, so I headed toward the back door and damned if they didn’t throw a grenade. I probably would have bought it, but an explosives testing shield hit me in the back and knocked my ass about five meters through the air. And here’s the funny part—those dumbshits threw a grenade into a weapons lab. Something else in there blew up when it went off and burned up half the squad. Incinerated them in a flash so fast they never even had time to scream. That shield was thick and heavy as hell, but it kept me from getting turned into a human torch too. The rest of them must have been worried something else was going to go off because they double-timed out of there like Corps Comp master runners.” There’s a burn along one of his cheeks, a raw pink furrow that looks painful. Other than that, his glowing smile is as reckless as ever.

  “They headed for the next level and I took off the other way, toward the hangar. When Karl and your brother came around the corner, it was nearly the end of it for everyone. I almost shot them, and Karl had me dead to rights. Once we regrouped, Karl heard your transmission about the Nova. He could tell from your voice that you’d bought at least one bullet, but if you could still talk, you were still breathing. So, we gave Da
vid a pistol and told him to keep it aimed forward, and we all doubled back to the hangar. We carried you as far as the midstation tunnels before you died. But Captain V and your boyfriend weren’t having it.”

  I blushed when he said that, no doubt in my mind he was talking about Strahan. “What do you mean ‘before I died’? And since when is Strahan my boy—?”

  He cut me off with a patronizing laugh and left, telling me I needed to get some rest.

  The havoc that the prisoners had wreaked upon the Fortress’s security grid had not only overridden fire-control protocols and left the entrances to the docking bays operational, but none of the airlocks or launch tubes could be locked down. Despite needing to get the hell out of the area before Corps detachments came to the Fortress’s defense, Vitruzzi still had the option of staying put as long as needed. The crew weren’t about to leave friends behind if there was even a slim possibility of rescue, and against monumental odds, Strahan and Desto had gotten David and I back to the MCACS, the ship launching at the last possible nanosecond before the Nova blew.

  But it was Vitruzzi who explained this part to me. A few hours later, she came into the med-station looking more tired than I’ve ever seen her, but no less composed. I noticed that the tenseness that had dug itself into deeper and deeper grooves around her mouth and eyes every day since I first met her seemed shallower. She no longer looked like a forty-year-old woman pushing eighty, and I was surprised by how relieved it made me feel.

  While she scanned my medical readouts, I repeated the question, “What was Desto talking about? He said I died.”

  “Yes, you were dead. You had a stomach that was more hole than tissue from the bullet wound, but that was the least of your worries. By the time Karl and Desto found you, you’d lost a critical amount of blood and went into heart failure, flatlined. The MCACS’s med-station had the equipment necessary to revive you, but we needed to get you back on the Sphynx if there was going to be any chance you’d make it. We launched just as I got your heartbeat back. Then the station blew.”