The Stars Now Unclaimed

by Drew Williams

  “They’ll be locked down, though,” Marus reminded her.

  “The Pax won’t have an AI I can’t hack,” she replied confidently. “I’ll bet my life on it.”

  “You will be. And the rest of ours in the bargain. If we don’t get Criat’s crew on board, they’ll cut through the seals and butcher the rest of us where we stand.”

  “But if we do, they’ll be able to dock and hit the Pax trying to get to us from behind. Not to mention holding us an exit route off the ship once we’re done.”

  “That’s optimistic,” Javier told her. “You’re still planning for some of us to get out of this alive.”

  “Of course I am,” the Preacher told him, sounding almost shocked that he’d suggest otherwise. “No matter how unlikely it is, one should always plan for both a best- and worst-case scenario.”

  I laughed; she just sounded so prim when she said it. Also, I laughed because it took my mind off the insanity we were about to undertake. I hated EVA so, so much.

  “So that’s it?” Esa asked, nervous, now that everyone had actually agreed to her plan. I could tell by her voice—she was terrified, not of the idea of assaulting the dreadnaught itself, but because it had been her idea. If they were ready for us, if we failed, it would have been her plan that put us there.

  “That’s it,” I told her, trying to banish the fear I felt from my voice; she didn’t need me sounding afraid—that would only add to her own fear. I unbuckled myself from my chair. Stood and stretched, let the motion last for a moment, pretending a calm I sure as shit didn’t feel. “Schaz, you’ve got a course set in, right?”

  “I do indeed.”

  “And you’re still keyed up on . . . whatever it was that MelWill gave you?”

  “I most certainly am. It’s lovely.”

  “Wait, what?” Javier asked. I’d forgotten I was still on comms.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “We’ll see you on the other side.”

  “Don’t you hate EVA?” he asked me.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I almost hissed at him. There went my cool. “We’ll see you there.” I switched off the comms, and turned to face Esa.

  “Come on,” I told her. “Let’s get you suited up.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The space suits I had on board Scheherazade actually weren’t that far from my usual combat vestments: the same armored plating, the same intention shielding for firefights, the same comms systems and tactical gear. The only real difference was the helmet, the seals, and the magboots that would let us clamp onto the outside of the dreadnaught.

  Fortunately, they were designed to be resized—all Justified equipment was, given the diversity of our members. A suit on board any given ship could go from being able to fit a Reint to being able to fit a Mahren with just a few tugs and pulls, then suction in tight with just a press. That meant that neither Marus nor Esa had trouble suiting up. Or rather, it meant that the suits I had on board would fit them—Esa had a little trouble getting one on, given that she’d never worn anything like this before.

  Should I have tried to get her to stay behind, to stay on board Scheherazade? Probably. But we were so few, and we were so desperate, and this had been her plan; it would have felt cruel telling her she couldn’t come. And we might need her abilities, once we were inside.

  “We’re in position,” Schaz informed us as we crowded into the airlock.

  “Open the ramp,” I told her.

  She did as she was bid. The ramp slid open, exposing us to nothing but void. Even through the heated suit I could feel the sudden cold, the warmth of Schaz’s interior being pulled out past us with all the atmosphere in the airlock. Beyond us was nothing but the distant stars—we weren’t even facing the battle, couldn’t see the flash and flame of the exchange of cannon fire at the distant Pax firing position.

  Beneath us was the hull of the Pax ship, a matte black alloy broken only by the occasional gun emplacement. If any of those noticed us, we were done. The hull below was drifting past, slowly; Schaz had killed her engines to get here, not able to risk firing them so close. Her stealth systems were good, but it still would have been tempting fate.

  I looked up the side of the Pax craft, trying to keep my breathing steady, trying not to think about all the nothing surrounding me. There was the breach, a jagged gash in the otherwise smooth metal of the dreadnaught’s surface.

  Esa reached out, with her gloved hand, and took my own. I nodded at her, then at Marus.

  Then we jumped.

  Fell through nothing. Fell into nothing, fell past nothing. I tried to keep the angle of my body ramrod straight, so that I’d hit the surface of the vessel below flat with the soles of my boots, give the magnets within their best chance at connecting with the metal. Otherwise I might bounce, and roll, and then I really would be gone, floating forever into the void—or not forever, if I managed to enter the orbit of one of the celestial bodies, or the pull of the black holes. Either way, I’d be dead long before then, having long since choked to death as my suit’s oxygen supplies ran out.

  Stop thinking about it.

  My boots hit the surface. As always, there was a brief moment of horror as it seemed like they wouldn’t connect, and then they did, and I was pulling Esa down beside me, into a crouch, until her boots connected as well. Marus landed picture-perfect beside us; thirty feet or so down the hull, Javier and the Preacher were doing the same.

  Criat and Sahluk had elected to remain on board their craft until we could open the docking bay doors—they’d had enough suits that two of them might have joined us as well, but they didn’t want to risk approaching so close to the dreadnaught, and then staying in that envelope long enough for us to open the doors for the others. Instead they were hanging just outside the Nemesis’s sensor envelope, waiting for our signal to approach.

  Which meant the five of us were it, at least for now.

  I raised my arm slowly and unholstered my pistol. My rifle was strapped onto my back, but it had greater recoil, and I didn’t want to risk the force pushing my boots out of their magnetic contact with the hull. I pointed toward the gash in the dreadnaught’s surface—barely visible except for the fact that it blocked out some of the stars behind it—and we started in that direction, slowly.

  We were actually doing this. We were trying to slip inside an enemy dreadnaught from a breach in their outer hull, so that we could take over their gunnery controls and fire back at the battle they’d limped away from. This was the best plan we had been able to come up with.

  The desperation was a bitter taste in my mouth.

  One foot in front of the other; slowly, we moved across the surface. It felt like it took forever, and I watched the gun emplacements the whole time, waiting for them to circle and casually blast us off the hull.

  In actuality, it was less than five minutes. Javier went over the edge of the gash first, dropping down inside; he’d always been good at EVA, and never the slightest bit afraid. I sent Esa in after him. I had no idea toward what—from where I stood, I couldn’t even see into the ship itself. But Javier had landed somewhere within, and he’d be able to catch her.

  Marus thumped my arm with his fist. We were trying to stay off comms as much as possible; it wasn’t likely that the Pax on board were idly scanning frequencies, but it wasn’t impossible, either. I turned toward him, then followed the line of his raised gun.

  There was a flood of light coming from a square on the dreadnaught’s surface; an access hatch was opening. Technicians, engineers, coming to assess the damage, maybe? Or the Pax knew we were here, and they’d sent soldiers to pick us off.

  I knelt against the dreadnaught’s matte hull, raising up my pistol. The Preacher was up and over, down into the ship itself. I nodded at Marus; he started over as well. I watched that square of light like my life depended on it, which it very well might have. Watched for any shadow, any break in the illumination, but there was nothing. Whoever was in there, they were taking their own sweet
time getting out.

  Marus was over now. I had to choose—wait for the Pax to emerge, possibly blowing our position early, but giving me a clear shot at them? Or try to scramble into the breach and hope we could get far enough inside the engine that they wouldn’t see us from the hole above, assuming they didn’t emerge and shoot me from behind as I was climbing over?

  I hated giving my back to the enemy. But I hated giving away our position more. I cursed under my breath, the word still sounding loud as anything inside of my helmet given that it was all I could hear, then I stood, and turned, and clambered over the damaged hull, careful not to slice my suit open on the jagged metal.

  I didn’t even have time to see what was below me. A glance back was enough to tell me that someone was about to emerge from the hatch. I could feel the slight tug of the dreadnaught’s gravity below—all I had to do was let go.

  I did, and I dropped.

  CHAPTER 7

  Marus caught me by the wrist.

  It was a good thing he did, too—he was standing on a catwalk, torn up by the shot that had ripped through the dreadnaught; I was falling right past it, into the engine itself. He and Javier hauled me onto the metal as the Preacher crouched past them, aiming her rifle up at the hole in the bulkhead, waiting to see if whoever had come out onto the hull was about to peer down at us.

  I tapped Marus on the thigh, twice. We needed to get moving.

  We scarpered down the catwalk as fast as we could—making noise didn’t matter, it wouldn’t travel through the vacuum of space. At least there was lighting, emergency lighting, bathing the interior of the engine in crimson.

  The damage that single cannon shot had done was severe, the great machinery around us pretty much destroyed by just one round. It really had been a lucky shot; just a few meters off, and it would have avoided most of the major components of the massive engine. Instead, it had hit most of them, managing to take the most damaging path through the engine possible, so much so that making repairs in the void would have been impractical at best. If that one shot hadn’t managed to do almost catastrophic injury, this dreadnaught would likely still be hanging in the skies over Sanctum, pounding away, and we would be that much closer to losing this fight, if we hadn’t already.

  Sometimes luck, more than anything, mattered in a war.

  The hull breach vanished behind us as we made our way through the labyrinthine passages of the interior of the engine. With every step we took I expected a platoon of Pax soldiers to materialize in front of us, or to start firing from behind, but there was nothing—they hadn’t detected us yet. It was only a matter of time, but the further we could make it forward before the Pax knew we were here, the less time we’d have to spend fighting through them to get to our destination.

  We arrived at another access door, this time leading to an airlock directly connecting to the interior of the ship. The Preacher touched the access panel, hacking through the Pax’s computerized security, until the door popped open with a hiss, atmosphere escaping around its edges. We crowded through into the airlock, then sealed it behind us.

  Someone was hammering on the other side. They’d noticed the airlock activating, wanted to know who the hell was messing about in the engine. You’d think that they would have been more wary—they were still at least adjacent to a battle, after all—but that’s the thing about being in space, the one advantage we had: you don’t expect to be hit like this. You just don’t.

  You’re insulated by all that nothing—you think that if there is an enemy boarding party approaching, it will only be after a long, protracted fight in the void, and the enemy craft will latch on and bore a hole through your hull, replete with warning sirens and klaxons and security personnel running to and fro. You never expect the enemy to just appear at your door, already inside, with no warning. It just doesn’t happen.

  That element of surprise was what we were counting on.

  The Preacher opened the airlock door.

  The Pax on the other side were still wearing their full suits; they kept themselves cloaked like that as much for their own purposes as they did to intimidate their enemies, made it so that they all looked alike, regardless of what race they were underneath all the black leather and armor plating, so that they were all Pax first. We couldn’t even read a reaction in their faces when we came boiling out of the airlock, because we couldn’t see their faces—just expressionless black masks.

  Still, they froze for just an instant when we were revealed, and that instant was all we needed. I took the Pax on the left with my knife—not likely a soldier, probably just a technician, about to go assess the damage to the engine—as the Preacher hit the one on the right and snapped her neck. We hid the bodies in the airlock, and sealed it again. They might be discovered in due time, especially if the crew that had entered into the breach after us decided to return through this airlock, but we’d be long gone by then, and likely discovered anyway.

  We were inside. We’d gotten this far, at least.

  I pulled up a map of the typical Nemesis layout on my HUD. We were two levels above the gunnery and shielding station we needed to reach, but it wasn’t far. We just needed to find the nearest stairs. According to the old blueprints, there should be a stairwell down the corridor and to our right. We’d just have to hope that the Pax were still at battle stations, and there wouldn’t be many of them prowling the halls.

  I opened the door and crept out. There were three of them in sight. So much for luck.

  We’d all attached suppressors to our rifles; they didn’t make the gunshots quiet, just less loud. Javier took one, the Preacher another, and I took the last. Nothing we could do about the bodies—someone would be along to investigate the shots before we even found somewhere to hide them. Instead, we just made for the stairwell, as quick as we could. The time before the Pax realized they’d been breached was now measured in minutes, if not seconds.

  We were down most of the second flight before the alarms started wailing.

  CHAPTER 8

  We ambushed a security detachment as they came pouring out of their armory. Again—even with the alarms sounding, they didn’t really expect someone to already be on board, not really. They thought maybe a craft had made it through their firing solution, or they were being called to sort out an internal problem, not that the enemy was already among them.

  We made a brief stop at the armory itself, to hook ourselves some extra gear, then to leave tripwired explosives behind—any Pax who tried to prepare themselves before assaulting us were in for a nasty surprise. The resulting explosions would both take them out and mangle the massed equipment here. It wasn’t the only armory on board, of course, but it was the closest one, so maybe we’d just bought more time.

  The doors to gunnery control had sealed shut when the alarm went off. Not the blast doors—they didn’t know this was our target yet—just the regular airlocks. The Preacher knelt beside the access panel, hacking us in, as the rest of us watched the hallways, Javier and Marus taking one direction, Esa and I the other. The slowly curving corridors seemed to stretch on forever, bathed in the oscillating red light of the alarms; they were coming, and they were coming fast.

  “Hurry,” I said to the Preacher. No need to stay off the comms now—they knew we were here.

  “I’m hurrying,” she told me. “It’s not like—”

  Gunfire from behind me; Javier and Marus had made contact. It took everything I had not to spin around and fire on their threat—that would just mean this direction was unprotected. Instead, I had to trust that they could hold their side.

  Something rolled into view around the curve of the corridor; an explosive. No, not that—a flashbang maybe? I wasn’t sure until it snapped into activation, and a shield spread across the hallway. A portable barrier. The Pax began massing behind it, safe from any return fire.

  I almost smiled. The shield kept them safe from my rifle rounds, yes. I could have poured fire into that shield until it cracked, but that would h
ave taken several magazines, and would have been pointless—they’d be ready to come through before I’d really done any damage. Besides, I didn’t need to. I had an even more potent weapon kneeling beside me, one that wouldn’t be affected by shielding at all.

  “Esa?” I invited her.

  She didn’t say anything; just laid her rifle on the ground, focused her will, and brought her hands together in front of her, like a clap. She didn’t actually need to do that—to match the force of her gift with a physical motion—but I guess it helped her visualize what she wanted to happen, or something like that.

  The results were impressive either way. The Pax massing behind the shield slammed into each other as if invisible walls had smashed them from either side. I’d guess that most of them were at least knocked unconscious, if not outright killed, though a few were still moving. With a motion almost like a shove, she sent the whole pile of Pax sailing backward down the corridor, as if they’d been caught by the blade of a plow.

  “We’re through,” the Preacher said.

  CHAPTER 9

  We stormed into the gunnery control station, firing as we came.

  There were a few armed security guards—we took those out first. The rest were technicians, engineers. Yes, we killed them anyway, and we did it without hesitation, even those running for the opposite exit. They were armed—Pax always were, wherever they went—and they were in our way.

  Would I regret it, later? Would I have nightmares about it? Was I doing permanent damage to Esa, teaching her to view the world this way, that sudden, immediate violence was a tool at her disposal, one she should lean on? Yes, yes, and yes, to all of them. But the stakes were too high, and the risks too great.