Ariston_Star Guardians

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  An ear-splitting scream of pain rose over the wind, echoing off the walls of the ruins.

  Mick spun toward the noise. It had sounded like a man. It had sounded like Ariston.

  Her legs took off running before she’d made a conscious decision to go check on him, to go help him. Maybe she had been wrong—it could have been another man, one of his enemies. Or it could have been her ears playing tricks on her, too, as with the wreck the day before.

  Those thoughts didn’t keep her legs from churning. She raced through the maze and skidded down a broad street, the cobblestones slick with snow.

  Light came from up ahead, rising up over the outer walls, brighter than the weak sun trying to pierce the cloudy, early morning sky. Though she wanted to charge straight for it, she made herself slow down before running from the ruins’ cover. If she followed the street, it would lead her straight out into the same area that the two wrecks occupied. The area where Dr. Garcia’s body doubtless still remained, forgotten and covered with snow.

  If possible, she would come back for it and get it home to his family for a proper funeral. But not now. Now, she had to make sure Ariston wasn’t about to join Garcia in an unmarked grave.

  Mick turned to run along the inside of the outer wall. She spotted a place that looked sturdy, hopped up, and grabbed the lip. She pulled herself up, her armor enhancing her strength so she could dangle there long enough to peek over the top to see what was going on.

  The two wrecks were still there, dark and neglected. The new shuttle was the source of the light, both from its running lamps and from an open hatch. An open hatch that four armored men were striding toward, with a fifth armored man between them, not walking. He was being dragged, his head down, his body limp, his weapons gone.

  Mick stared, recognizing that patchwork armor.

  Ariston.

  16

  Mick shook her head, watching the men drag the seemingly unconscious—hopefully not dead—Ariston toward the shuttle’s open hatch.

  How had he let himself be captured? How had they gotten him so quickly?

  More armored figures milled inside the shuttle, a couple peering out, then moving so more could peer out. Ariston had been vastly outnumbered. As she had feared.

  That salvage captain had wanted him captured so he could question him—torture him, it had sounded like—and kill him. They would find his Star Guardian tattoo quickly. If they realized he’d been sent out here to spy on them, to gather evidence and bring them in for the courts to judge, that wouldn’t change their minds about killing him. If anything, they would realize they needed to kill him right away, before he could escape and get the evidence he had back to his superiors.

  Even though Mick didn’t know Ariston well, her heart ached at the idea of him being tortured and killed. She wanted to get to know him well, damn it.

  Nobody was looking toward her wall, at least none of the men outside the shuttle, so she pulled herself all the way up, crouching atop it as she considered her options. Not many. She had to go after him, had to help somehow. She would probably end up captured, too, but maybe the men would be so startled by her appearance that she could gain the advantage. At the least, she and Ariston might be more likely to escape if they were captured together.

  “Get captured together,” she muttered under her breath. “What a brilliant plan.”

  But she couldn’t imagine much else—it wasn’t as if she could stay and let the shuttle take off without her. Even if she’d had no feelings for Ariston, she needed to get up to the salvage ship to find that converter; otherwise, she and the others would be marooned here for the rest of their lives. Which, given the weirdness of this place, might not be long.

  The last of the men stepped into the shuttle, reaching down to lift Ariston’s limp legs through the hatchway. Mick sprang from the wall and ran toward them. If they closed that hatch before she reached it, that would be the end of the story.

  Fortunately, the shuttle wasn’t very far away. With her bolt bow clenched in one hand, she sprinted full out.

  The running lights shifted, and the thrusters fired up, blowing dust around behind the craft. The hatch started to lower.

  Mick dove through the narrowing gap like a swimmer springing from the starting blocks. She careened off someone’s armored legs and tried to roll, to come up firing. She bumped into more people, many more, all shouting exclamations of surprise.

  If she’d had any sense in her mind, she would have simply dropped her weapon and let them capture her, but there was no guarantee they would take her prisoner. They might strip her of her armor and kill her.

  As she jumped to her feet, she saw Ariston lying facedown where they’d dropped him. Unmoving. God, what if he was already dead?

  She roared and fired at the first armored chest she focused on.

  Gauntleted hands whipped in from numerous directions, trying to tear her bolt bow away and stop her. Mick kicked and threw elbows, knocking those grasping hands away. Her heel sent someone flying all the way into the cockpit, where two startled pilots in plain clothes shouted in alarm.

  Even though she fought like a cornered alley cat, she knew they would soon take her down—sheer numbers dictated the impossibility of anything else.

  But then something changed. One of the armored figures jumped to stand beside her, to help her.

  “Back to back,” the man barked.

  Ariston.

  Mick obeyed, turning her back to his so nobody could get behind her. Somehow, she’d retained her grip on her bolt bow. She fired into the men all around her, kicking anyone who got close.

  In the tight quarters, the kicks were more effective than the weapons fire. With the enhanced power of her armored lower body, she could send men flying. They slammed into bulkheads with jarring strength. Even though their armor insulated them, her efforts pushed them back, taking them out of the battle for a few seconds.

  In the chaos, Ariston managed a free moment to lunge to the side and clunk an elbow against the hatch panel before re-engaging in the battle.

  Mick, catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, thought it was accidental. The hatch opened, and her breath caught. They had already risen fifty feet, the ruins now visible from above through the hazy air. An alarm wailed from the cockpit.

  “What are you—” Mick started to ask. But an armored body flying past her interrupted her.

  A man Ariston had thrown. His foe hurtled through the hatch, arms flailing as he dropped out of sight.

  Mick realized that had been strategy, not an accident. He was trying to get rid of their enemies.

  The next man who lunged in close to Mick punched for her face. She swept her arm up in a karate middle block, knocking the fist aside. She dropped her bolt bow and stepped in to slam a palm strike into his faceplate.

  Again, the armor enhanced her power. His head snapped back hard enough that it had to hurt, even with his neck insulated.

  He tried to grab her shoulder, more to hold on to her than as an attack, she wagered. Having none of that, Mick blocked the move. This time, she gripped his arm and tugged him toward the hatch, tripping him to keep him off balance. He stumbled a step toward the open hatchway, the wind gusting past, and started to recover, but she stepped back to gain enough space, then rammed a side kick into his butt. He flew through the hatchway.

  Another man tumbled out right after him. Ariston was still at her back, still battling multiple opponents and keeping them from getting close to her.

  Two more lunged in, trying to tackle Mick. Normally, she would have dodged, but that would have let them get to Ariston’s back, and she had to protect him as he protected her.

  She went down on one knee, letting one get close, looming right over her. She came up, ramming her shoulder into his abdomen as he grabbed her. She thrust upward and sideways with her legs, hoping to hurl him out the hatchway.

  He had more presence of mind than the last man and stuck his arms and legs out to keep from going th
rough.

  Before Mick could think about throwing a kick his way to dislodge him, the other man fired at her. The en-bolt bounced off her armor, and she made herself lunge toward him, even though her instincts yelled at her to dive to the deck and get away from that weapon.

  She whipped her hand out, catching the frame of his bolt bow as he tried to leap back for another shot. She yanked it toward her as she snapped a kick into his armored groin. His legs flew out from under him, and his face contorted with anger, but he didn’t let go of the weapon.

  “Fine by me,” Mick growled and yanked again, this time with both hands wrapped around it.

  Once more, she dropped to one knee. She pulled her foe over her head and toward the hatch. He stubbornly clung to the weapon as he sailed past. She let go and he crashed into the other man at the hatchway. That one had managed to get himself turned back around and appeared ready to jump into the fight again—just in time for his comrade to slam into his chest. They tumbled through the hatchway together.

  Fists up—Mick had no idea where her own bolt bow had gone—she looked for her next opponent.

  But the only armored man still standing was Ariston. The two pilots at the helm were hiding under the console. One had a stunner and clutched it as she glared out around the seat base, but she didn’t bother shooting at Mick and Ariston in their armor.

  Ariston glanced through the open hatch, then shoved a couple more unmoving men in armor through it.

  “Will they survive the drop?” Mick asked, surprised at what seemed callousness on his part.

  “From fifty feet? In armor? They should. We’ve moved away from the ruins, so they’ll have a hike to get back, if they care to bother, but leaving them in here would have been problematic. I don’t have a can opener.”

  “A what?” Mick envisioned him pulling cans of tuna fish out of some hidden compartment and frowning woefully at them, perhaps because he was tired of his nasty suet bars.

  “There are a number of tools, most related to magtorches, for getting enemies out of their armor, and that’s what we usually call them.”

  “Ah.”

  Ariston turned toward the cockpit, toward the man and woman glowering at him from under the console. But he didn’t walk toward them right away. He gave Mick a considering look.

  It occurred to her that he didn’t look much like a man who had screamed in pain and been unconscious only minutes before.

  “Did I ruin your plan?” she asked, realizing it must have been a ruse.

  “No… Just set it in action sooner than I’d intended.” Ariston sounded amused rather than annoyed. “I was planning to wait until I was in the shuttle bay on the salvage ship and—hopefully—surrounded by fewer people.”

  He looked at the pilots again, and Mick grimaced. Would they be able to get onto the salvage ship at all now? The pilots wouldn’t voluntarily help them.

  Ariston could perhaps threaten them or force them to fly the shuttle up to the bigger ship, but there might be some passcode required to land inside its bay. Even a comm conversation could prove disastrous. Presumably, the crew was small enough that whoever operated the bay doors would recognize a stranger speaking. Or an enemy.

  “Sorry,” Mick said. “I heard you scream and thought nefarious and disastrous things were happening to you.”

  “They were.” Ariston rubbed his side, though he couldn’t have felt it through his armor. Still, the gesture suggested he’d taken a battering. “I had to make my capture convincing.” He lifted his hand to her shoulder and gave her a pat. “I’m glad it worked. My people love the theater, and I have actors in my family.” He smiled at her. “I can’t be sorry that you cared enough to come rescue me.”

  “Well, I need that converter.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And someone to install it.”

  “So, you would have been devastated by my loss.”

  “Extremely so.”

  Ariston patted her again and strode toward the cockpit.

  To Mick’s surprise, he lifted his hands to unfasten his helmet. That would make him vulnerable to a stunner—or any other kind of weapon the two pilots might have squirreled away. The way they exchanged glances made Mick think they were lovers or at least people who knew each other well, people who could devise a plan communicating only by facial gestures.

  Mick recovered her bolt bow and walked closer, aiming it in the pilots’ direction.

  “I need you to continue flying us up to the Pleasant Journey,” Ariston said, looking down at them.

  “Screw you, traitor,” the man said.

  “Are we not both going against Eryx’s wishes, Teia?” Ariston gazed frankly down at them. “I saw you two removing skulls from that reservoir.”

  Oh, these were the two who had done that? How had they ended up flying this shuttle? Or had they taken over at the helm when they came aboard? Perhaps because they wore clothes instead of armor, they had been given that duty, while the rest of the crew had gone out to deal with Ariston.

  “You know the captain wouldn’t approve of that,” Ariston added. “He is, in his own vigilante way, fighting for justice out here.”

  The woman snorted. “Justice that lines his pockets with drachmas, just as this will line ours. Just as someone is lining yours, I’m sure. What’s your angle? Who’s paying you?”

  Ariston set his helmet down on one of their seats and touched the tab in the collar to loosen it and his torso pieces.

  “You’re stripping for them?” Mick asked. “I thought you only did that for people who beat you at Kapti.”

  “I’ve been known to make exceptions.”

  Mick kept an eye on the pilots and also on the view screen while Ariston removed his armor. Though nobody was at the helm, they appeared to be flying level. That was fine as long as the terrain below didn’t rise, but she remembered from the flight in that there were mountains in the distance. The sun had broken through the clouds, perhaps a sign that the storm was over, and its orange rays shone down upon the rugged landscape.

  Mick eyed the console, wondering if she could fly the shuttle. Her sister could have, whether she could read any of the Dethocolean labels or not, with her natural aptitude for piloting. But Mick’s job in the Marines had been repairing airplanes, not flying them. She’d learned on the Viper and gotten her pilot’s license on a planet Katie had suggested, where all you had to do was drop money in some government lackey’s pocket and prove you could take off and land without crushing buildings, vehicles, or people.

  The woman’s stunner twitched as Ariston lowered his torso pieces, revealing his black undershirt.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Mick said, making a show of stepping closer and aiming her bow at the woman. “In fact, why don’t I remove the temptation?”

  She knelt down and reached for the stunner. The woman jerked her hand back, but not quickly enough. Mick caught it and yanked it free.

  “Come out from there and give me any other weapons you have,” Mick said.

  “Screw you.”

  Mick wondered if every human culture out there had some variation of that statement. “Unless you have some interesting toys in your cabin, I think you’ll find that difficult.”

  The man snorted and smirked. The woman—Teia, was it?—glared at him, and he lost the smirk. Mick decided Teia was the brains of their twosome, or at least the one who both considered to be in charge.

  Movement at the edge of Mick’s vision made her jerk around, her bow pointing toward the back. Had one of the armored men been hiding in the engine compartment?

  But when she looked, there was nobody in sight. Could someone have peered out, then jerked his head back in when he saw what was going on? Or were her eyes playing tricks on her again?

  “Thought I was past that,” she grumbled to herself.

  She’d made it all the way from the Viper to here without any hallucinations, if that’s what they were.

  Mick turned back, glad she’d relieved the wo
man of her stunner; otherwise, Teia might have taken advantage of that moment. Mick couldn’t believe how casually Ariston was removing his gear—now he was rolling up his sleeves.

  “Teia,” Ariston said calmly, not remembering the man’s name. “You asked who my employer is.” He lowered his forearm so they could see his Star Guardian tattoo. “If I have betrayed the captain and crew of the salvage ship, it is because they’ve betrayed the Confederation and the law of men by colluding to kill crews and capture and destroy ships. While I understand that Eryx feels justified because he’s targeting people who may be criminals themselves, taking the law into one’s own hands like that isn’t permitted, nor is profiting from the deaths of others, whether their actions are criminal or not. I’ve recorded enough footage to condemn Eryx for his actions, and I also recorded the two of you looting the ruins.”

  During his speech, the pilots’ eyes seemed transfixed by him, locked on to his tattoo.

  “We didn’t—” the woman started to say, but he was quick to interrupt.

  “Will I not find sacks full of skulls with ancient Wanderer chips embedded in them if I search this shuttle?” Ariston asked.

  They clammed up.

  “Mick,” Ariston said, “do that search for me, will you, please?” He lowered his voice so they wouldn’t hear his next comment—Mick wouldn’t have, either, if they hadn’t been on an open comm channel together, his words coming through the speaker near her ear. “Make sure nobody else is hiding back there too.”

  “I will, but if I do you a favor, I expect a return favor later,” Mick said.

  She intended it as a joke, but he frowned over her.

  “Related to my position as a Star Guardian?” he asked, wariness in his tone.

  Oh, he worried she wanted a favor that would require him to go against his duty, his honor. Perhaps to pretend he’d never seen her and her ship here.

  That might be nice, but if Mick truly got in trouble over this, she would go to her sister for help. Katie would have advice and might be able to pull in a favor from the Star Guardians she knew. From everything Mick had heard, Zakota’s captain, Sagitta, was the most famous of the Star Guardian commanders and had been a war hero during the Territory Wars. He could probably get a case against a friend of a friend waved out of existence. Not that Mick wanted to rely on anyone for help. She would simply speak the whole truth, that she’d been hired and hadn’t known she was doing anything questionable.