by Zach Winderl
Atom made to rise.
The crouching commander caught the motion and raised her blaster. Squeezing off a wild shot, she backpedaled and slapped open the hatch. The body of her trooper fell to the floor in a crumpled mess of flesh and armor and leaking fluids.
With a scowl, Atom scrabbled to his feet. He watched as the woman snatched the body of the first trooper from where it lay inside the airlock. With her back pressed into the corner of the lock, she cycled the outer door open and thrust the body into the hatch beside the first. Like darting a hand into the mouth of a beast, she held the body just right for the crushing doors to jam. The dead carved just enough space for the commander to slither through and make her escape.
Just before she disappeared into the swirling snow, she turned and took a final shot at Atom through the narrow gap in the door.
Instinct saved Atom. He threw himself to the side . . . headfirst into a crate.
***
Light flickered in painful slices as Atom slipped one eye open. Vision blurred, he tried to make out his surroundings, but gave up as his disrupted equilibrium threatened to toss the contents of his stomach from his noodle-like body.
He tried to talk, but a strange croak leaked from his mouth instead.
With childish tenderness, a hand rested on his forehead, cool and soothing.
“Dada,” Margo’s soft voice fell like refreshing rain.
Atom croaked again.
Water dribbled on Atom’s lips. His throat felt raw. For the first time, he realized the parched, scrabbled feeling of his throat as a spoon of water dripped past his swollen tongue.
Atom took a deep, rasping breath, trying to feel his body as his chest inflated a few grains at a time.
Another spoonful of water.
Atom swallowed more this time. Nothing seemed broken, but his head swam with the effects of the repeated head trauma. Gingerly, he flexed his hands, focusing on each finger and knuckle. His legs and feet followed.
“Atom,” Kozue spoke with bedroom softness. “I detect no major damage to your system. However, you have suffered a moderate concussion.”
Atom’s eyes rolled. Then one drifted into focus.
Margo hovered. She held a small bowl in her hands with a deep soup spoon clinking in the bottom, a clocktower bell to Atom’s ears. She smiled at her father and lifted the spoon with an undeniable look.
“Drink, Da.” Her emphatic innocence brought a weary smile to Atom’s face.
He sipped the trickle and dropped his head back to the deck.
“What the hell happened?” he mumbled through the groggy haze.
“Give it a moment, Atom,” Kozue’s voice took a firmer tone, but still remained soft.
Atom took another spoonful of water and lifted his head in an attempt to survey the hold. As he blinked like an inebriate, he frowned. The hold seemed untouched by the attackers, but a pile of still figures lay sprawled near the cargo ramp in an unceremonious mound. With more effort than he cared to admit, he pulled himself up to lean against the crate.
Margo helped in her tiny way, straining at his shoulder as he settled into a position that eased the pain throbbing in his temples.
“Are they dead?” He gave a vague wave towards the pile.
“Only the soldiers,” Kozue stated. “Shi is still unconscious. Byron is vomiting in his room. He was also concussed. Daisy and Hither have tidied up the intruders. They wanted to dump the bodies, but I suggested it would be a good idea for you to look them over before disposal. Any information could prove useful for future encounters.
“Smart.” Atom pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “Wait, future encounters?”
“It seems probable. This is the same outfit you encountered on Gomori Alpha.”
Atom closed his eyes and thought about the peace of unconsciousness.
“I thought you should rest longer, but Margo was anxious to have you up and about.” Atom heard the shrug in her voice as she changed the subject. “So, I indulged her.”
“You didn’t think having the captain up first would have been the best course for the ship?” he grunted, massaging his temples with a wince. “I need to be able to run the ship and I can’t very well do that if I’m taking a nap.”
“I considered the options and studied your readings. You awoke in the earliest window to avoid adverse effects of a concussion.”
“Such as?”
“You could be vomiting like Byron.”
Atom nodded, his stomach queasy, either from the motion or the thought. “I’m good now. Fill me in on what I missed.” Atom watched Margo scuttle over to Shi, cradling her bowl and spoon as if carrying liquid crystal. “Our daughter is disturbingly adept in your arts.”
“Thank you,” Kozue purred.
“Ten enemies breached our ship,” Kozue’s contralto flowed like the instrument of a fine musician. “They rode in on a transport from the small colony down the valley from the hab. We did not detect their presence because of negligence on my part. Having detected no arrivals or departures from this planetoid since our arrival, I did not have cause to believe our enemies would be waiting for us.
“I estimate that their first order was to neutralize the crew. They did this without fatality, which leads to the conclusion they were after information. They did not find what you did. They hoped to capture some, or all of you, alive.
“They used a bouncer.”
“It was set to adult height, which means they weren’t taking Margo into account.” Atom pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut as he processed.
“Yes, that was fortunate,” Kozue’s voice drifted, lending to the illusion of her ghost wandering the hold as she spoke. “Due to that miscalculation, Margo slipped beneath the main concussion ring, and from there I was able to lead her into the air ducts. I guided her to one of Shi’s multiple weapon stashes.
“I chose the arc-blaster.”
“Shorter range, greater hit radius,” Atom mumbled. “Good choice.”
“It was calculated….”
The words drifted. Atom’s vision swam. Somehow, Kozue’s voice lost cohesion and the words twisted into a melodic dance.
The world faded again.
“Concussion.” The words danced at the edge of Atom’s consciousness.
In the blackness, his mind shifted like a ship in a storm. It pressed through the swirling fog of war that clouded his eyes and carried him back to the beginning. The start of chaos….
***
Atom slipped open his eyes and recognized the ceiling of his cabin. The problems flooded back. Pieces of a galactic puzzle twirled in his mind as he tried to fit them together, but now a new piece, a harsh angled fragment in a curving gap appeared. He had recognized Toks Marshall. The true question lay in her motives for attack.
Ignoring the dull throbbing behind his eyes, he rose and dressed.
“Kozue, he grunted, as he dropped back to his bunk to pull on his boots. “We need to figure out which planet in the Nemo System holds our ship.”
“There are more pressing matters, Atom.”
“Name one.”
“An ordered list: the deaths of the Blonde family; we were attacked by unknown assailants; you and Byron are still suffering the latent effects of concussion; and Lilly is gone.”
Atom dropped his half-booted foot to the floor with a startling thud.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Immediately following the detonation of the concussion-grenade, a pair of armored troopers dragged her off the ship. As she is not one of the crew, I had not taken the liberty of implanting myself into her system. Therefore, my last data of her whereabouts is an image from our external cameras of the troopers loading her into a rover and heading spinward.”
Atom wiped sleep from his eyes. “First order is to iron out the murders with the locals. I don’t want the Ticket tagged because we burned before the law finished its process.”
“I believe the bodies in our
hold will help speed that process.”
“Let’s hope so.” Atom wiggled his foot down into his boot with a scowl and rose to head for the hatch.
“I need a cup of bitter to twitch my bones.” He smoothed his rumpled hair as the hatch hissed open and he stepped into the hallway. “And a shower and shave before I try to talk my way out of a pile of bodies.”
“That you do.” Hither wrinkled her nose as she slipped past Atom in the direction of the galley. “You set foot in town like that and they’re liable to toss you right back out on your face. I’d prefer you de-stink first, but I imagine it would be a better call for us all if we figured out bearings first and cleaned up second.”
Atom lifted his arm and whiffed himself. His eyebrows tried to join his hairline, but he followed Hither to the galley.
The crew fell silent as he stepped through the hatch.
Wearing a weary smile, Atom wandered to the counter. In a matter of moments, he filled a mug with steaming black bitter. He turned and leaned on the counter, closing his eyes to savor the steamy aroma.
A polite cough from Hither broke his reverie.
Atom sipped. “I hear we dodged a real mess.” He held the warmth of the drink in both hands and willed its energy into his ragged bones.
“Understatement,” Hither said. “We should be dead, every single one of us.”
“But we ain’t.” Shi reached over and tousled Margo’s loose curls as the girl climbed up into Hither’s lap. “I know she had the help of her mother, but I ain’t never seen a kit that coulda done as she did and saved ‘er kin.”
“As is.” Daisy hushed the others with a wave of his massive hand. “Seems we have two issues to figure: how’d they find us, and what’s our next play?”
“You’re forgetting the locals and just who it was that attacked us,” Atom said.
Daisy grumbled a curse. “I was hoping to just burn and avoid that whole bag of weasels.”
“They tagged us inbound,” Hither said with a shake of her head. “Atom’s right, locals come first on that list. If we jump this rock, they’ll tag us and pin the massacre of an entire family on us.”
Atom nodded a distant grimace at the other.
“Don’t forget that we have lost Lilly,” Kozue interjected. “Without her, we only have a system and a name. There are thirteen planets in the Nemo System, seven of which are registered as inhabited. I can find no direct reference to Shepherd beyond a family name that seems fairly common in the system. The largest city is Stillwater, with a population of forty-seven thousand.”
“One thing at a time,” Atom said with a worn sigh.
“There are fifty-two cities with populations over ten thousand.”
“Enough,” Atom barked, slapping the countertop. “We need to dig ourselves out of one hole before we jump in the next. Not to mention, we’ve added another group that wants to see us dead, and we don’t even know who they are.”
“The armor was military cut,” said Shi.
“You don’t think it’s Toks?” Hither asked as Atom wandered to take his seat at the head of the table.
He stared into the depths of his mug for a moment. “I don’t see a more likely candidate.”
“I was afraid of that,” Hither said.
“You mean we got imps on us, darl?” Byron’s gaze drifted around the table, trying to gauge their trouble. “What’s it mean fer us?”
“It means we’ve got somethin’s bigger burnin’ our tail than we’ve ever dealt with before.” Shi leaned back and propped her heel up on the seat to hug her leg. “I reckin we gotta deal with marines and gun-ships and a shoot-sight list that’ll pop a torp up our pipe ‘fore they so much as say howdy.”
“Kack.” Byron deflated.
“But they didn’t do any of that, to our knowledge,” Daisy’s calm tone settled the energy swirling about the table.
“But the bokes boarded us,” Byron mumbled.
“Truth, but they only retrieved Lilly.” The pilot slipped from the booth and stood beside Atom with his arms crossed. “They didn’t kill us or take us into custody. That would indicate they haven’t linked us to Lilly in any manner beyond a transport.” He glanced down to Atom. “Cap, how do you know that the red armor links the imps with Toks?”
“I saw her face.” Atom set his mug on the table and drummed a finger tattoo.
“And did she see you?”
Atom lifted his head with a thoughtful flicker in his eyes. “I couldn’t say.” He glanced over to Margo and studied her face for a moment. “I know she saw me, but I don’t know that she knew it was me. I know she wasn’t looking for me, but don’t know that she had the time to register who I was. On top of that, our paths only crossed a time or two under my former employment.”
“I can verify if you give me time,” Kozue hesitated. “Yes, facial recognition and voice ID confirm that the woman aboard our ship was Toks Marshall. According to the open nets, she appears to be in command of the Blood Wolf Legion. Beyond that, I cannot say without digging and potentially alerting the Imperials to our interests.”
“How’d they find us?” Hither asked.
“Maybs a tracer?” Byron replied with a shrug.
“Or they coord jumped us,” Daisy put in. “It’s not like we plotted a multi-burn to throw them off.”
Atom studied Byron with a thoughtful expression. “Koze, you’d detect a tracker on our hull, right?”
“Most likely,” she replied. “As long as it is programmed to send out a regular pulse. Although, military hardware is way beyond my paygrade. I imagine they have tech that’s somewhat harder to catch.”
“When did they slap us wiff a tracer?” Byron asked, glancing around the table.
Daisy and Atom exchanged a look. “The torp,” they said in unison.
“I know we rattled some shrap, but it never crossed my mind that they would tag us that way.” Daisy looked worried.
“I’d put my full chit on a vector drop.” Atom pondered out loud. “If I’m right, they slapped us with a mag canister that drops a trail of breadcrumbs. They don’t actually activate until we are out of normal scan range. We don’t pick up any of their electronic chatter, and they are tuned to the pulse frequency. The imps just follow the dropped tracers and eventually find what they’re looking for.”
“Wouldn’t Koze ‘ave detected any ‘ull anomalies?”
“Probably not. When Shi and I were in the fleets, we had similar trackers, but I imagine they’ve improved since then. I know the ones we had were made to blend with different parts of the ship to avoid detection.”
“That’s all well and good,” Hither said. “But it doesn’t explain how they got ahead of us.”
Everyone sat in silence, turning ideas over.
Byron eventually broke the silence. “Lilly knew tha heading, seems waxy that tha Genkos wantin’ ‘er dead, shared all the info wiff tha bokes they’s sendin’ after her. Logic says they knew of Blonde, but weren’t touched ‘nough to figure it out.”
“Most logical answer is most likely,” Daisy said in appreciation.
“We have an idea of how they found us.” Atom slugged down the remainder of his tepid drink. “But I don’t have the foggiest of their next play.”
“I imagine they got what they came for,” Hither spoke up. “As we already covered, if they had actually wanted us for anything, they would have taken us too, and if they felt us a threat, they would have eliminated us.”
“Why didn’t they kill us?” Shi asked.
“She has a point,” Daisy followed up. “They didn’t seem to have any problem eliminating the Blonde family. I would imagine we are a loose end to be eliminated.”
“I believe the answer to that question is sitting in Hither’s lap,” Kozue’s fondness colored her words.
“Who’d a thought the imps’d be scared off by a wee gal?” Shi laughed.
“Then we only have one step to take at the moment.” Atom rose and carried his mug back to the kitchen to drop
in the recycler. “We need to clear our names of the murdering that’s taken place in the Blonde homestead.”
***
The ramp dropped and crunched through an icy crust, even as the massive doors grumbled shut on the hangar. Before the hydraulics ceased their whine, Atom plunged through the last swirling eddies of snow. Pain-killers eased the pulsing darkness behind his eyes, and even though the meds made his head feel off, he could at least focus.
“Play nice,” Atom growled to Hither and Shi as he hopped the suspensor over the lip of broken ice at the ramp’s end.
“I reckin’d it’d be warmer in here.” Shi blew into her balled fists as they hurried across the wide hangar towards a distant hatch. “I can’t think of a soul that’d agree to work in here. I’d lose toes.” She tucked her arms inside her poncho and hunched.
“I told you to wear something warmer,” Hither laughed as she snugged her puffy coat around her face.
“You look like an advert for a parade floater.”
“But I’m a warm floater.”
“I said play nice,” Atom repeated as they drew near the hatch.
“I thought you meant with the locals,” Hither said with a saccharin smile as she rubbed elbows like a playful flirt.
Three abreast, they stalked from the deathly cold into the arid chill of the domed community. With hands on pistols, they kept vigilant, expecting an imperial ambush to open up on them. Only silence, punctuated by the distant hush of air recyclers, met their ears.
The landing hangar sat at one end of the town’s solitary street, which ran a half mile to a structure Atom guessed to be an atmospheric processing center. Above them, the dome seemed an exact replica of the Blonde’s artificial habitat, but on a larger scale. Discarded shipping containers and pre-fab buildings lined the wide avenue in parody of civilization.
“Who looks a fluff now?” Shi joked as Hither fought to shuck her thermal coat.
Hither sneered back.
Atom picked out the dispensary, a solitary storefront, and halfway down the short road, what appeared to be a tavern. The tallest and broadest building, the tavern looked to be a reconstituted, heavy machine shop.