D'Arc

by Robert Repino

  “There’s no time. They’re coming.”

  Once more, the sword moved on its own. D’Arc brought the blade to her shoulder, ready to strike. She could kill again. It didn’t matter anymore—one person, two, a hundred. She needed Mort(e) to see what she had done. What she had become. What he had made her.

  “We need to get to the bridge,” Lasky said. “We can open the cell from there.”

  His words cut through the haze. “Yes,” she said. She repeated it a few more times until it stuck.

  While Lasky gathered the weapons from the dead, D’Arc sheathed her sword and returned to the Old Man’s cell. She called his name.

  “Still here,” he said.

  “We’ll come back for you. We have to go to the bridge to let you out.”

  If the strators took him, this would be their last conversation, delivered through a steel barrier. “Then what are you waiting for?” the Old Man said.

  D’Arc followed Lasky around the corner, toward the bow of the ship. They made it fifty paces before she heard a piercing scream, the sound of Grace Braga discovering the body of her daughter, the child promised to her, the one she had spent the entire war protecting. The screeching seemed to grow louder even as it got farther away, pursuing D’Arc like a ghost.

  ···

  Falkirk watched on the monitor as Ruiz, Wawa, and the other guards tried to breach the strators’ defenses at the engine room. Three times, the soldiers made it as far as the nearest compartment, where they took shelter while trying to return fire. After each failed attempt, they dragged one of their wounded comrades to safety, leaving a shiny streak of blood on the deck. Smoke glazed the camera lenses. Shell casings littered the floor. Three dead bodies lay in twisted positions, with a single bloody footprint on the deck nearby. The strators advanced to the nearest intersection in the hallway, from which they could target intruders approaching from any direction. Wawa and Ruiz retreated to the common area.

  On another screen, in the top right corner, two strators tried to break into Mort(e)’s cell, using a laptop connected to the keypad. Falkirk could not find D’Arc on any of the security cameras. It was better than finding her lying on the ground.

  Falkirk clicked on his walkie-talkie. “Ruiz, come in.”

  “Yes, Captain?” Ruiz twirled around until he faced the nearest security camera. In the stark black-and-white image, the young lieutenant aged suddenly, with harsh lines on his forehead and around his mouth.

  “You have to abort,” Falkirk said. “This is going nowhere.”

  “Sir, if they take the engine room—”

  “They’ve taken the engine room. We have to find another way.”

  Onscreen, Wawa placed her hand on the human’s arm. Ruiz switched off the walkie-talkie as she spoke. He reluctantly nodded. On another screen, the strators spray-painted the lens of the camera near the engine room.

  “What are your orders?” Ruiz said.

  “Fall back to the bridge. If you can slow them down, you might buy us enough time.”

  “Time to do what?”

  Falkirk was glad that Ruiz could not see him at that moment. “We’re working on it.”

  He walked away from the console. The bridge got quiet. Everyone knew what was happening. Everyone knew that Falkirk was helpless, issuing orders that no one could execute. In the captain’s chair, Gaunt sat slumped over, chugging water from a canteen, his goggles covering most of his face. He emitted an odor, like ripe fruit and guano. Falkirk could not blame Gaunt if he jumped out of the escape hatch and flew to safety, away from these troublesome land animals and their flying machines.

  Bulan frantically tapped away on her keyboard, trying to access the Upheaval’s mainframe. Falkirk hovered over her shoulder. “Any progress?” he asked.

  “They knew we would try to get into Upheaval’s system. It’s locked.”

  “What about triggering a drill, a malfunction, something like that?”

  “I tried all of that. Nothing works.”

  The lights went dark. Then the images on the monitors collapsed into microscopic dots before fading out. The emergency lights flicked on, bathing everything in a red haze. When the screens switched on again, they showed an ominous white field. The crew members tried tapping the keys, hitting escape. Nothing happened.

  “Sir,” O’Neill said. “This is bad.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “They’re trying to reboot the system.”

  “Can they control the ship from the engine room?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The bridge has a manual switch. We can restart the computer and add a new password.”

  “We can do that, but it’ll take at least ten minutes to get everything back online.”

  Falkirk tried to think. Maybe the strators wanted them to switch off the computers. It could allow them easier access to the bridge. He tried to remember the countless manuals detailing each of the ship’s functions. He had scored the highest on the schematic tests, and now all of the diagrams were like bowls of spaghetti to him, twisting about with no design or purpose. It was all slipping away. Soon the strators would be the ones dragging him from the bridge. They might even make a joke or two about his nickname before they shot him.

  Falkirk would crash the ship. It was the only way. They could take out the Sons of Adam, along with these war machines that hovered over the city. What more could he have expected from this life but a noble death? It was more than most people got.

  He called over Lieutenant Unoka. The pilot hopped up from his chair.

  “Remind me what you can control from the cockpit,” Falkirk said.

  “We can steer. But steering is useless without the engines.”

  “Can you control the air pressure in the balloons?”

  Unoka glanced at Bulan and O’Neill before answering. “We can. Why?”

  “I need you to do some math in your head. Now, we’re at nine thousand feet. Let’s say we . . . vented the gas in the balloon.”

  “We need the computers to do that.”

  “Not if we trip the fire alarm. Both balloons will evacuate if a fire is detected inside.”

  Unoka thought about this. “Yes, that is true.”

  “Right. So we vent the balloons. And we start to descend.” Falkirk demonstrated by holding out his hand and letting it sink to his waist. “If the crew of the Upheaval is smart, they’ll cut us loose. So let’s say we drag them about fifteen hundred feet before they disengage. That gives you over seven thousand feet to activate the emergency tanks and re-pressurize the balloons. Can you do that?”

  “The emergency tanks are meant to keep the ship afloat if something punctures the hull. They were not meant to be used in free fall.”

  “I know.”

  Unoka did not want to answer. “I . . . we would still need the computers.”

  Falkirk turned to O’Neill. “You said ten minutes.”

  “Yes,” she said, almost like a question.

  “I can do it,” Unoka said. “I think I can do it.”

  Falkirk told them to get started. Throughout the bridge, his orders spread to the crew in desperate whispers and sudden movements. With nothing to do but wait, he returned to the captain’s chair to find the bat still sitting in it. Gaunt did not seem interested in the controlled panic settling in all around him.

  “Do you think we can do it?” Falkirk asked.

  The bat let out a single chirp that could have meant yes or no.

  Wawa took the legs of the wounded man, while Ruiz carried him under his armpits. A raspy moan gurgled in the man’s throat. Blood pooled in the two bullet holes in his jacket. Three soldiers led the way, while two others guarded the rear, keeping an eye out for any strators that may have followed them. They were all humans—all children, more or less, with freckles and peach fuzz. And they were all t
hat remained of the security force on board the Vesuvius. Despite the failed raid on the engine room, Wawa wanted to believe that they had slowed the strators down. Then the lights went out, and the generator kicked in. The red bulbs cast an eerie glow with no shadows, turning the blood on the dying man’s chest into black syrup.

  “Stop,” Ruiz said. “Just stop.”

  They eased the man onto the deck. His head rolled onto his collar. A final breath exited through his nose. Wawa did not know this man, though she likely shook his hand at an initiation ceremony for new recruits. He probably told himself he would give his life for Hosanna without having the slightest idea of what that meant, and how dying was never noble nor dignified. A wet stain glistened on the front of his pants. His lips curled into a grin. In a matter of minutes, Wawa would be able to smell the rot from the shell of a body he left behind. A total waste.

  “Someone’s coming,” one of the soldiers said.

  A young man emerged from around the bend, holding his rifle in both hands over his head. A dog followed close behind, the one the humans called D’Arc.

  “Lasky,” Ruiz said. “Where were you?”

  “The cellblock. The strators have it.”

  The boy spotted Wawa. His head tilted as he wondered how in the world the Chief of Tranquility stood in front of him.

  “We’re falling back to the bridge,” Ruiz said. They would form a perimeter outside the door. If the strators wanted to take control of the ship, they would have to walk single file through a hail of gunfire.

  As they began to move, Wawa waited for D’Arc. The dog was in some kind of shock. A sticky red handprint wrapped around the hilt of her sword, while droplets of blood dotted her fur from her chest to her ears. Someone had expired in gruesome fashion right in front of her, and D’Arc did not even bother to wipe off the remains.

  “How did you get here?” D’Arc asked.

  “The bat flew me in. And now Hosanna owes the Great Cloud a new nature preserve.”

  D’Arc shook her head. The bats’ penchant for haggling was legendary. “What else?”

  “The reservoir. And a mine shaft near Lancaster.”

  D’Arc seemed grateful for the small talk, even if she couldn’t laugh or smile. Despite everything she had been through, Wawa wanted to tell this dog that the strators would never get their hands on her friend. She wanted to shield D’Arc somehow, because there was no telling what would happen to a person when the world collapsed on top of her. Wawa’s life as a fighter wore her down until she was like a smooth stone on a beach. But so many people cracked after that first wave, leaving them bristling with sharp edges. D’Arc could go either way.

  The common area was empty. Upheaval still blocked out the sky on the portside window. Ruiz led the team at a full sprint up the seats of the amphitheater, to the corridor that led to the bridge. As they passed through, Wawa realized that the amphitheater would serve as the perfect cover. The strators would be able to hide behind the steps as if peering over the top of a trench. Still, the corridor—a metal tube about twelve feet wide—acted as a bottleneck, giving the defenders a slight advantage.

  Ruiz and the other humans unscrewed the steel panels from the walls and used them to create a barricade. Within minutes, four metal plates sealed off the corridor from the common area. The soldiers aimed their rifles over the top. Ruiz asked for an ammo count. Wawa had only one magazine left before she would have to use her sidearm. The humans admitted to having only a few shots as well. D’Arc was down to her pistol. “And this,” she said, tapping her sword.

  While Ruiz hailed the bridge, Wawa thought about how she would die. She was not afraid. It felt like contemplating what to eat or what clothes to wear. When the lethal wound struck her down, would she lie there and go to sleep, or would she flail her claws at the strators until she collapsed? Would she think of Cyrus in those last moments? Or Culdesac? She had nothing left to say to God. They would have plenty of time to talk later. How she chose to die would be her final prayer, maybe the only one that ever mattered.

  “Here they come,” one of the humans said. On the other side of the room, the strators forced the door open and scrambled in, little insects blotting out the pristine white surface. Wawa stopped counting at ten. They were too far away to waste ammunition. Instead of speaking, the invaders communicated with hand signals, operating like a team of Alphas scouting new territory. Pham took the lead, his squat little body pressing against the walls. Two dark stains shaded the pits of his olive-colored T-shirt. The humans gathered in the slight depression of the amphitheater, out of sight. Then, the first head popped over the top step, about forty feet away. Then another.

  “Ruiz, come in,” Falkirk said over the walkie-talkie.

  “Stand by, bridge. They’re here. They’re right in front of us.”

  In the amphitheater, the humans whispered to each other about what to do next. Wawa figured that they were mere seconds away from rising over the top and rushing this pathetic little machine-gun nest.

  “Ruiz,” Falkirk said. “Even if you can’t answer, just listen. We need you to buy us some time. Ten minutes. We’re going to vent the balloons, force the Upheaval to break off.”

  “Copy,” Ruiz whispered.

  “Ten minutes. Sing them a song if you have to.”

  The strators lifted their rifles over their trench. Pham’s fat bald head made him resemble a toad. Wawa aimed at the silver earpiece he wore.

  “Chief Wawa, is that you?” Pham said.

  “Happy to see me?”

  “Of course. I was hoping you could talk some sense into your friends and get them to surrender. No one has to die here. We just want the ship. And the prisoner.”

  Wawa heard a hitch in his voice, perhaps a clue that he was bluffing. Humans spent so much time talking that they forgot how much they gave away.

  “We have the advantage,” Wawa said. “Win or lose, a lot of your people get killed.”

  “We’ll win. And we’re ready to die. You know that.”

  “You want to risk puncturing the balloon? This isn’t the airlock. A firefight in here might get us all killed.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Chief. We have very good aim.”

  She was running out of ways to keep him talking.

  Grace Braga entered the room, not even bothering to take cover. A patch of blood stained her shirt. She wore a dead look on her face that dared Wawa to try to shoot her.

  “Why aren’t we attacking?” Grace said. Pham left his spot at the front of the trench.

  Wawa listened as the man whispered. “We need to find another way into the bridge,” Pham said.

  “No! We attack now. I’m gonna cut those dogs open myself.” Grace began to laugh, a gasping sound that quickly devolved into an uncontrolled cackling. With Ruiz’s walkie-talkie switched on, the bridge crew could hear it, like some witch from the dark ages of humanity, channeling demons and speaking in tongues.

  “Sheba!” Grace howled. “Sheba the Mother! You’ll tell me what my daughter said to you. I will take it back. I’ll cut it from your throat!”

  Wawa turned to D’Arc and mouthed the words, what did you do?

  “I killed Maddie.”

  Grace yelled more threats. “Did she die like your children did? Or did she die like a human?”

  Wawa put a hand on D’Arc’s shoulder. There would be no negotiation, no more stalling.

  “Strators,” Wawa said. “Did Grace tell you about the time she killed a dog with her bare hands?”

  A murmur rippled through the room.

  “She loves to tell that story,” Wawa said. “But I don’t buy it.”

  “You will, Chief.”

  “In that case, I have a proposal for you. You and I settle our differences. No weapons, just claws and teeth. If I win, your people return to your ship. If you win, we surrender.”

 
; More mumbling and whispering followed. The humans liked this idea.

  “You can’t get through us without sustaining heavy casualties,” Wawa said. “This is the best option you have.”

  When Grace failed to answer, Wawa slid a knife from her belt and tossed it over the barrier. It clinked against the deck. “If you’re afraid, I’ll let you fight me with a knife.”

  The strators egged Grace on. Someone shouted, “Kill her!”

  “Do it, Strator!”

  “Cut her open!”

  They weren’t challenging Grace to fight simply to save their own skins. They truly wanted her to carve up one of these animals and walk away with the pelt.

  “God favors one of us, Grace. Don’t you want to find out who it is?”

  Grace lifted her hand. The shouting ceased. A satisfying silence followed as the invaders waited for their leader to decide. “We’re lowering our weapons. You lower yours.”

  The strators shouted and stomped their feet and bashed their rifle butts on the deck.

  “Are you going through with this?” Ruiz asked.

  “I’m not trying to win, Lieutenant. I’m buying us some time.”

  It was a lie. She wanted to twist Grace’s head off and toss it into the crowd.

  Her opponent climbed the last few steps of the amphitheater, like a demon rising from hell, while the other devils cheered her on. A single strand of hair hung loose over her face. Her eyes drained of tears, Grace retrieved the knife, spun it in her palm, and held it blade down.

  “Chief,” D’Arc said. “Please don’t do this.”

  “It’s okay. If something happens to me, you and Falkirk can watch over the pack.”

  Wawa hopped over the barricade to deafening shouts.

  Staring at Braga, Wawa lifted the St. Jude medal from her chest and kissed it. It felt cold on her lips, as if the magic had run out. By entering the arena, Wawa ventured into the unknown, where not even the Patron Saint of Lost Causes could protect her.

  The voices lifted, the way human voices tended to do in the midst of combat. Wawa recognized it from the fighting pits, a primal chant full of rage. The humans evolved this way. They embraced the hunt and the blood that came with it because it kept them alive. But long after they stopped needing it, they still loved it, even the most peaceful among them.