by King, Sara
For the longest time, Jeanne said nothing. Then, softly, “The next time I see you, you’re dead.”
“Yeah, whatever!” Tatiana screamed into the microphone. “You want to fly it, you get in here and do it. Count me out.” Then she slammed the switch down and unlocked the outer hatch, leaving the ship still running.
She was halfway down the ramp when she saw the Nephyr.
He was walking across the tarmac, a gun slung across his chest, a curious look on his face as he examined the ship.
As soon as their eyes met, they both froze.
Oh shit, Tatiana thought. Several more seconds passed, her heart thundering in her chest. A little frown built on the Nephyr’s glittering face and he took a step toward her. Tatiana spun, ran up the ramp, and slapped the door lock. Then she ran to the cockpit and sat down in the chair.
She almost powered it up. Almost.
It’s gonna be this ship, she thought, looking at the familiar console, the same outrageously huge leather chair. This is the one that kills me.
She heard the Nephyr hit the ship’s outer lock, hard. It wasn’t enough to get him inside—brute strength would never be enough to crack this particular nut—but the muffled thud made Tatiana jump.
I’m trapped in my own coffin, she thought, verging on hysteria.
Outside, she heard the whipping roar of Bouncers as they slowed overhead. Along with them came the sonic booms of soldiers, then the sound of the ground thundering as they dropped beside her on the tarmac. While the Nephyr couldn’t force his way in, they could, and gladly.
“Calling all colonist ships within a seventy-five kilometer radius of the civilian town of Deaddrunk. This is the Coalition Air Force. Power down your engines and exit your ships or you will be fired upon.”
Tatiana closed her eyes, remembering the fires, the horrible pain, her own charred flesh. Above her, she heard a ship blown apart. She heard the percussive sounds of the soldiers firing back. Reluctantly, she put her hands to the joystick that she had watched break her ribs.
She took a deep breath, hesitating there. No guts no glory.
Then she jerked back on the nose and rammed forward the accelerator, praying she could make it over the treeline before the Bouncers realized she wasn’t going to hold still. She expected a normal, gentle, computer-regulated liftoff. Instead, she shot off the tarmac at a thirty degree angle, creating a sonic boom before she was over the treeline, sending a hurricane of broken asphalt into the group of Nephyrs and soldiers gathered on landing pad behind her.
Despite herself, Tatiana had to grin in reluctant admiration. Nice ship.
She spun it in an arc, hitting twenty thousand feet in seconds, barely feeling a single G as the ship’s inertial dampeners kicked into gear.
Really nice.
She leveled out and hit the power, outdistancing the Bouncers that followed her as if they were standing still.
I could get used to this, she thought, spinning and going high, then backtracking and dropping down on them from above. She put holes in their engines before they’d even completed a half-turn.
Really used to it.
Tatiana screamed her delight as she weaved between the fiery debris of the Bouncer ships, clipping the trees with no more than a meter to spare. “This is great!” she shrieked. She’d never been in anything so intense. It had engines built for a ship three times the size, and was utterly responsive to her every twitch.
Experimenting, Tatiana weaved over the treeline, following the contours of the earth, unhindered by the ship computer’s normal calculations and trajectory corrections. The ship moved with the grace of a soldier, yet without the sensory deprivation. She saw the land rushing under the windshield, could almost feel the wind whipping across its hull.
It’s so much better than a soldier, she thought, spinning out over the other Bouncers, taunting them. She was so thrilled it was a pressure rising up in her chest, until she was laughing uncontrollably.
“Like flying a magic carpet,” she giggled. She brought down four more Bouncers, dancing around them and filling them with holes as easily as if the four larger ships had been sitting still. She flipped on her microphone and said, “Milar, this thing is awesome!”
Instead of responding, Jeanne said, “Aanaho, Miles, we can’t find Wideman. He wasn’t on any of the ships!”
“Then where is he?” Milar cried. “Tell me where he is, Jeanne!”
“You think I’m fucking God?”
“I’m going in after him!”
“With that ship?!” Jeanne cried. “That’ll get you killed, Miles!”
Milar did not respond.
Tatiana frowned, imagining the Liberty taking on a Pod of soldiers. It would not be pretty. “Miles,” she told the microphone, “Stay where you are. Let me clear a path first.”
Milar ignored her.
Tatiana moved her attention to the three operators that were only now leaping off the tarmac in pursuit. The six remainders were moving into the town.
She winced at the idea of the soldiers reaching the town, but gave priority to the three coming at her head-on. Out of anything in the Coalition fleet, soldiers had the best weaponry, and one mistake would leave her a bleeding corpse in the midst of a fiery wreck.
That was a sobering thought.
Can’t let them get a bead on me, she thought, flipping low and wide, then twisting to do a hard ninety-degree climb. The ship responded perfectly. She could almost sense its frustration, its willingness to do more.
Good ship, she thought again. “Milar, you’re not doing anything stupid, are you?” She twisted around, found the operators beginning to take the turn upwards after her—unlike the Bouncers, they were capable of the more excruciating Gs—and quickly hurtled past them with enough sonic force to make her teeth chatter. As they were trying to work their way back, she put on speed, arced back up, and came up above and behind them, right on their tails. She turned all three into little balls of flame before they realized they were no longer following her.
Tatiana whispered an apology as they went down in pieces. It had been her deepest fear as an operator—going down with her ship. The Coalition Air Force did everything in its power to preserve the high-tech hardware of a coalition operator. That meant the entire pilot’s chamber was essentially an indestructible black box.
And, if the rest of the ship was destroyed, that meant it was an indestructible black box without power. Thus, for most of her career, Tatiana had been plagued with nightmares of being trapped in her safe little bubble of goo as the machinery died around her.
From the few other operators who would talk about it, it was a common sentiment.
Realizing Milar hadn’t responded, Tatiana frowned and scanned her viewfinder for Liberty.
Nothing but Bouncers, the smaller dots of operators, and the erratic blip of Jeanne’s ultra-fast Belle.
“Milar?” she asked, her voice catching. “You there?”
No response. As she passed overhead, Tatiana’s eyes fell on the wreckage in the jungle, the ship that had exploded above her as she sat on the tarmac. A sick welling of dread began to form in her chest. “Jeanne, what happened to Milar?”
Jeanne didn’t respond.
The operators were wrecking the town, obliterating everything. Right behind them, the Nephyrs were combing through the wreckage, dragging survivors out of the rubble and lining them up on their knees, hands behind their heads.
“Jeanne!” Tatiana snapped, flying low and firing on the closest operators before pulling out of their weapons’ range. She felt the five remaining launch behind her. Just skimming the treeline, Tatiana spun a wide arc and caught the operators from behind. She blindsided one with a rapid pulse, then curved low and wide as the four remainders went after her. They were faster and more agile than the Bouncers, so she had to struggle to stay behind them. Not wanting to make them nervous, she didn’t bother with trying to make a lock. She just held back and waited until three of the four were clustered toget
her in a tight curve before peppering them with energy rounds.
The fourth operator was harder, obviously more experienced. Even with his smaller engines, he was doing a good job of staying out of her sights.
Hold still, you slippery bastard.
The operator refused to let her get a lock. He kept going straight, darting in and out of the trees, keeping low enough that even Tatiana was having trouble keeping him in view. After several frustrated attempts, all she succeeded in doing was setting vast swaths of the forest afire. The operator, meanwhile, was setting a direct course for Rath.
He’s leading me away, she realized suddenly. Her blood went cold. She immediately spun up, turned, and raced back to the town with every ounce of speed her engines could muster.
Oh my God, she thought, staring at the destruction. Oh my God.
A single Nephyr remained in the village. He was walking down the line of prisoners, a gun in his hand. She saw the Nephyr come up behind a woman, put a gun to her head. Through the magnified image of the viewfinder, Tatiana vaguely recognized her as one of the faces that had worked on her node and collarbone when she had drifted in and out of consciousness after her crash. A doctor.
She saw the doctor jerk and flop forward into the dirt. The Nephyr moved down the line. Put his gun to another head.
No, Tatiana thought.
A second colonist collapsed. A man.
No! Tatiana passed overhead. She couldn’t shoot at him. Not unless she wanted to risk hitting the colonists if the shots bounced off the energy field of his skin.
But she had to stop him. She had to.
The Nephyr, pausing only long enough to recognize the sonic boom of her passing, moved on to the next person.
Tatiana swept over and back, then dropped for another swoop at the town. Tatiana twisted her ship at an angle and flew through the center of town, preceding her own soundwaves by three times their speed as her left wing all but scraped the village’s central road.
She hit the Nephyr dead-on with her wingtip, ripping him off the ground. Immediately, she dragged her nose up and put on speed. She could feel the drag his body created against the wing as she soared into the atmosphere and compensated with more power, praying the ship had enough structural integrity to hold together.
“You the cleanly sort?” she growled, flipping on her wing-cam. “Because you’re about to learn how to vacuum.” She broke through the stratosphere, then passed the mesosphere, picking up speed. She was halfway through the thermosphere when the Nephyr caught fire and broke apart.
Damn, she thought. Her eyes were filling with tears, but she wiped them away. She dropped the ship back to the tattered tarmac and sat there, listening.
The skies were empty. The Coalition was dead or gone. Gingerly, Tatiana flipped open her com. “Milar?”
Silence.
She remembered the obliterated ship, smoking in the forest. Had it been Liberty? A growing dread was screaming at her that it had been.
Then, a gruff, “Get back in the sky, girl. More might be on the way.”
Sucking in a breath, Tatiana flipped on the microphone. Thinking of the pieces of devastated wreckage she had seen in the jungle, she said, “Jeanne, what happened to Milar?”
There was a long pause. Then, reluctantly, “He went down.”
Oh no.
Unable to stop herself, Tatiana powered down the ship and ran out the back. Behind her, she heard Jeanne shout, “What the Hell are you doing?! Get back in the air, girl!” Then Tatiana had opened the hatch and jogged into the sunlight, all of her senses on alert, adrenaline kicking fiery arcs through her chest. In the town below the landing strip, she heard the shrieking scream of a raid siren. She ran for the woods, her nose scrunching at the smell of burning metal and polymers.
It wasn’t Liberty, Tatiana told herself, It wasn’t Milar. Please God let it not be Milar. She reached the edge of the tarmac aiming for the crash site she could see billowing smoke in the forest beyond. She pushed her way through the alien brush, desperate to know, now. Five minutes of grunting and panting later, she found it.
Coughing at the smoke, she stopped on the ridge carved by the nose of the ship and stared down at the wreckage, trying to compare it to the colonial utility that the twins had been flying.
Nose, engines, and size were all wrong.
It was a Bouncer ship. She felt her relief as a living thing, rushing through her core.
Tatiana spun and jogged back toward her own ship. She’d have a better chance spotting him from the air.
When she reached the edge of the forest, she came to a stumbling halt.
The TAG was gone.
An instant later, she felt something cold and hard touch the middle of her spine.
From over her left shoulder, she heard, “You move, traitor, and I won’t wait for after your trial to start ripping off skin.”
Chapter 39
The Last Fifty Feet
The last fifty feet were the worst.
Magali had spent her first night huddled in a hollow, hugging her knees as the wind blew hot air through the Snake. Even with the scattered rests she had taken on the way down, Magali’s arms ached and trembled. It was all her blistered fingers could do just to stay in the shape of hooks. Her legs were slowly giving way under her.
Her bloody toes slipped on the stone, taking off more skin, leaving her once more dangling by her hands.
Magali looked down tiredly. In a tired pang of desperation, she considered letting go.
It’s just fifty feet, she thought. I can drop fifty feet.
Then, a darker part of her said, You can’t kill anyone with a broken leg, Magali.
Somehow, she dragged her feet back to the rock and slowly lowered herself another foot. She hadn’t found a place to rest since the sun had hit the top of its arc. It was almost nightfall, now. Two days of climbing. The night in the hollow had sapped her body’s warmth and left a runny nose and a fever in its place. Her limbs were almost unresponsive, now. She would often find herself clinging to the rock, daydreaming, with no idea how long she had been in the same position. During those daydreams, Wideman would appear clinging to the rock nearby and talk to her.
Was it a daydream, or something worse?
Then she thought, How could it be a daydream? I hate Wideman. People daydreamed about stuff they loved. They fantasized about brawny men in secluded waterfalls, not some creepy old dude with greasy white hair and bug-eyes.
Her exhausted, feverish brain was doing circles in the sky above her, feeling completely detached from the limbs that struggled against the cliff-face.
Forty feet.
I’m not gonna make it. She felt her sweaty fingers loosening, despite her every attempt to control them. She was so warm…. Her eyes kept wanting to shut.
“You’ve gotta kill them, Mag.” Wideman was back, hugging the rock a foot from her face, his eyes fixed on her with his creepy, psychotic stare. “You’ve gotta kill them all for what they did.”
Magali squeezed her eyes shut and slammed her forehead into the reddish stone to get rid of the image. When she looked back, Wideman was gone.
Gingerly, she lowered herself another foot. Her hand slid down the crevice she had put it into, skinning the already-too-sensitive flesh of her fingerpads. Some part of her was recognizing that she was going to fall, but it felt like she was watching her thoughts from a distance.
She closed her eyes, feeling the trembling in every muscle, unable to get them to work. It seemed so ironic. After a four thousand foot climb, she was going to fall to her death at the last forty feet. She already felt her fingers losing their hold on the rock face.
“Magali.” This time, Wideman’s schizophrenic eyes were half an inch from her own. “Remember Benny? Remember what they did to Benny, Magali?”
Magali squeezed her eyes shut and hit the side of her skull against the cliff.
When she looked again, she was startled to realize Wideman was exactly where she left him, his skinny f
orm clinging to the rock, vegetable particles stuck to his fingers and hair. Trembling, she whispered, “I hate you.”
Wideman grinned, his psychotic eyes unmoving. “I know.”
And then he was gone.
“I hate you,” Magali said again, louder this time. She dropped her forehead to the stone. “I hate you so much. You ruined my life!” Everything, from her first moments in Deaddrunk ,to her sister’s intervention with Patrick, to pulling the trigger on Martin, all of it was due to Wideman. Her whole life had revolved around him and his stupid little vegetables.
“I hate you,” she said again. Her limbs were shaking with anger, now. “You’re just a stupid, crazy old man.”
She heard Wideman laughing at her.
Magali tightened her fingers against the rock and wept. For thirty years, he had commanded every part of her life. The entire village of Deaddrunk had formed every daily activity around him, dancing to his every whim, writing down even his most incomprehensible gibberish. Even now, even after she had thought she had finally gotten free of Deaddrunk, even after she had traded her freedom for the life of a doomed egger, he was still there, still directing her life, still nudging her the way he wanted her to go, still controlling her future.
Yet Magali recognized the irony. After years of avoiding guns, avoiding Milar’s rebellion, avoiding anything that could possibly make her deserve Wideman’s hated title of ‘Killer’, now she wanted to kill those men. She wanted to do it more than she wanted to breathe. It wasn’t just some passing feeling, something that she could put out of her mind. It was a driving, ever-present passion to see them die.
Even as she thought about putting them in her sights and pulling the trigger, she felt no regret. She wanted to see the bullets enter their brains, wanted to see the startled little look on their glittering faces before they fell, the thrashing of their confused bodies afterwards. She wanted to see them die.