The ship lowered, air buffeting Grace’s helmet. She blinked against the glare of the landing lights, her visor’s automatic adjustment snapping between black and white as it fought against the visual cacophony. Their ship had come for them. The Tyche would not let them die in darkness and fear.
The cargo bay was opening, and Hope’s face looked down at them. “Come on!” she yelled. Or that’s what her lips looked like they said, the Tyche’s rage having taken Grace’s hearing away. Penn was the first to the ship, pulling himself into the cargo bay. Kohl was still in the street, Nate pulling on the big man’s arm. Some reason returned to Kohl’s eyes, and he came to the Tyche too, but still clutching his rebar club. Grace looked back at the Tyche, expected her to be pulling away, now that Nate knew what she was.
But there he was, still on the ground. Hand out to her.
She ran, took his hand, and they boarded the Tyche. Together.
Hope was yelling something into the comm, slamming the cargo bay door control closed. The ship shook around them, then pushed at the ground, leaping for the sky. They hugged the floor of the bay, thrust pressing on them.
Penn was looking up, trying to see around the cargo bay. “What kind of crazy pilot flies in a meteor shower?” he said.
Nate was grinning. “Well, Rear Admiral Penn, that would be my pilot.”
El’s voice came over the speakers. “Tyche to crew. Strap in. Shit’s gonna get real.”
Grace laughed. Because now it would get real. But at least they were together.
Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace…
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They had a little time.
Kohl: in sickbay. Not a full medbay like the Gladiator had. Just a small room, a few medical supplies, most of them past their use-by dates. A low-end scanner Nate had scammed from someone was telling them what they already knew. Kohl might be dying, or he might be recovering. He'd lost blood. He’d been poisoned. There were several unidentified stimulants in his blood. He was unconscious. Stupid machine, thought Hope.
El: on the flight deck, arguing with Penn. That was a thing she wouldn’t have got to do in the actual military. They were arguing about who would fly the ship, and where it would get flown to. About how fast and far they would push it. About whether taking off was even a good idea, what with the sky full of burning rocks — the bugs were still shelling the planet — and a hostile alien spacecraft orbiting the planet.
Penn: also on the flight deck, but full of bad ideas and desperation. The man had been sweating, moving too fast from foot to foot, like he had a powerful need to use the head, but didn’t know where it was. He kept talking about the mission and acceptable collateral damage, like he was telling a story that would help them sleep at night. He had hard eyes.
Nate: asleep. Out like a baby in a coma, cabin door open, arm draping over the edge of his crash couch. Still in his clothes. Twitching while he slept, whimpering, dreams that were too bad for real rest but too soft to wake from. His dreams might have been about freedom. All their dreams might have been.
Grace: missing. Not in her cabin. Not in the ready room, eating, having a coffee, or something stronger. Not in Engineering, and not next to Kohl in the sickbay. She wasn’t on the flight deck, supporting El, or supporting Penn. She wasn’t in Nate’s cabin, although that was a crazy thought, but Hope had had to check anyway.
And, finally, Hope. Here, in Grace’s cabin, holding the hilt of Grace’s broken sword. It had been thrown into the recycler, where Hope had found it. Hope drew the blade, ten centimeters of steel glinting from the scabbard before a jagged stump covered in alien slime told the full story. She’d come to find Grace, to say would you like it fixed, or..? because Grace looked tired, just as tired as Hope was, and she looked like she’d had a bad day.
Hope didn’t have many friends. She couldn’t. But she had plenty of stims, and she could always sleep later. This friend, she’d try and look after.
• • •
Since no one else was watching Kohl, Hope tried it for a while. She wasn’t a Guild Healer, although it was all mechanics at some level. Hope had read a little on how the body worked, and then went down the Engineer path because machines didn’t leak so much. She didn’t know people like she knew drives and reactors and fabricators, but maybe if she talked to the sickbay machine enough, it’d talk back in a way she could understand. She could bring Kohl back. Kohl didn’t like her, and she didn’t like Kohl, but Hope had taken some time — never enough, always something to do — to watch the recordings from their suit cams. She’d seen him at work, doing what he did best. She’d also seen the number of Ezeroc arrayed against them. That was a powerful force to face, but especially when you were down a man.
It didn’t matter what kind of man. It was about numbers. It was about survival.
Nate had plugged Kohl into the right tubes, set the medical machine to ping and sigh at the appropriate times, put his hands on his hips, then said fuck it before walking off. Because none of them knew how to fix a person beyond putting on a field dressing. Kohl had been poisoned by the Ezeroc, some kind of alien toxin injected under his skin to fester and boil.
Hope had watched the holos. She’d seen people with bugs where their brains should have been. Was this how it started? Stabbed while you were at lunch, or on a bus, or shopping for new clothes. Pain, blood, and then … what? Oblivion? Madness before the end?
Penn had a data sliver. There might be more on that data sliver.
Hope leaned forward, putting a cool hand on Kohl’s sweat-slick brow. “Let’s see what we can see,” she said. She pumped the sanitizer a few times, then wiped her hands dry on her flight suit. Because, while Kohl needed their care, God only knew how you caught that kind of sickness.
• • •
“As the senior ranking officer—”
El’s peal of laughter came down to Hope as she approached the Flight Deck. “Oh, Penn. Penn, Penn, Penn. We’ve been going at this for an hour or more. And finally, you drop the senior officer card?”
“I’m a Rear Admiral in the Republic Navy—”
“You’re a spy,” said El. “You might also be a Rear Admiral. But you’re a spy, because I’ve seen people like you. Last man standing. Got the big scary data, got to get it out! Seriously? It’s old. Also, this is not a Navy ship.”
Hope reached the airlock, sticking her head through. She watched El playing with her console, checking the Tyche out after their run of fire and death. The LIDAR was still down, and that’d need fixing. Hope then looked at Penn, who had one hand on his hip and the other hand on the butt of a blaster he’d scrounged up from somewhere.
Penn hadn’t finished, or he hadn’t seen Hope, or he didn’t care either way. “It’s under Navy charter—”
“No,” said El, not looking around.
Hope could see Penn’s hand tighten on his blaster, the muscles in his jaw clenching. He was about to do something that couldn’t be undone, because he was used to getting his own way, used to being in charge, and he probably felt close to freedom. Like that was a thing you could be close to, rather than have, or not have. She cleared her throat.
Penn startled, a little, his hand dropping from his blaster. El didn’t even look around as she said, “Hey, Hope. How’s my LIDAR coming along?”
“It’s coming,” she said. She paused, then said, “but I’ve got a comm line up to the Gladiator. I found a few satellites up there still talking, routed around the planet, and viola.” El had parked the Tyche on the opposite side of the planet to the Ezeroc ship, and thus also the Gladiator. No line of site was no problem if you had patience and skill. Hope had a theory that said the satellites were how the Ezeroc had jammed their comms, but she was missing some important vectors, like how had they gained access to the satellites or where was the signal’s point of origin. Later; there’d be time enough for that after the immediate threat of a horrible death had passed.
That made El turn around. “Nah. That ship’s likely a smolderi
ng ball of nuclear fire.”
“It might be,” said Hope. “I don’t have the codes.” She looked at Penn. “But it doesn’t matter. If the comm’s up, we could get a signal out.” What she knew, and El knew, and Penn knew, was that the Guild Bridge was also down. That wasn’t the point. The point was that the Gladiator might be told to make an automated jump.
“A signal?” said Penn. “Perfect. I’ll need a console.”
El was looking at Hope with a what the actual fuck expression, but she was one of Hope’s few friends, the very few, and so she said nothing except, “Take the Cap’s. He’s sleeping off whatever party you had down there.”
“I’m surprised you’re not sleeping,” said Hope. “Not tired?”
“Wired,” said El. “I won’t sleep for days, not after a combat drop.”
“You said you weren’t Navy,” said Penn, sagging into the other acceleration couch.
“Not anymore,” said El. “You guys are assholes.”
“We could draft you at a moment’s notice,” said Penn, not looking up from the console. He was patting the front of his uniform, until he found — perfect — a data sliver. He tucked it into the console.
“With my combat record?” said El. “You wouldn’t dare. Besides, you try that shit and you’re walking home.”
The holo cleared, sat dark for a few moments, then came to life with the injured cries of the Gladiator. Systems down. Drives damaged. Weapons offline. Reactor still online. Some flight controls. Limited, but there. She’d crawl out of orbit, but not a lot farther. What was left of her couldn’t hold enough atmosphere to fill a coffee cup. Lots of telemetry readings, still good RADAR and LIDAR. A functional PDC, singular, for all the good it would do. No working railguns or lasers. Torpedoes spent. “Huh,” said Hope. “What did they hit her with?”
“Rocks,” said Penn. “They’re big on rocks. It seems like they peel of a piece of their own ship … hell. This is classified.” But he looked tired, like he wanted to tell them things, because he wanted to tell someone.
“We need to know,” said El, giving Hope a glance, “in case we ever get the opportunity to take off again.”
“Here we go,” said Penn, finding the comm systems. Hope watched the holo as he linked it to the automation systems. He started an upload of his data, and in a blink of an eye, it was done. He cued up an order to dispatch the Gladiator — which Hope, on a hunch, stopped on her wrist console — then slumped back. “Done, or as near as without a more personal delivery.” This last with a pointed look at El.
Hope wasn’t a hundred percent sure why she’d stopped the Gladiator’s dispatch. Penn seemed too eager, if anything. Sending a ship straight towards human space didn’t seem sensible with alien eyes watching. No point in talking about that now; she had what she wanted and there wasn’t any point getting in a tussle about the Gladiator. Penn would be upset, and yell, and nothing would change anyway. “Sounds good,” said Hope, brushing a wisp of pink hair from her eyes. “You guys want a beer now, or what?”
• • •
Engineering. Her haven. Her space. No one came here.
Oh, sure. The captain did, sometimes. Grace had, once or twice. Kohl, when he was tearing out the Tyche’s heart, helping with that emergency transplant — those scars had healed, courtesy of the Gladiator. El, never. El was front-of-house; Hope worked in the kitchen.
Whenever people came here, they never stayed. It might have been the smell, or the primal fear of standing next to a live reactor. The thrum of the drives, insistent here in a way they couldn’t be anywhere else. It could just be the smell of grease and the fear of grubbing up a good flight suit.
Either way, it worked just fine for Hope. Especially for times like this.
Her holo chattered to life as she and the Tyche had a conversation. She got the data dump that Penn had sent to the Gladiator. The man was some kind of amateur spy, if he was a spy at all; Spycraft 101 had to be not using someone else’s deck when sending top secret comms. It could just be the man was as desperate as he looked, and it could also be that he expected none of them to survive, so what was the point?
Medical documents. Bioscans, before the shit turned real and there was nobody left to do the scanning. Tests against live subjects. Tests against dead ones. Theories on organization, social culture, technology.
That last, she could understand. She opened the file. It was sparse. Because they didn’t seem to have a technology, in the typical sense.
The Tyche beeped at her, reminding her she wasn’t done. “Oh, sorry,” she said, giving her console a pat. Before she had the reward of a decent technical document, she needed to give the captain something he could use. The Gladiator’s codes. She coded a message for his console, fire it off complete with here’s how you unlock the remains of a Navy warship instructions, and the flipped back to the files she wanted to read.
Light on the detail, but that would probably happen if you were being invaded by a bunch of aliens. Keeping your sciencing on point would be tricky in that kind of situation.
The Ezeroc’s ship — the asteroid — had popped into the system without a drive trail. Initial reactions were as expected: yo, hey, that’s unusual, but it’s just a rock, so whatevs. Hope pushed a strand of hair aside and kept reading. The planet crews were a little confused when their comms arrays went down. No response from the Guild Bridge, but you know, there were protocols in place. The Republic would send a ship, replace the transmitter, and it’d be unicorns and rainbows before the week was out.
The ship never came. Or, it had, but they hadn’t been able to see the Ravana. Didn’t even know she was there. Hope suspected the Ravana had seen what was happening on the surface though. Something that had made the ship signal for help. It supported El’s spy theory though. A standard freighter wouldn’t linger; they’d just cut and run. And a standard freighter wouldn’t risk all hands to get a message back faster than was wise. The Ravana, here for Penn as well as dropping off the transmitter? Maybe. Files didn’t say, all one-sided intel at this point.
The Ezeroc didn’t seem to use conventional thrust. Their ship moved like it was under the control of an invisible hand. It also moved like G forces were things that happened to other people. The damn thing had come into orbit after putting on the brakes at what looked like a sustained 15Gs. Do that to a person and they’d detach a retina, or maybe stroke out. Conjecture: the bugs were tough. Hope noted that on her console.
She paused, looking over at Grace’s broken sword where she’d dropped it beside her. Hope unsheathed the broken blade. Conjecture confirmed.
Initial small arms conflicts looked promising, yada yada. Hope scrolled through a couple pages of military dick-measuring. No real clue on communications structure. They seemed coordinated, focused, and pretty much ate the colony for lunch in just a few days. There’d be a bunch of brass back in the Republic who’d like to understand how that was possible. It’d make repressing uprisings with subversives like Hope much easier.
Steady, now. This isn’t about that.
Okay, okay. Communications infrastructure second to none but no clue how it worked, check. They were tougher than humans due to a shiny shell; fists and clubs were useless but blasters worked just fine. What’s in the other files? Hope flipped through, thinking Kohl is dying upstairs, and wondered what might cheer him up. They said laughter was the best medicine, so … weapons?
Weapons. Not a lot here. They used numbers, which — a cross-referenced note to breeding in another file — were supplied by native populations. Not great news, that. They had sharp mandibles, and claws made with purpose; rip you apart or deliver larvae, and that was your typical warrior-slash-drone. There were other files here — a land-based big thing, and something that looked like a brain roach. Time scales were variable, but if Kohl had been infected it should have happened by now.
Should.
It’d cheer Kohl up, if he ever woke. Not having your brain eaten by insects was a good thing, right? Even if
his wasn’t much of a brain to start with.
Hope looked at the sword again. Time to get to work.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nate woke with a start, the scrabbling fingers of a dream still dragging at him. He flailed in his bunk, reaching for a blaster that wasn’t there, then a sword that wasn’t there either. Only after all that carry on did he work out where he was — the Tyche, home — and was happy no one was watching him, because it was his cabin, and no one should see a man wake from a nightmare. Even if they had just gone through hell with a bunch of angry space insects.
He blinked at the open door. The open door.
Nate was up in a flash, feet on the deck, eyes scanning the room. Definitely no one here, but the door was also definitely open. He had closed the door when he came in. It wasn’t that he was sure of it. And even if he hadn’t, the doors closed themselves, unless someone was messing with them. It was a ship, and ship doors wanted to be airtight, in case some part vented their breathable atmosphere into the hard black. What was worse than waking from a nightmare? Waking while being sucked into space.
Technically, it wasn’t sucked, it was blown, but that wasn’t the issue here.
The issue was his door was open.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand — great, no drool — and checked the door control. Looked normal, panel was in place, lights doing the things that lights did. Except … there. A tiny scratch. Something you wouldn’t notice, unless you know every square millimeter of the Tyche like the back of your hand. Nate reached his metal hand up and applied pressure. The panel popped off, revealing a mess of wires underneath. Hey now: someone had installed a bypass.
Someone had busted into his cabin while he was asleep.
He let the panel go, dangling by wiring, and turned back inside. Nate stood in the middle of it and closed his eyes. Think. Remember. What had it looked like before?
Tyche's Flight (Tyche's Journey Book 1) Page 19