by K. Gorman
“Gave us a glancing blow off the shields. Warning shots.” He rubbed at an eye. “Caught us just before Amosi.”
“Shit. I’m sorry. I—”
“Not your fault. I knew what we were getting into.” He lifted his gaze, and his lips tightened, the smile thin and sharp. “Their next shot won’t be a warning. Cookie uploaded a jamming Trojan into their systems when they hailed us. Embedded it in the video feed. It won’t work a second time.”
Her eyebrows shot up. Marc had often referred to Cookie as a hacker, but, since most of the exploits he’d bragged about involved messing with arcade games and buggy phone systems, she’d assumed it had been a joke. What hacker would bother finding scrounge sites for them when they had much more fruitful jobs to work?
But then, perhaps that had her answer. Who else would find sites for them? Who else with the knowledge could afford the kind of casual work a lone scrounge set-up provided? Cookie’s apartment on Enlil hadn’t been luxurious by any standard, but it hadn’t been wanting, either.
She cleared her throat. “I… uhh… Isn’t that the plot for one of the old alien invasion movies? Defeat them with a computer virus?”
“Yeah… it didn’t quite work out that way. And they’ll be coming in hot next time. We need to be ready.”
She nodded, jaw tightening again. Inwardly, her stomach did a little flip.
How in the ten hells could they be prepared for that? Nothing had changed. The Nemina was not, in any way, shape, or form, a fighter—at least, not one that could toe with a cruiser full of Alliance fighters.
Brushing a wrapper from the pilot’s seat, she dropped down with a wince and picked through the controls, flashing the screen through to the navigation dashboard. The engines still sat hot, with fuel a little under half of what they’d come in with.
As if on cue, the ramp down the hallway banged. Soo-jin and Cookie’s voices sounded in a hush, accompanied by a series of clanking.
The fuel rods.
“All good back there?” she called.
“All good. Get us the fuck out of here. I’ll put these fuel rods in.”
“Anyone not doing anything should find a crash seat.” Karin flicked the switch to close the outer ramp and jerked a finger to the seat next to her. “I want you in co. Make sure you got that gun ready.”
A creak of pleather sounded as he eased himself down. “As much good as it will do us.”
“Happy thoughts, happy thoughts,” she murmured.
With full atmosphere, the engines whined as they cycled back up. She relaxed as the familiar vibration rumbled through the floor and into her seat. Manual controls jutted from the dashboard in front of her, already loose from their docking. She guided them closer to her and pulled the seat restraints around her. After a few seconds, she released the magnetic lock and called toward the back again. “We’re taking off.”
The docking magnets released with a clunk. She flicked on the comms and pulled off the Ozark’s number, skimming past the Enmerkar’s ident on the most recent calls. As she went to engage the thrusters and lift them off, she froze at the face that appeared on screen.
Hopper.
Fuck.
The anger on his face seemed amplified by the largeness of the screen. Her mouth tightened. A part of her wanted to swipe his face into a small, unnoticeable icon at the side of the screen, less important than her navigation system, the same as she did when alerts popped up from insects hitting the front.
But that wouldn’t solve the problem. If he had popped up on the other side of the Ozark’s comms, that meant that he was on the bridge. Which meant the hangar door would not be opening for them.
As if to accentuate her thoughts, he said, “You’re not going anywhere.”
She feigned a smile. “That’s fine. I’m cozy right where I am. Back in my cockpit.”
“You’ll be in a jail cell, soon.”
“Not if I can help it. Is Christops there?”
“He can’t help you now. This is my station. You are not leaving.”
She broadened her fake smile. “I’ll assume that’s a yes, then. Tell him that I’m sorry in advance? And to give my regards to Ethan? Thanks.”
Still smiling, she muted the comms and turned to Marc.
“Looks like you’ll get to use that gun, after all.” She switched on the internal comms. “Okay, party people. Find a crash seat. Now. This is not optional, Soo-jin.”
Marc’s frown deepened as, at the light touch of the controls, she lifted them up, briefly fighting the artificial gravity. The hangar bay spun around them as she swiveled, keeping the thrust low. As the main doors aligned with their nose, the frown dropped from his face. “You don’t mean—”
“I think we can do it. Our cannon’s pretty strong. C-Class Laser, right?”
She chewed her tongue. The doors floated in front of them, swaying as they adjusted. Below, loose parts of the hangar flapped and blew around in the Nemina’s wake. The controls hummed through her fingers.
“Two shots, I think?”
“Three, at least.” The frown returned to his face, flowing into the downturn of his mouth. He rubbed the skin under his lip as he stared at the screen. Stubble scraped across his chin. “Maybe four. It’s solid metal, locked in place, and we need a hole big enough to fit. Clio.”
At the side of the screen, Hopper had stopped talking to her, probably figuring out she’d muted the stream. Gesturing to someone off screen, he stalked to the side, the snarl in his face evident. Christops appeared in the frame, his face like stone as he watched the place where Hopper had gone.
“I’ll re-magnetize us,” she said. “Put the first blast in the doors, and we’ll wait for full vacuum before we go for any others.”
“I can’t shoot when parked. Not there, anyway.”
“I know. It’s going to be tricky. Shoot once, and I’ll take over.” Louder, she called back. “All right. Extreme flying coming up.”
A hush of swearing came up the hall in answer. By the rushed pounding of shoes on metal, she guessed they hadn’t followed her previous suggestion.
As Marc pulled out the secondary dash, displacing a set of wrappers with a sweep of his fingers, she swayed the ship back and forth, wings tipping.
“Anything sharp in here I need to know about?” she asked, thinking about the bedding.
“Just straws.”
“I can live with that.”
She glanced to his screen. Her flight training had covered precisely nothing on weapons programs, but his dashboard didn’t take much to recognize. Even with her unfamiliarity, and the variations between Alliance and Fallon systems, enough televisions and movies referenced the programs so as to create a degree of reality within their narratives.
A bump below her that sounded like landing gear dropped the hidden weapon below their underbelly, and a laser-target system pulled across most of the screen, giving it a green wash as it overlaid the view. The hangar door skewed in her mind, coming from a different angle to the image she had in front of her.
Marc picked a spot close to the seams near the bottom. The white cross-hair tightened and locked on. He glanced to her, waiting.
“All settled?” she called back.
“Yeah, go for it.” Soo-jin’s answer floated up the hall, muffled by the bend. “I want to see this creative flying of yours.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” she murmured, then gave a curt nod to Marc. “You heard the lady.”
He nodded. Releasing a safety on the thumb trigger, he flicked its cap back, double-checked the dashboard, and pushed the button.
The cannon thundered below them. Karin wrestled the flight controls as they jerked back from the recoil. The entire screen lit up in red as the laser ripped into the structure. The shriek of breaking and bending metal dulled less than a breath later.
Then, they were falling.
Gravity flipped. Karin dragged the controls up, thrusters raging against the pull. The Nemina tipped and turned. As the
light diminished, the entirety of the hangar twisted around them, rotating as they fell toward the rush of air in a slow spin. G-forces threw into her. She fought against them, pushing the controls. Warnings flared on her screen. A bright flash of light cracked overhead as they hit something and scraped down.
Then, she got the spin right.
Like a cat, the Nemina seemed to right itself—just in time to land at the top of the doors.
Karin flicked the magnetic locks on as the hangar roared around her. Looking outside, she fought a sudden drop in her stomach.
The Nemina had its own gravity. The floor sat below them, perpendicular. While her instincts screamed she should be pulled forward to the floor, their own gravity generator held strong. Craning her neck, she allowed herself to rise up in her seat to look down at the doors.
“You know, that hole could be bigger.”
Marc grunted. “Your landing could be better.”
“Let’s give us both a second chance, then.”
A notification at the bottom corner of her screen told her the air had depressurized from the hangar. She watched a piece of paper, somehow left over from the time Marc had come in, float out, its straight-edges indicative that it moved more on inertia rather than any acting force. When she lifted the magnetic locks, the Nemina pulled free with no resistance.
She twirled them overhead, then righted themselves as the doors came back in line.
This time when Marc fired, it made no sound at all. Only a quiet, steady rumble under her feet.
Stifling a yawn, she held the ship steady as the red beam shot out from underneath them, darting to different parts of the door. The light pressure from earlier pushed closer to her mind, bearing down on her, but she fought it back.
No rest now.
They had to get out.
A white-hot glow seared the edges of his firing. As he worked, she realized he was going for a Nemina-shaped rectangle. She’d have to tip them to the side to make it work, but they could fit through.
The last shot, a sustained blast, burned into the center of his work. A second later, the piece of door kicked out, flipping with inertia. Blackness replaced it, for a second looking like a square piece of Shadow—but as she tipped the ship forward and moved closer, the blue light of Lokabrenna slipped into view.
Space.
Freedom.
She pushed the thrusters, tipped the wings, and aimed for the hole. The proximity alert shrieked as they flew close to the sides of the hole, but cut off almost immediately.
A wide grin spread across her face, and she gunned them out, racing them under the Ozark’s bulky, planed underbelly and out on the other side, skipping away. More and more of Caishen appeared, the Nemina dwarfed in its bulk. She flicked on the side cameras to get screengrabs of the ships docked there. Maybe one of them had sent the metal balls.
But, as they cleared the ends of two ships, and more of open space grew visible, her grin faltered.
The warships had arrived.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Oh, holy mother of—Shit.” She veered, ducking back under the Ozark’s underbelly.
As if that would help. With the scanners those ships had, they could probably see right inside the room and judge them by the amount of trash on the floor. The star field swept to the side as they glided up into a nook next to an embedded communication array and nestled their shield boundary close to the Ozark’s outer hull.
“Well, I told you there were ships out there.”
Marc’s arms folded across his chest. He had a relaxed look, back and shoulders curved into a partial slump in the chair, eyes steady on the screen. The green light from his weapons program washed over half of his body, contrasting with the blue from her bigger, brighter screen. The view on his screen swayed as they drifted, mirroring hers.
“Have you stopped with the crazy flying yet?” Soo-jin’s voice drifted up the hall. “’Cause I kinda have to pee.”
“Yeah, go for it,” Karin called back. “But if they shoot, don’t hold me responsible for evading.”
“I’ll be quick.”
The Ozark’s communication link still sat active in the corner. It caught her eye when she glanced over to it. Nick’s face had appeared, gesturing toward the camera.
She swiped it into a one-quarter view on her screen. “Nick, what’s the word?”
“Alliance called in, and Hopper left. Did you really blast the door?”
“Only half of it.”
“Sol.”
“I already apologized. I’m not going to do it again. What did Alliance say? Has Fallon called?”
“No. No word.”
She touched the controls and edged the Nemina forward, taking another peek at the two ships. Massive. Old Earth had entire countries smaller than the vessels on the screen in front of her. She’d read once that, kitted up and on full alert, an Alliance cruiser could hold up to eighty-thousand personnel. This one, she suspected, didn’t. If it had, they would have sent more fighters after the Nemina. Her entire plan had been stupid to begin with—ill-thought out and flawed down to its very principle. There was no way Marc should have been able to outwit the cruiser by running.
Except that he had. And her math had held true. And here they were, on the flip side of it, and the Enmerkar had caught up to them.
Maybe they had Lost on board. Enough to cripple the crew down to its skeleton.
And maybe Fallon did, too. With a tap of a key, the ship’s idents checked into the Nemina’s dashboard, and she got a name. Agni. God of fire, in one of Fallon’s more popular pantheons.
And Enmerkar is a Mesopotamian hero. Sol, I’m in the middle of a mythic battle.
Realizing the two of them were waiting on her, she glanced up to the screen and shook her head. “I’ve got no idea. Marc? Any idea on Fallon?”
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“Haven’t been back in two years.”
Behind him, Cookie poked his head around the corner of the threshold. “Is it talk time?”
“I guess.”
She squinted. The light from the screen was beginning to glare at her eyes. The pressure hadn’t let up, either, instead settling into a constant throbbing that pulsed into her temple. A few wrappers on the floor crackled as Cookie passed the back of her chair and settled into the navigation next to her. The tape had held well. All three laptops remained on the console.
She rubbed a hand to her forehead, eyeing his hands as he reactivated his dolphin laptop. “Don’t suppose you can put another virus up their butt?”
“Karin?” The tiny voice, the strain in it amplified by the warble of the speakers, snapped her attention back to the screen.
Ethan.
He didn’t quite fit the desk. Instead, he’d crawled into Nick’s lap for the camera to see, looking small against his height and frame. The purple Starcats T-shirt, looking more worn than when she’d last seen it a few days ago, made a sharp contrast to the gray of his background and the paleness of Nick’s arms. Even in the washed out camera feed, it brought out the green in his eyes.
“Hey.” She straightened in her chair. “Hey, long time no see.”
“I saw you yesterday.”
“Yeah, well…” Okay, maybe it hadn’t been that long. “I didn’t see you,” she finished, sounding lame.
“Are you going to get shot?” he asked.
“I hope not,” she said. “I don’t like getting shot.”
“I don’t like you getting shot, either.”
Well, she thought, letting out a slow breath as the earlier dizziness returned, not a whole lot to say to that. The conversation hit an awkward pause. They stared at each other through the feed, neither moving. By the way his jaw worked, and the tremble in his throat, he looked on the verge of tears.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They want me alive.”
Movement tracked onto her screen. One of the shuttles from Caishen looped under a ship at the far end of the docki
ng platform and started toward them. She stiffened. “I have to go.”
“Bye.”
“Take care, Ethan. Keep using that netlink.”
She cut the transmission and swept the feed away. Gods, that had to be one of the most awkward goodbyes she’d had—but what more could she say to the kid? They’d delivered him back in his proper place. Christops would look after him, come what may. Wasn’t anything else she could do for him.
And she had her own problems.
With a light touch of the controls, she swiveled them around to face the oncoming shuttle. Marc leaned forward, once again engaging the weapons panel.
“That one’s got no guns, right?” Cookie eyed her screen. Rough stubble covered his chin and neck, and a few spots of acne had risen on his face. “It can’t shoot us?”
“Sure,” Marc said. “And I can’t hide a gun under my ship.”
“Point taken,” Cookie said. “You gonna shoot it?”
The sudden comms tone cut off Marc’s reply, and the edges of Karin’s screen flashed. She glanced at the address—the Enmerkar—and swiped it off.
“Soo-jin?” she called back. “Where you at?”
A shadow moved at the door, and Soo-jin clasped her hand to Karin’s shoulder as she walked past. “We back to creative flying?”
“Yep. I think these guys are just here to stall us.” She jerked her head to indicate the oncoming shuttle. “Why else come? We got no people to transfer.”
“Maybe it was part of whatever the Alliance wanted to talk about,” Marc said. “Caishen’ll have to be talking to them by now.”
“More reason I don’t want to wait around.”
Another comms tone came again. The flashing red outlined Soo-jin as she settled into the sensor station, the stone-serious mask of her face directed to the screen. The shuttle paused ahead of them, as if waiting. Karin watched her put the seat restraints on.
She swiped the comms screen away again and touched the controls. The Nemina shifted under her hand, her view pulling back toward the star field and the two ships.
“That’s where I want to go. Right through. We can hit the belt past Clemens if we get lucky and hide in one of the thicker asteroids. Harder to detect.”