Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

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Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 80

by Chaney, J. N.


  I slammed into her from behind with my shoulder and knocked her sprawling, but she rolled out of the fall and was back up again before I could do anything to stop her. She kicked me in the face, with the same technique I’d seen her use in Artorias. It didn’t hurt, but it did unbalance me. I stumbled backward and then fell over, and she turned back to Li Fei before he could even fire his weapon.

  She freed the rifle from his grip and tossed it away, then she ducked out from under his attempt to grab her and countered with a flurry of jabs and knee strikes. The blows kept coming as she faded away, and it was all Li Fei could do to keep his balance, let alone defend or counter. Even with the dropsuit’s actuators multiplying our strength, she’d managed to disarm the both of us. She was winning this fight, just like she’d done in Artorias.

  Li Fei’s arm hyperextended, pulled into the air in front of him like a marionette. A moment later, the woman flashed into view as she stepped around him and twisted his wrist. She torqued his arm backward, forcing him to double over. She then swept his legs from beneath him, flipping him head over heels onto his back right next to me.

  Standing from a supine position is not an easy thing to do in a drop suit. The woman decloaked, her weapon aimed at us. “Tell me, please. At this moment, are you afraid?”

  It didn’t look like there was any option except to die, but I wasn’t about to grovel.

  “Section 9 will find you.”

  “That’s good. You didn’t negotiate, you didn’t plead, you didn’t burst into anger or despair. Very good. I think I won’t kill you after all.”

  Li Fei was still conscious. What’s going on here? Who is she?

  I didn’t respond to him.

  She walked toward the door of the bridge, her weapon still trained on us despite what she’d said. “You’ve stumbled onto something you aren’t capable of understanding. Nothing you’ve done so far has made it absolutely necessary for me to kill you, so if you cooperate—if you lie there and let me leave—you won’t force my hand.”

  I realized my own hand was touching something on Li Fei’s drop suit. I didn’t think she could see it from her angle, but then again neither could I. What was it?

  “Do we have a deal, gentlemen?” she asked, still walking slowly.

  Based on the location, it was either a concussion grenade or an incendiary grenade. If it was a concussion grenade, it wouldn’t do anything other than prompt her to shoot us both. If it was an incendiary grenade, it might just turn this whole situation around. I put my hand around the grenade.

  Li Fei noticed what I was up to immediately. The grenade? Yes, do it!

  “Wait!” I called out to her.

  She paused in place. “Yes?”

  I yanked the grenade off Li Fei’s belt and tossed it in her direction. A particle beam lanced out from the muzzle of her weapon and cut through both the grenade and, to my horror, Li Fei’s body. The grenade exploded in a white flash. A ball of fire bloomed for an instant before it was snuffed out by rushing air. I blinked my vision clear and saw the hole in the hull was now a jagged gash. The venting atmosphere was violently dragging anything not bolted down into vacuum. That included me, our rifles, and what was left of Li Fei.

  I activated my mag boots to stop myself but watched helplessly as my weapon slipped into space.

  “You’re brave, I’ll give you that,” the woman called out.

  I’d taken a gamble, but it hadn’t paid off. Now Li Fei was dead, one of two Arbiters killed on this mission. It seemed to me that if I had to die, this was as good a moment as any for it. I rolled over and tried to stand, but when I broke the connection between my boot and the floor, I began to slide. I got one foot under me again and stopped myself, then I got both hands under me and pushed myself upright.

  Another particle beam shot out but missed me by a wide margin. The woman was still armed, but she was wrapped around a chair and holding on with everything she had. That was why she had missed, but she was doing her best to take aim for a better shot. I ran for cover, knowing that a moving target would be much harder to hit.

  The woman fired again and a section of control panels above me flared up and then went dead. Through the broken hull, I could see the surface of Europa. A moment later, an automated voice echoed through the ship.

  EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY. ALL PASSENGERS AND CREW EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.

  The woman reached across the console in front of her and tapped a command. “Launch pod 12,” she ordered. When I realized what she had in mind, I wasn’t sure if I was shocked or impressed. She had launched an empty escape pod and was counting on the chance that she’d be able to get into it from space.

  The pressure inside the ship was dropping, and it was becoming difficult to hear. Sounds were muffled and distant but, despite that, the woman spoke. “You have my respect. Andrea is lucky to have you.”

  Those were her last words before letting go of the chair and flying right out of the ship into open space. Now that I thought about it, her odds of survival were probably better than mine. The only thing I could see on the navigation screen was the surface of the moon, rushing up at us at tremendous speed. When the Havisham hit it, the impact would be exactly like a conventional warhead. If I wanted to live, I needed to get out of this ship.

  As the ship listed, the view through the hole in the wall changed as well. I could no longer see the stars of outer space, only the icy landscape of Europa. The woman’s plan didn’t seem so crazy anymore. If I got out through that hole at a reasonable altitude, it would be no different than a combat drop.

  It was my best chance, so I decided to take it.

  I deactivated my mag boots and shoved off with both feet. I floated across the bridge and slipped through the broken hull into the vacuum of space. I was falling free, just like any Arbiter on a mission drop. And just like the drop to Llyr station, I’d have to trust my stability thrusters to negate enough of my speed for the suit to absorb the impact.

  As the moon’s surface rushed up to meet me, I closed my eyes. Seconds later, I felt the jolt as the suit did its work. The thrust countered my acceleration and burned off speed, and all I could feel was the pressure of the suit against my body as inertia and gravity fought against it. Then something strange happened, and I felt the pressure give way, replaced with a drop in my stomach.

  I opened my eyes to see a warning flashing across my visor.

  FUEL DEPLETED.

  Of course it was. I checked my readouts, hoping the thrust I’d managed had been enough, but the numbers were grim. By the time I hit, I would be moving at a relative speed of forty meters per second.

  This was it, the end of my story.

  I remembered something I once read then. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” Tycho Barrett would die, but others would carry on. I’d join all the people I’d lost, and Section 9 would continue the fight without me.

  As I plummeted down toward the icy surface, I felt peace in the knowledge that I had done all that was possible.

  10

  I opened my eyes again and found Raven looking down at me.

  I looked back up at her beaming face, into those bright brown eyes, and her smile felt like home.

  Raven clapped her hands together excitedly. “Oh, Tycho, you’re back!”

  I tried to say, “I guess I am,” but my throat was dry and I couldn’t make a sound.

  “Hold on,” she told me. “I’ll get you some water.”

  She disappeared for a moment, and I heard the sound of running water. I blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling and tried to get my bearings. The room spun with every movement of my head. Raven came back and offered me a glass of water. She helped me sit up to take a sip. It felt awkward to move, but I was still too groggy to understand why. I tried to keep my eyes open, but it was hard.

  Raven placed the glass on a small tray and sat down next to me. Next to the bed. Was I in a hospital?

  “You can close your eyes, it’s okay. There’s no need to fight your own
body. Not after what you’ve been through.”

  I tried to force some words out again, and this time I succeeded. “l’m alive?”

  She gave me a look. “I don’t know how I should take that, Tycho. Which version of the afterlife do you think you’re in?”

  I couldn’t fight it anymore, so I let my head fall back onto the pillow.

  “That’s better,” she went on. “You just go back to sleep, and I’ll tell you what’s going on when you wake up.”

  “No…”

  “No, you don’t want to go back to sleep, or no you don’t want me to tell you what’s going on?”

  “Tell me…now.”

  “That’s awfully demanding, tough guy. It wasn’t hard to find you. Your drop suit left one hell of a mark on the landscape.”

  “What happened to the ship?”

  “The Havisham is resting beneath the ice in Europa’s ocean. What happened to put it there?”

  “Grenade,” I answered.

  “Holy shit. That lady threw a grenade inside the ship?”

  “No.”

  There was a long pause, which might well have been awkward if I hadn’t been too exhausted to think about it. Then Raven finally spoke up.

  “You threw a grenade inside the ship?”

  I nodded my head, which sent pain stabbing through both shoulders. I winced, and Raven put her hand on my forehead. “Probably better to lie still, at least for now. Okay?” I didn’t ask her to clarify. I was just too tired, and my whole body felt totally wrong.

  “Tycho, throwing a grenade inside a yacht like that is the most mental thing I’ve ever heard of. Didn’t you realize it would crash the ship?”

  “She was going to get away.”

  Another long pause.

  “There’s probably no right way to say this, so I’ll just say it. I’m sorry if this is hard for you, truly, but… Tycho, I’m going to need you to open your eyes for a minute.”

  Something about the way she said that made me open them immediately, but I didn’t see what she was talking about at first. The world was blurry, like I was underwater.

  “What is it, Raven?” She looked down, and I followed her eyes.

  I blinked, trying to get what I was looking at to make more sense than it did. It looked like I was wearing part of a nanosuit, starting at my shoulders and running down the length of my arms. I held my hands up in front of me. Wet fluid seeped from the seams and formed hexagonal rivulets across the black graphene. I blinked again and saw curled skeletal metal fingers wrapped in synthetic muscle.

  Prosthetics. Just like Capanelli.

  “Raven—”

  “I know, Tycho.”

  She took my hand, and I was surprised to find that I could still feel the warmth of her touch. It felt different, though. Distant. Like it was happening to someone else.

  “You almost died. You were dead for a while. The fall took your arms and legs, but—”

  I closed my eyes again and tried to make sense of my new reality. Four limbs gone. I was just a torso and a head, with four awkward tools bolted on to me. Raven took my chin and turned my head to look in her eyes.

  “I know this is hard,” she continued, “but this is exactly what Andrea lives with every day. If she can do it, Tycho Barrett can do it.”

  I knew she was right. With an augmented body, I could live just as well as anyone else. I could even become better at some things over time, because prosthetic limbs were stronger and faster. It’s a strange experience, processing two contradictory sets of emotions at the same time. I would never have wanted something like this to happen to me, but I could accept what it would mean for my future.

  Raven was sitting patiently beside me and holding my hand. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know how to answer that. This is a big change.”

  “I know. But you’re back at Section 9 Headquarters now, and I can’t think of a better place for you to be. You’ll learn to use your augments in no time.”

  The Earth Headquarters was a place I hadn’t frequented since my training period was over. Section 9 usually worked out of a network of safehouses, both on Earth and off-world. The Headquarters in Bruges was used mainly for administrative and training purposes. If I’d been brought back here for the surgery, that implied they had needed access to the best available equipment just to save my life.

  “How long has it been?”

  “Six days. There’s been a lot of debate about whether you should get a new nickname or not, but when everyone hears that you threw the grenade yourself, I think that will clinch it.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Panic is a perfectly good nickname for a man who crashes a functioning spaceship into Europa rather than flying it to safety. Don’t you think?”

  Although she was teasing me, I had the impression she was actually impressed. I didn’t imagine too many old spies had a story about the time they rode a civilian ship plummeting into the nearest moon.

  “Panic it is, then.” I swallowed, still trying to get my head around what had just happened. I hadn’t even tried to walk yet on these artificial legs. I had no idea how.

  I thought of Andrea, trapped for days beneath the ruin of a collapsed building on Mars. That’s how she had lost her limbs, and she had only been a child. In that context, Raven’s advice made complete sense.

  “Is Andrea around?” I asked.

  I tried to make it sound casual, but my voice caught in my throat when I said it. It felt terribly important to talk to her suddenly, to get her perspective on what had just happened to me.

  “I’m afraid not. She’s off-world right now. She left to call in a favor, but she hasn’t come back yet.”

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought I caught a hint of worry in Raven’s tone of voice. She wasn’t telling me the whole story; I knew that much for certain.

  “Raven, where is Andrea?”

  “We’ll talk about that later. First, I have to go tell the doctor that you’re up.”

  I meant to argue with her, but I didn’t get the chance. A wave of dizziness came over me, and I had to close my eyes just to steady myself. It felt like I was going to somehow fall off the bed, and just keep falling like a neutrino if I did. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, and by the time I heard Raven’s voice again, the feeling had started to ebb.

  “Tycho, what is it?” she asked.

  “I’m just dizzy.”

  “Tell the doc about it when she gets here. She’s on her way.”

  I opened my eyes. “I thought the doc was that old guy. The one who taught the medical class.”

  “This isn’t our regular doctor. This is Dr. Samara Markov. She’s the best. You’ll see.”

  “Why would we bring in a civilian?”

  “Not everyone can do the type of surgery you’ve had. In fact, there probably aren’t a dozen people in the entire system who can do what she did for you.”

  What she did for me. It seemed like a funny way to put it, but I guess that’s exactly how most people would look at it. I’d get used to it in time, I knew that much, but it still seemed so foreign. Like waking up in a completely different body. Was I still me? How much of Tycho was the flesh? How much was the mind? Replace it all with prosthetics like an Augman, would I then still be me?

  “So what you’re telling me is that I’m cutting edge technology.”

  I tried to smile, but based on Raven’s reaction it must have looked more like a grimace.

  “Yeah.” She tried to smile back, but her smile looked just as strange to me. Like she was fighting not to express some other emotion. “You’re top of the line. I mean, maybe not compared to an Ares Terrestrial cyborg, but…”

  “Well, I don’t know. If I can’t be as good as one of their chimeras, I’m just not sure it’s worth it.”

  She squeezed my hand, then looked up as we heard the door open. A small woman with a skinny face and short blonde hair brushed straight back walked in. “So, the patient’s awake?�
�� she asked.

  Raven nodded. “Awake and talking.”

  “Hello, Tycho. I’m Dr. Markov,” the woman said, as Raven stood up and moved out of her way. “How are you feeling?”

  It felt a little strange to have someone I didn’t know addressing me by my first name. It’d been a long time since anyone outside of Section 9 had called me by anything other than a pseudonym. It was strange, but comforting too.

  “I’m… processing. This is a lot to take in.”

  “Of course it is.” Her voice was warm and sympathetic. “You probably didn’t expect to survive that crash at all.”

  “No, I guess I didn’t. How bad were my injuries?”

  Dr. Markov was quiet for a moment, looking as if she was trying to gauge me. “Your injuries were extensive,” she said. “You presented with acute traumatic ischemia and frostbite. Torn mitral valve. Globe rupture in the right orbit. Three broken vertebrae. Fractured skull, multiple fractures across—”

  “Okay, I get the idea,” I said. “I was more broken than not.”

  “Well, the good news is that you made it. And I’ll do everything I can to help you adjust to your new life. That is what it’s going to feel like. A new life, with new capabilities and even new responsibilities. But we’ll talk more about that later, yes?”

  I nodded. Something about this woman was deeply comforting. Maybe it’s just that it wasn’t hard for me to believe she cared, but I could feel my anxiety about the situation fading.

  “First things first.” She took out a small device from her lab coat pocket. “I need to check for any complications, now that you’re awake. Please lie as still as you can for just a few minutes.” I lay back while she ran the device down my body. It made an intermittent buzzing sound as she brought it over my chest.

  “Everything okay, Dr. Markov?”

  “Everything’s fine. And call me Samara, please. I promise I won’t mind.”

  Something about the doctor’s voice seemed familiar. It took me a minute to place it, and I didn’t know what to make of it when I did. Her voice sounded strangely similar to Andrea’s. Once I’d drawn the comparison, I realized she even resembled her, though in a different way from the woman on the Havisham. That woman had carried herself with the same poise Andrea always had. Samara had a quiet, subdued manner that was almost the opposite, but her face and voice were definitely similar to Andrea’s.

 

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