Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

His claws clacked in laughter. He stepped back from my broken body and moved to the controls, intending to launch the nukes. “As you die, so will Earth.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The ship jostled and jerked. Fearful of jabbing herself with the icepick, Rada shoved it into the orange mat lining the lower half of the wall. The material had thawed and the pick slid in easily. She braced her arms against the walls, pressed against the floor by the ship’s upward acceleration.

  The ride smoothed out. The Turtle had mapped the ship’s interior, but Rada’s memory wasn’t nearly good enough to trust. Besides which, the IRP could have established a command center anywhere onboard. She would have to go room by room.

  Except she wasn’t dealing with an engineer or a war-hardened captain. She was dealing with Hobart Evans. He would want to command from the aliens’ bridge. Proof the ship was fully his. She didn’t remember the precise route to the bridge, but she knew its general location.

  She dislodged the icepick from the mat on the wall. It was better than a pipe, anyway. Much easier to conceal. She didn’t know what good it would do against an armed force of unknown number, but it was better than nothing. The only other option was to hide out and wait for the ship to be captured by the Hive. She didn’t think that was a sure thing, though. The attack hadn’t been scheduled for another half a day. Somehow, the IRP had gotten wind of it in advance.

  Besides, if Toman took the ship, she knew he wouldn’t put Evans down.

  She peeked past the doorway. The hallway was silent. So far, she hadn’t seen any internal modifications of any kind, including surveillance. Were probably trying to keep the ship pristine for whoever they’d bring in to reverse-engineer it. Just in case, she walked down the hall as casually as she could.

  All of the doors had been opened. Most of the rooms were dark. The light of the hall outlined large, oval furniture. As she neared the end of the passage, a man in a red and white suit swung around the corner. A white pistol was holstered on his hip. His hood was down and when he saw her his eyes went wide.

  He stopped in place, rocking on his heels. “Perez?”

  “Holly Rhodes,” she said. “Squires sent me. Last-second add.”

  “And you’re only now telling us you’re here?”

  “Didn’t have time to sync up my device. Given our passenger, I didn’t think it prudent to be broadcasting over public channels.”

  The man nodded. “What are you doing back here?”

  “I barely got in before launch. Had to buckle down on a damn Swimmer treadmill or something.” She laughed, then grew sober. “I was on my way to find someone. When I was crossing that intersection, the gun on the wall was tracking me.” She pointed down the hall. “It’s not supposed to be doing that, is it?”

  His gaze slid down the intersection. “What gun?”

  “Wall-mounted sentry. Alien make. The ship’s internal defenses—I think they’ve gone live.”

  “That’s not possible. Everything’s dead except our own systems.”

  “The airlock has power, doesn’t it? The lights? I’m telling you, that gun, I saw it move.”

  He took a few steps down the passage. With a solid rumble, the engines throttled up, bending their knees. He threw out an arm and planted a palm on the wall.

  “Know what, this is beyond my pay grade. I’m calling Donsun.”

  He lifted his wrist to his chest and bent his head, exposing the curve of his neck. Rada shuffled behind him, drew the icepick, and slammed it up through the base of his skull. His rumpled hood was in the way, but the pick passed through cleanly. He made a dry squawk like a cat yawning. His limbs thrashed. The back of his fist struck her ear and she danced back, drawing the pick with her. He dropped and shuddered.

  There was little blood. He hadn’t had time to activate his comm. She dragged him two doors down to a room with a concave wall of floor-to-ceiling blue mats. Large round holes stood in a row at chest level. She got his gun from its holster and popped his device from his forearm. She ejected hers and replaced it with his.

  “Moles, you all right?” a woman said through the comm. Rada stiffened. “Your heart rate went nuts for a second. Then stopped altogether.”

  She deepened her voice. “I’m fine.”

  “Yeah? Figured you must have run into an alien back there.”

  “All clear.”

  The woman was quiet a moment. “Finish up and get back here. May have some maneuvers ahead of us.”

  They were only accelerating at about half gravity and Rada was able to hoist the body and stuff him into one of the holes. Her heart rate climbed again, but nobody said anything about it. She picked up the white gun and turned it over in her hand. It didn’t appear to be keyed. She went to the door, confirmed the hall was empty, then went back inside, stuck her arm in one of the holes in the blue matter, and squeezed the trigger. The round fired with a low clap and whapped into the rubbery blue cubby.

  Without warning, nausea cramped her stomach. She folded to her knees. She had stabbed him; he was dead. She swallowed down bile. Reminded herself that the security team had vented those people at the airlock. Shot the others. Back on the surface, hundreds of workers had been disposed of like spent cans of O2. That’s why they’d made such a big deal about hiring people without families: so no one would raise a peep if they went missing.

  She lifted her head. This death, the purge of Plan Red, everything—none of it would have happened without the attack on Nereid. The storm that ensued had been precipitated by Hobart Evans. Rada knew that didn’t absolve her of the actions she took in response. Those actions, in the end, were hers.

  But she did believe it justified them.

  She surged to her feet. She had a gun now. More importantly, she had one of their devices. Installed on her arm, it showed orderly rows of icons. Many weren’t intuitive, but she’d spent enough time with Sollivan’s device to recognize the commands she needed. She tapped the icon of a globe.

  A wireframe map of the ship appeared on the screen. A number of dots were concentrated in a large oval room near the fore. Three of the dots were red. Security—the remaining members of Evans’ team. Three of the dots were green: possibly a second team, but more likely to be crew. And one of the dots was white.

  Evans.

  Making sure her comm wasn’t live, she practiced roughening and deepening her voice. She clambered up into the hole where she’d stuffed the body and turned on her suit’s light. His suit had armored plates on its chest, abdomen, groin, and joints. The rest was more flexible, but when she stabbed it with the ice pick, it had a tough time penetrating. He had an auxiliary O2/life support pack fixed to his back.

  She was still studying the map when her comm reopened. “Hey Moles, you taking a nap in there? Let’s get moving!”

  “There’s something here,” Rada whispered hoarsely. She switched her device from the map to the vitals it was constantly measuring as provided by her suit.

  “Moles? What the hell are you blathering about?”

  “There’s something here. In the ship.”

  The man’s voice grew cold. “Calm down, Moles. Flip your camera on, will you?”

  “Contact! Donsun, Perez! You have to help—!” She tore the device from her wrist. On its screen, the vitals flatlined.

  “Moles? Moles!”

  “What’s happening out there?” another voice said. “Why don’t we have visual?”

  “We gotta get out there. Moles!”

  Rada reached inside the cubby where she’d deposited Moles and tugged him back out. Once his lower back cleared, he slid down, landing with a clatter of armor. She secured his hood and dragged him to the front right corner of the room, arranging one foot behind him. From the door, to get a good look at it, you’d have to step inside.

  She went back for the device. On it, two red dots had left the bridge and were hurrying down the ship’s central corridor, headed her direction. She carried the device to the right-most hole on the concave wall. Once it
was safely inside, she went to the left-most hole, crawled in, and turned around to peek past its yielding blue lip, gun in hand.

  Two minutes later, boots scraped outside. A light shined from the doorway, blinding; her mask’s visor darkened to compensate. A trooper in a plated suit swung inside, sweeping his rifle left to right. Rada didn’t flinch. The light came to a rest on Moles’ sprawled body.

  “Moles?” the man said. “Perez, he’s down.”

  A second trooper moved inside, gaze arrested by the body. “Is he hurt? What’s wrong?”

  “He’s not moving. No vitals, but his comm is showing from over there.”

  He kneeled beside the body. The other man moved behind him. Rada took aim at the auxiliary pack on his back and pulled the trigger.

  The first shot ricocheted off and spun into the thick mats on the walls. One of the men shouted. She continued to fire. As they spun, bringing their rifles to bear, a round penetrated the man’s air tanks.

  Rada dropped beneath the lip of the hole. Fire screamed through the entrance, washing over her suited hand. A shock wave hammered into the mat. The boom was so loud her suit dampened the audio, leaving her with nothing but the whoosh of her breath.

  The light and fire faded as fast as it had appeared. Rada popped up her head. The man whose tank had gone up was nothing but a dark spot on the floor. His partner was no longer recognizable as a cohesive object. A hand lay against one wall. One and a half boots rested against the other. His suit was tangled and scorched, pads smoldering. Smoke swirled in the air, drawn away by the recyclers. Inside her suit, Rada couldn’t smell anything.

  She hopped down from the hole. Both their rifles were slagged. She went to the right-hand hole where she’d concealed Moles’ device and got it out. On the other end, men were arguing, panicked.

  “What do you think it is?” one yelled. “It’s aliens, man!”

  “We’ve swept this barge a hundred times,” a gruff voice said. “If there were anything here, we would have seen it.”

  “They’re coming out of the walls. That blue shit. We’re meat on a platter, Captain!”

  “These men are gone!” Evans yelled. “That much is evident, Lieutenant Olden. The question now isn’t what we can do for them—it’s what we can do for ourselves.”

  “You’re right,” said the gruff-voiced man, Olden. “Captain, seal off the bridge. Turn the ship around.”

  “Belay that order, Captain,” Evans said.

  “Admiral! The ship has been compromised. This is the only way we keep you safe.”

  “You’re right—the ship has been compromised. But we cannot land. That guarantees it will fall into the hands of the enemy.”

  “Sir,” Olden said. “I understand the ship is your first priority. But your safety is mine.”

  “There is a solution to both our wants,” Evans said. “We’re leaving the ship. Captain, you will seal the bridge behind us. And you and the crew will guide our prize away from harm.”

  “Aye-aye,” the captain said, voice stoic.

  “If that is your wish,” Olden said. “Whatever took out the team, it’s got access to their comms. Prepare to go dark.”

  In the alien bunk room, Rada took a last look at Moles’ device, cast it aside, and took off running down the tunnels, heading fore and toward the top deck. Where they’d secured the shuttle. There was only one main route up top and as she neared the intersection, she slowed to a walk and stuck her head around the corner, confirming she’d beaten them there. The unnaturally wide halls stretched empty to both sides.

  She turned onto the main corridor and ran on. The doors were open here, too, but the furniture inside some of the rooms was blackened, partially devoured by fire. Somehow, this made the remnants less strange: the humans and Swimmers had been enemies once, but long ago, at the beginning of each civilization, they had both faced the common enemy of fire. The damage looked old, as if it had been inflicted when the ship first crashed. The rubble had been cleared out, however, presumably by Evans’ people: all that remained was what would stay attached to the floor during the stresses of flight.

  The tunnel stopped in a T-intersection. Ahead, a door was open in the wall. Rada ran through it and stumbled on the low edge of a ramp. This spiraled up the wall, providing a stairway minus the stairs. It was more of the orange material, however, rubbery and textured, and she was able to climb to the top with little trouble.

  The landing fronted a closed airlock door. On the other side, the shuttle waited. Rada drew the white pistol and shot the human control panel they’d added to the interface. It fritzed sparks and went dead.

  He could hide, but he couldn’t run.

  She jogged back down the ramp, checked the intersection, then ran the way she’d come in, swinging into the second door she passed. A few low, ottoman-like pieces surrounded a scorched table. There were no lights besides what spilled from the hall. She got down behind the table and waited.

  A suited man jogged past, rifle in hand. He passed so quickly she had no time to react, but she replayed the memory in her head and she didn’t think the man had worn a red stripe on his helmet. The lieutenant, then. Olden. Rada rose halfway and slunk to the side of the door.

  Five seconds went by, ten. No sign of Evans. She held position. Footsteps padded down the hall. She tensed, ready, but they were coming from the wrong direction, toward the ramp. She retreated from the doorway. Olden flashed by, heading back down the hallway.

  Silently, she swore. He was clearing the route ahead. If he’d noticed the damage to the airlock, they might change their entire plan. With Moles’ device blacked out and the bridge locked down, she didn’t know how she’d get to them again.

  But she couldn’t charge after Olden. There was nothing to do but wait. Thirty seconds later, the steps returned, landing irregularly. Not one pair of feet, but two.

  Neither of the men spoke. Evans came first, jogging past the entry. Olden was right behind him. Rada slipped out and leveled the gun, aiming it at the back of Olden’s neck, between his helmet and collar.

  He spun, glimpsing her from the corner of his eye. “Get down!”

  She pulled the trigger. The shot furrowed into his collar, lodging there. Evans flung himself to the floor. He didn’t appear to be armed. She fired again, the bullet clanging off the curve of Olden’s faceplate. The soldier swung up his gun, shooting as he did so, bullets raking past Rada’s legs. Hard puffs of air echoed down the vacant corridor.

  She twitched her pistol down and opened fire at his weapon. Something clunked; the rifle sprung open near the stock, gushing black smoke. Olden yelled and flung it aside. Rada took aim and shot him in the neck.

  He staggered to the side, clutching his throat, blood spraying against the inside of his faceplate. The counter on her pistol said “03.” She kept the gun trained on Olden, but he didn’t appear to be in position to do anything more. She felt a flicker of sadness for him. It was possible that he’d helped enforce Plan Red and deserved everything that he got, but it was also possible that he’d been nothing more than an innocent soldier attached to the wrong superior.

  Evans got to his knees. “What’s your name, soldier?”

  “I’m not one of your soldiers,” Rada said. “I’m your assassin.”

  “You shot my favorite lieutenant, you asshole. Who are you? One of Benez’s fanatics? Here to win your master a second fortune?”

  “You think I’m here to take this ship?”

  Evans cocked his red-striped helmet to the side. “Why else?”

  “I’m here for the people you took this ship from.”

  “I am afraid you’re as crazy as I pegged you. Discounting its original, far more crab-like owners, I am its original possessor.”

  “You took it from us.” To her left, Olden slumped, causing Rada’s gun to twitch. His hand fell from his throat. Obscenely red blood spilled down the front of his suit. She trained her weapon on Evans. “You send your people to places like Skylon to wait for some drunken
miner to run his mouth. Then you kill him, take his claim, and use it to fund your political ambitions. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? The IRP doesn’t create anything of value, so you have to steal from others to line your nest.”

  Evans laughed. “What are you, some kind of conglomerationist?”

  “I don’t hate all governments. Just yours.” She took a step forward. “Were you there on that Bunker when the Box Turtle was destroyed? Or did you give the orders from the comfort of your palace?”

  “The Box Turtle? Is that what this is about?”

  “You killed my friends.”

  “Well, it was their own greed that did them in. They should have gone to one of the powers that be the instant they knew what they’d found. Honestly, who thinks you can stay independent in this day and age?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Do you know what happens when a guppy gets too fat? It feeds the sharks.”

  “We’re done,” she said. “See you in hell, Admiral Evans.”

  “Wait wait wait!” He threw up his hands. “I just have one thing to say: yellow chihuahua extravaganza.”

  Rada blinked. “What?”

  “It’s an ancient language. It means, you’re totally fucked and about to die and no one can have my toys but me.”

  He leapt to his feet and ran toward the ramp to the airlock. She fired at his neck. This time, the first shot took him down. As he was on the floor, writhing, she took aim and put another bullet beside the first, then stripped off his helmet and shot him in the head.

  She had no idea which way the ship was oriented, but she looked up at the ceiling, seeing the icy blue surface of Nereid. “Rest easy.”

  But her work wasn’t done. She needed to get into the bridge. Commandeer the ship and deliver it to Toman’s incoming fleet. She bent over the body and stripped Evans’ device.

  She froze. A deep-down groan welled up from her chest. “You have got to be kidding me!”

  On the screen, an imbecilic smiley face leered up at her. Beneath it, a timer ticked down from 09:38 to 09:37, denoting the exact instant at which the alien vessel would self-destruct.