“We are now orbiting the Meridia moon. Personnel assigned to resupply duty, please ready at the bays.”
“That ain’t us, thankfully,” Dorr says. “I ain’t in the mood to work.”
“When are you ever,” Hartman says. “But just so you don’t get too fat, how ’bout you get your tail to training and take your pups with you.”
“Yah yah,” Dorr says, getting up. I stand with him.
Macedon has to stop in order to load supplies of new weaponry, small-ships, or food. The drives whine to a halt, blanketing the ship in the thick kind of silence you get when you aren’t on the move. The Send seems unduly loud now, everyone’s voices in the mess too stark and empty.
Evan says, “See you later, Jos,” just as the deck at our feet suddenly shakes. And again, so violently I grab the table to keep upright.
Shock waves from below. Below this deck are the hangars.
Lieutenant Hartman’s tags beep just as she reaches to make contact. Commander Xavier’s voice comes through, loud enough that we all hear it, even as the ship’s battle klaxon erupts.
“Get to gear, we’re under attack! Missile barrage on our sensors—”
We run from the mess in a stream of crew. The corridors are alive with uniforms, most of them black.
“—and hangar bays. Expect boarding parties—”
“Not if they blow the bays!” Iratxe yells.
Priority is to arm ourselves and link on the tacfeed.
“They’ll come in through the escape pods,” Dorr barks.
Which are located all over the ship, even near the drive room and the bridge—which would be the enemy’s goal. A multiple point attack.
It’s an orderly scramble to get our gear, assisted by whoever has the extra hands—from cooks and laundry people to the ship chaplain and shrink. Evan materializes at my elbow to help me with the armor. He’s armed himself with a rifle. Once the pickup’s in my ear, all the bad news starts to pour in.
The missiles came from around the dark side of the moon. They travel faster than ships, but even if we detected them early, Mac’s at a full stop for the resupply. Ashrafi’s battleships haven’t shown up yet. Our long-range sensors are blown, along with three-quarters of the hangars. The inner bay doors are locked down or that whole deck will depressurize. We lost people.
And two Komodo-class pirate ships just slingshotted around the moon and have already launched outriders toward our escape pods—just as Corporal Dorr predicted.
“They’re prepping to disable the clamps and scuttle the pods,” Xavier says over the feed, and that’s all I hear as more explosions boom throughout the ship, echoing right down to jetdeck.
Dorr yells at us to get to engineering and start securing the perimeter with small-charge concussion grenades and claymores. We don’t wait for the levs, but pour down the steps in haste, brushing elbows with more crew. Smoke vomits through the vents in gusts, then squeezes to a mere line as the air flaps shut.
Our team gets to the drive room in one piece. Cleary and the other techs shout to one another in terms I can barely understand but amount to the fact they’re trying to get Macedon’s drives online. Their comps are alive with reports, little flashing lights on the schematic displays, some parts glowing with 3-D holo representation. Commander Pasqual’s on comm with the bridge. It’s all a muddle of voices laid over the ship’s wailing defense.
Iratxe and I set to booby-trapping the perimeter, far enough away from anything vital, but close enough to give proper protection. If pirates try to enter the drive room they will leave limbless.
From here on in it’s a deck-by-deck fight.
You don’t spend time thinking.
You turn a corner and there’s a body in clothes you don’t recognize, and you shoot.
You can’t see their faces because they wear black helmets, protection against any chemical gases the ship might release into isolated corridors. Smart bastards. But it doesn’t matter. They die the same, faceless or not. Rifle pulses penetrate even helmets.
It’s a race to own compartments. You move room to room, corridor to corridor, setting traps that will bite the heels of anyone who follows you. Bleed them to death in your wake. The noise deafens you—shouts in your ear from all parts of the ship, shouts by your elbows from the crew beside you, fighting beside you. In the intersections behind you explosions go off from delayed switches. You’re clear to advance, to keep moving ahead, corridor by corridor and death by death.
The enemies pour in from another makeshift airlock— where the escape pods used to be, back near the mess hall. They’ve used the blown hole to lock their own ships to, and they come out firing.
A splatter of red bursts on my sight, but I feel no pain, not even in delay.
It’s not me who’s hit. It’s Iratxe.
She’s at my feet as I crouch in a hatchway, shooting around the frame. She’s dead.
Dorr tosses a grenade, waits for the crack of fire on impact, then moves ahead. I follow, step over her body, and keep going. Just keep going. It’s all you can do. Somebody treads behind me and I assume it’s another jet.
Soon we’re at medbay. Another escape hatch pops in and enemies rain out.
We exchange fire, bright pulses. The medics are armed, shooting from their position just inside the doors. I look quickly behind me, feeling someone’s breath.
Evan, who’s followed me for how long, I don’t know. I see a glimpse of wide eyes before yanking him back into a recessed hatchway, grazed by bolts.
Then a voice through my pickup says Ashrafi’s battleships have finally arrived.
Someone must be telling the pirates the same thing. One of them shouts to his comrades to retreat.
Then he tosses a thunderflash toward us. I cover my head but the boom shakes me to my marrow, tilts me into the corridor. Time enough for somebody to grab me up and haul me off my feet. I can barely see, but fight, seeing streaks of armor, then ceiling lights, then helmets. Something knocks me across the head. The world is a painful, throbbing silence, then my rifle’s ripped from my hands.
Sound and sight and awareness eventually bleed in. Low lights and voices talking about insurance. “They won’t shoot with their own jets on board.” And, “Our mothers will keep ’em busy ’til we’re home.”
I blink through the fog, the scent of my own sweat and somebody’s blood, the sound of swearing and the sight of a dozen unfamiliar faces.
I’m inside a pirate outrider and it smells like Genghis Khan.
* * *
IX.
My arms are numb, pulled behind me and cuffed. I can barely see, but it’s not my eyes. The inside of the rider is dim. We’re all sitting on the grease-stained deck. No benches, just nonslip flooring that bores hard through my uniform. Evan and Erret are crammed on either side of me. Evan’s head is bowed. Erret sits up, glaring across the narrow space between jets and our captors.
I glance down the row. Our squad is here. Madi, Aki, Hartman, Venice McCrae, Rodriguez. We were covering the same corridor. Eight of us, and now we’re here. Insurance.
Erret fidgets. I feel the movement of his arms against me. He tests the cuffs.
I don’t move. I know what it earns you.
The pirates are a line of blank, smudged faces. Some of them young like us, a couple of them much older. None I recognize. Of course. But I know them anyway, I’ve seen them before. Just masks of hardness with death behind their eyes.
Despite the bodies beside me, I’m cold.
“Your ship’s too easy,” one of the pirates says, taunting. “Takin’ it’s easier’n takin’ a shit.”
“That why you in retreat?” Erret says.
I want to know how they knew we were going to be there. Carriers don’t broadcast their resupply schedules on the Send.
“We ain’t in retreat,” the pirate says, “we just got bored.”
“Yah, it does get borin’ when two battleships come up on your ass,” the corporal says blandly.
Luckily for him at tha
t moment the outrider jostles us around, going into dock. Through the bulkheads we hear the deep, heavy sound of bay doors shutting.
We’re inside one of the ships.
The back ramp whines down. Light pours in. I squint. Evan shifts beside me. My arms and shoulders throb from numb to extreme pain.
A pirate comes up and hauls me to my feet. Each of them takes a jet. The movement makes my head black out. I stumble and he hits me, as if that will orient me better.
Our weapons are gone, of course, and our utility belts, armor, webbing, anything that can help us. We’re left just in our black BDUs and boots. And our tags. They searched us thoroughly.
They march us down the ramp and onto the cold deck of their hangar bay. It isn’t as large as Macedon’s, only half the size with space enough to house about ten APCs. Or twelve outriders.
They walk us out of the hangar, guns at our backs.
The gritty bulkheads arch up over my head like gray, badly lit specters. I remember these corridors; years on Aaian-na could not burn them from my mind. Every few meters the smooth exoskeletal support beams jut out like the ribs of some large beast, a design inherent only in Komodo-class ships and especially favored by heavily armed merchants and pirates.
Painted deck directions in red and yellow are mostly scraped away or smudged over by years of collected grime and laser burns from old fights. No amount of scrubbing can get rid of those scars. And Falcone likes it uncomfortable, he likes these reminders of injury. There is that pervading smell: cold steel, cigrets, the faint distant odor of cloud drugs. Blood.
It’s in the walls and through the vents, years of submission and violence.
Behind me in the line as we walk, Evan breathes deeply. He’s afraid. I want to turn around and look at him, at least look him in the eyes, but I can’t. The guard propels me forward. My head throbs with each echoing step we take to their brig.
It’s not as formal a place as the one on Macedon. There are only three cells, caged on every side, dim lighting, and no security station. The bulkheads are damaged skin: pockmarked, scarred, and stained by who knows what. The cold, stagnant smell is worse here. Chains are affixed to the walls in each cell and high steel bars run along the ceiling.
A bolted chair sits empty in one of the cells.
They stuff us into one of the cages, one without the chair. I bump between Madison and Aki, then land up beside Evan. I meet his gaze finally.
He is twelve and I am eight. There’s no dodging it.
I edge to the cage wall between the two cells and Evan does the same. I keep my eyes on the two guards that the ringleader pirate leaves behind, the mouthy one from the rider. The two are as impassive and focused on their prisoners as jets would be. After a moment I feel Evan touch my sleeve and hold on.
“Well, this is just dandy,” Dorr says, plopping himself down on the single cot in the cell.
“Be quiet,” Hartman says.
This brig is probably embedded with optics. We won’t give a show to whoever watches. And our tagcomms are useless, too short range.
Silence weaves through us. Aki keeps looking at me; maybe she sees the same fear in my face as I do in hers. I try to avoid her eyes but there is not a lot to look at. We all wait for the same thing and within the hour it arrives.
Evan straightens beside me, rigid.
I slouch back behind Aki and catch glimpses over her shoulder.
Falcone’s appearance has changed, like I thought. His hair hangs past his ears, a dull blond, not the spiked silver I remember. His face is stubbled and thin. It makes his nose and large eyes more pronounced. Lines arch down from the corners of his nose to the corners of his mouth. He’s dressed in dusk black and deep blue fatigues, the colors of bruises.
He seems smaller than I remember, physically. Older, of course, but not as old in appearance as he should be.
If I only had a gun. Or my hands around his throat.
Everybody keeps perfectly still. Not out of fear, for them. But rage. Indignation. Restrained rebellion. Jet reactions.
With slow deliberation Falcone lights a cigret and looks into the cell, the same unblinking stare, the same hard, almost bored expression I remember.
“Everybody toss out your tags, here.” He points to the deck in front of him.
Same voice, all smooth like someone who grew up privileged. Same smell. And something inside me tucks into itself, a tight little ball.
Our tags with our names and faces on them, that’s what he wants.
Evan shakes his head slightly at me. I don’t want to either. Ours are names he might recognize. Our faces too, even though we’re older.
But we toss them out with everybody else’s; they fall musically at Falcone’s feet.
He riffles through them.
Evan shakes. I touch his sleeve. My hands are cold.
Falcone stops sifting. He holds one of the tags up to his eyes, the cigret burning between his teeth.
“Private First Class Musey,” he says. “Step forward.”
Aki’s gaze reaches out to hold me back, but it is only her gaze, and I go.
A hand lands on my shoulder and pulls me back before I reach the gate. Madison steps in front of me casually, to block Falcone’s line of sight in case he decides to pull a gun. Dorr keeps hold of my shoulder.
They know my past. They’re actually trying to protect me from it.
Falcone steps to the side, as if Madison is no more than a door he wants to see around. He stares into my face.
Don’t let me go, I think at Dorr.
“Joslyn Aaron Musey,” Falcone says, and something lights in his eyes. Not pleasure or even anything as vibrant as surprise. Something else. “Joslyn Musey. Front and center.”
No. I can’t say it but I think it, and my feet don’t move.
Dorr says, “Why don’t you come in here an’ get him, Birdy.”
Erret will get himself killed and it will be my fault.
I tug out of the corporal’s grasp but he’s quick and grabs the back of my shirt.
Falcone pulls a gun from his back waist, in no apparent hurry.
“I’ll kill the mouthy jet, or any jet. Front and center. Now.”
“He doesn’t bluff,” I mutter to Dorr, and step forward. The jets make room for me, but not too much.
I stop on the opposite side of the cage door. And there he is, up close. I find myself locked on his face. If he just steps closer I can grab him through the food tray slot and ram his nose into the bars.
We look at each other, Falcone and me, through the cage bars and across eight years.
I stand still as his eyes rake me over, head to toe and back up again. My eyes don’t leave his face. I’m not a child any-more. We’re almost of a height. And Nikolas S’tlian trained me. Macedon trained me.
If I don’t breathe I will black out. I try not to make any sound as I draw in the stale air.
His eyes, like welding flames, finally settle on my face. His lips curl like thin sheets of burning metal, in a heated smile.
“You are a curious bastard,” he says in the tone of voice you use to compliment somebody.
My throat locks. I blink halfway.
The smile grows sharper. In one brisk movement he gestures one of his guards to open the gate. The other one stands with his rifle aimed, doubtlessly on a wide beam spread.
He’s going to take me away from the jets and there’s nothing they can do about it. Nothing I can do about it. I hear commotion behind me and to my left, glance and see Evan fighting his way forward to grasp the cell bars. Fear, plain on his face. Fear and worry. Aki comes up behind me and touches my arm. But I can’t look at her directly. If I do it will be the end of it.
The guard opens the gate. I walk out under Falcone’s gun, on leaden feet.
There is one moment of opportunity with the gate still open and the guard within kicking distance. One half of a second.
I don’t take it. The second guard, standing out of lunge distance, would take all o
f us down with one widespread shot before I could even reach Falcone.
The gate shuts behind me with a clang. The lock buzzes. There are three guns on me now. You just don’t take chances with jets. Falcone would know as well as any EarthHub captain.
“You and I are going to get reacquainted,” Falcone says. “Privately.”
My thoughts plod doggedly down trained routes. One guard will likely stay behind. Two of them covering me as we walk would not be enough. They don’t know who trained me. I can handle two, even armed.
But Falcone doesn’t motion me to walk. He smiles and shoots me himself.
* * *
X.
Getting shot at point-blank range with a paralysis pulse puts you down for a couple hours, but it always feels like days. Nausea permeates every cell in your body when you finally awaken. I take deep, slow breaths to combat it but my mouth still waters, the saliva tasting sour. Blur recedes into sharply drawn shapes and numbness bleeds into painful clarity. I sit wire-cuffed to a bolted metal chair, ankles bound to the chair legs and arms behind me, in a small cold room. There’s another chair opposite, empty.
A guard stands by the heavy, paint-chipped hatch. She watches me with dark, alert eyes and a hand on her gun. The yellow lights flicker slightly in distracting rhythm. Breath pulls icicles into my lungs, and exhales in clouds.
I’m still clothed, at least, though my wrists already feel raw.
The guard says into her wirecomm. “He’s awake.”
It’s a long wait. I know enough that it’s purposeful. I try to get myself into a distant, numbing state, but there’s the inescapable fact of where I am. And I am small under the guard’s glare, small under the lights and in this cold room, waiting with my gaze in the corner.
I think of Niko. Focus point, like he taught me. I allow my eyelids to droop.
The hatch clangs open and Falcone steps in. Clouds of breath bloom in front of my eyes. Focus scrambles away.
“You can go,” he tells the woman.
I clench my fists where they are bound behind me. Pain to fight the block of ice in my chest. He sits across from me. I force myself to look at him, not to bow my head.
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