by T. F. Grant
Damn, she hated fighting in space. If a single round nicked her suit, she would be in serious trouble. Why the hell had she let Tai talk her into this? What in the names of all the Gods, of all the races on Haven, was she doing running away from a pack of vuls with bloodrage in their eyes and toward a bunch of newcomers who didn’t know one end of a shotgun from another.
She spun round and blazed away an entire clip from her Piercer—that’d give those wolfish bastards something to think about—and leapt to the side, behind a mess table.
Dropping the magazine out and letting it fall onto the deck, she slammed in another and jerked back the slide. With the Piercer in her right hand, her left dipped and drew a Haven-made revolver with a wide bore, loaded with pellet rounds.
She looked behind her and saw the newcomers. The flashes of their shotguns blasted away. Which one was Sara? Who was in that emergency suit on the edge of the corridor, blood subliming into the vacuum as it leaked from the body?
Where was Sara?
A shotgun boomed, and double-zero pellets whizzed by her head. Kina threw herself headlong to the floor. One of those stupid newcomer bastards was shooting in her direction.
She raised her head and saw one newcomer smash the stock of his shotgun into the groin of another newcomer and then turn and fire over Kina’s head. She only managed a quick glance through the newcomer’s faceplate, but she recognized Bookworm, and she was sure he wore a wide grin.
She rolled over onto her back.
Oh shit!
A pack of vuls charged out of the corridor. A lot of frecking vuls. She didn’t bother to count them; she just lifted both her guns and blazed away.
***
Tai touched helmets with Hela. “Nobody here.”
“Linus skipped out,” she replied.
“Yeah, but why didn’t the vuls take the bridge when he left? It’s the most defensible position of the hulk.”
“Maybe they had their fill of gold and ran too? You know what vuls are like.”
Tai thought of the blood and brains and guts strewn around the corridor below—at least two of them were torn apart by the explosion and the cannon fire that followed it.
Yes, he knew what they were like.
“Bloodrage,” he said.
“Shit,” Hela replied.
***
Kina reloaded while Bookworm covered her. Damn, that man was a surgeon with the freaking thing. He didn’t bother reloading. He just emptied one shotgun, grabbed the one from the man he had knocked down, and kept on firing.
Kina slid to a halt beside him. Thank him later. She dropped prone on the deck, slapped another mag into the Piercer, and holstered the revolver, not having the time to reload its cylinder. She held the Piercer with both hands and blasted away up the corridor as Bookworm slammed new shells into the shotgun magazine.
He slapped her on the shoulder.
Ready.
Kina leapt to her feet, and they backed away from the exposed position. DeLaney—yeah, it had to be that cretin who almost blew her frecking head off—crawled along beside them, holding his balls.
Sara and the twins hunkered down behind former tables, now twisted hunks of metal. They were popping up, firing, and then dropping back down again.
Not bad for their first firefight. At least they had a plan. But Sara was exposed and on her own with a door behind her. Nobody covered it. Kina watched it all happen as if in slow motion.
Her legs ran through molasses. Her arm, heavy and slow, started to lift the gun. Her mouth opened in a death shout. Light glinted as the vuls poured out of the door behind her. Sara wouldn’t be able to see or hear them. She hadn’t learned the first rule of airless combat: you have to rely on your eyes. You have to keep looking. Never fixate on one spot. Never.
The vuls lifted their clawed hands toward Sara.
Kina’s gun lifted so slowly. She wouldn’t have time… Sara!
Tooize rushed through behind the vuls. He ripped through them with a battle-axe and a sawn-off shotgun.
Sara turned, looked up, and lifted her shotgun. A burst of light flashed from the barrel as she fired. She continued to work the lever, firing again and again.
A struggling vul managed to hit Tooize with a stray shot. He staggered back as more vuls poured through the gap in the defense. Sara rose to her feet and reversed the shotgun, having expended all her ammo.
A vul climbed down from a level above Tooize. His taloned gloves were poised to stab down into the kronac’s back. But Sara saw him and swung the shotgun like a bat, smashing in the vul’s faceplate, sending glass flying.
Then Tai, Hela, Lofreal, and Scaroze dropped down the shaft into the middle of the firefight. Flashes bloomed all around, lighting the clouds of blood. With vuls flying, kronacs swinging, and humans dodging, the scene became a balletic maelstrom of death. Kina had been in a lot of firefights and battles in her short life, but this was like nothing she had ever seen before.
She shot her final clip into the melee, emptying the magazine. Two vuls lay dead by her feet, the talons just inches from her suit. And then, after no more bullets fired, everything became terribly still.
And it was all over.
Kina dropped her guns, threw herself down beside Tooize, and slapped emergency patches on the holes in his spacesuit. His eyes flickered behind his faceplate.
TWELVE
Sara knelt by Kina and the downed kronac. With the patches applied, he would be safe from depressurizing, but his body had taken a battering from the assault. She patted Kina on the back. The woman stood and pressed her helmet against Sara’s.
“If it wasn’t for you, Tooize wouldn’t have made it. That was quick thinking.”
“I don’t even remember what I did,” Sara said as she held up her shaking hand, the shock and adrenaline buzzing her nerves.
“You were frecking great,” Kina said. “And hey, you survived your first space battle.”
“I don’t know how. I certainly don’t want to repeat it.”
Bookworm stood over the bodies of two of the Venture crew who didn’t make it: Prescott and Humphrey. The Hentians joined the others in the middle of the mess hall. Where was DeLaney? Tai and Hela had their helmets together, discussing the situation. Sara wondered what they were saying, especially as Tai was looking right at her.
After a moment he broke away from Hela and touched his helmet to Sara’s.
“Impressive work, lady. Looks like you got your ship back. That’s step one. This is legally yours now.”
“What’s step two?”
“We get the hell off it, recuperate, and come back to strip it of resources. Gather your crew and follow us back to the Mary-May.”
“My crew? You mean DeLaney’s.”
Tai pointed behind her. She turned round to see DeLaney on all fours crawling out from behind one of the tables, his face wet with sweat and tears. He cut a pathetic image as he crawled through the blood.
“You think he’s suitable to lead you lot? Freck no, sister, these are your people. Take charge. Give the poor suckers a chance to survive.”
Sara opened her mouth to protest that she didn’t want the responsibility when Tai broke off and helped Tooize to his feet. He returned to Sara, touching helmets.
“So what now?” Sara asked.
“Nominate someone to stay behind. The ship needs one person on it at all times to keep the claim. We’ll seal up the bridge, pump some air into it, set up a portable scrubber, and leave them a way into the rest of the ship. It’s no problem. Standard stuff, we do it all the time. I’ll leave Lofreal behind for technical backup.”
She thought who she should ask to stay back. DeLaney wasn’t worth anything right now, and the twins looked eager to leave. The only one who seemed in his element was Bookworm. He’d already cleaned off the blood and reloaded his shotgun.
“He’ll do,” Tai said, seeing her scrutinizing Bookworm.
Sara broke off and touched helmets with her colleague. “Hey, Bookworm. How yo
u doing?”
“Fine. That was quite fun, really.”
“Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it. Listen, someone needs to stay behind while we head back to Haven and prepare to return to strip it of resources.”
“Sure, I’ll stay,” Bookworm said before she could even make her case.
“You’ll have company. Tai’s leaving Lofreal behind to help prepare for our return.”
“As long as the kronac stays out of my way, we’ll be all good.”
“Okay then. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Bookworm blinked as though he had never done anything stupid in his life. He broke off and approached Lofreal. Kina joined them, and the three of them touched helmets with Kina no doubt translating for Bookworm. After the chat, Bookworm and Lofreal clasped hands and nodded.
Sara was both confounded and proud that Bookworm had taken to all this so easily. He’d been near useless on the ship before now, only really there to make up the numbers because no other ship had a position for him. The archetypal misfit.
She envied him the ease of adaption. Every single moment she felt on the edge of a panic attack, and with the growing weight of responsibility on her shoulders, the fear of failure pulled taut like a mining cable. When it snapped, she just hoped it would be in a place that wouldn’t incite too much fallout.
Tai finished his rounds, instructing his crew, and gave a hand signal to head to the Mary-May. Sara did the same for the… no, her crew. And to her surprise, they followed. Even DeLaney, despite the scowl he wore.
***
Vekan instructed her vul, the three of them that were left after their hasty retreat, to unclasp the grapple line between her ship and the Mary-May. She had abandoned the chyros, leaving them on the Venture. Not her fault. They were no doubt still prying up grav-plates.
A youngling followed the order and snarled as he returned, closing the airlock behind him. “It’s done. The Cauder pup will pay for everything.”
Vekan bared her teeth, delighting in the image of Tai and his crew disintegrating into a shower of debris. Once Tai was dealt with, her name would be legend on the station.
First the son and the mother next. It was time that haughty bitch, the Red Cauder, was taken down a few pegs, or spit-roasted on the flames of an uprising. There was a lot of the Cauder bitch to go around. She would feed the bellies of many of her vul.
She pushed the lever on the console forward. The engines kicked in, thrusting them toward Haven, using a long route she’d devised, cutting in and out of the many thousands of dead hulks. If she planned it correctly, no one would see them approach until they were right on it.
In and out, no problem.
Unlike Tairon Cauder.
***
Sara strapped herself into her seat and unlatched her helmet. She took a deep breath of fresh air. She wiped the sweat from her face and looked back to the rest of the crew sitting in the back of the ship.
“Everyone okay?” Sara asked. “Any injuries?”
“Okay? Okay? Are you blind?” DeLaney said. “This whole escapade has been a travesty. Totally unnecessary. We lost two good people in there, and you lot”—he pointed to Tai and his team—“are high-fiving because you’ve snagged yourself a bargain. What price those lives, eh?”
Tai spun his chair to regard DeLaney. “Price? Lives ain’t worth shit here in Hollow Space, Crowner. You still ain’t figured that much out?”
DeLaney started to unbuckle from his seat, then thought better of it when Hela gave him a snarl.
“We’ll need to return for the bodies and give them a proper ritual,” Margo said. “That’s not open for discussion. And as captain of this ship, Tairon Cauder, you would be doing me an honor if you took on that task—as a personal favor to me.”
“Sorry, love, don’t do favors. This ship don’t run on best wishes.”
Murlowe spoke for the first time since they left. “Given your advantage on us, Cauder, and the large amount of financial reward you’ve earned from us, I would take it as a personal act of dishonor if you did not extend this courtesy to allow us to pay respect to our dead in our own way.”
“Listen, Hentian, we don’t do favors, okay. It’s nothing personal. It’s business. Surely you’ve seen that already? We’ll be coming back after we’ve refueled and retooled. You can get your dead then. As to what you want to do with them, that’s your business, not mine. But if you wanna come back in my ship, you’ll pay for passage.”
“No way,” Sara said. “Here’s the deal: you bring us back here free of charge, and I’ll give you first option on the contents of the first two stasis units you recover.”
Tai gave her an amused smile. “You do realize I’ll be recovering them anyway.”
“Know how to open them, do you? You think there’s just people inside?” She was totally bluffing. There were only people inside, but Tai wasn’t to know that, and she hadn’t explicitly said otherwise, so if the Drifts wanted to arbitrate, it would be pretty clear that Tai’s greediness had got the better of him.
“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Ten.”
“Two.”
“Hmm, okay, we’ll settle on eight.”
“I’m not negotiating here,” Sara said. “You want them open, accept my terms or walk away.”
Kina gave her a sly smile behind Tai’s back.
Tai looked her over and nodded. “Okay, sister, you got a deal.” He held out a hand, and Sara shook it. “We’ll ratify with a Drift when we get back. It’s been witnessed.”
“Fine. It’s done.”
“Right,” Tai said. “If you babies have stopped crying, let’s get the freck out of here.”
He and Kina initiated the launch procedure. The engines rumbled through the hull. Sara gripped the overhead handholds, tensed her body, and waited for the G-force to scramble her organs again as Tai, high on his victory, would no doubt do something crazy.
The ship sped forward, sending everyone lurching forward, but then the engines cut as an explosion came from the starboard stub-wing. It sent it into a roll. Kina fell from her copilot seat, crashing into Sara, grabbing her around the waist. Sara let one hand go and held on to her.
“What the hell?” Sara said, seeing the hulks and Haven through the steel-glass windows, spinning off in the distance.
“We’ve lost power, air tanks are ruptured, hull integrity breached,” Tooize whistled.
Tai wrestled with the controls, burned the reserve thrusters, and managed to level them out. He punched a red button on the console. A distress beacon burst out of a barrel, lighting a burning red orb at their position.
That isn’t good, Sara thought.
He spun in his chair, speaking to Tooize. “What the hell happened?” Then to everyone else, “Suits on, helmets down, now.”
Before Tooize and Tai put on their helmets, the kronac took a thermal patch and applied it to the hairline crack in the hull of the ship.
“BPD,” Tai said after the kronac patched the crack. “It won’t hold.”
“What’s a BPD?” DeLaney said, struggling to fit his helmet.
“Black powder device,” Tai said. “Those frecking vuls!”
He clipped his helmet down and continued to wrestle the controls as he guided the Mary-May to Haven, trying his best to avoid the debris and hulks in the way. With only landing thrusters and one wing, the craft bumped and skidded through. Each collision, although slight, scraped off yet more of the ship, creating more flashing warning lights. The console lit up like a nebula.
By the time Tai had navigated through the worst of the graveyard, the patch on the hull had split, and the crack widened. Tooize frantically tried to apply more patches to buy them time. To make matters worse, they were completely off course with Haven at their stern.
And there in open space, flashes of white light. Shapes stretching through…
“Oh God,” Sara muttered. “God, no, no, no!”
All around them, a dozen ships appeared, hyper-jumping into Hol
low Space, and as the flashing lights stopped, Sara saw them.
A cold sweat trickled down her spine.
“The Markesians. They’re here.”
THIRTEEN
Sara’s limbs turned to ice and her chest tightened. How could they have survived all this, only to have their hunters find and surround them, waiting to pounce? She counted at least twelve Markesian ships, their scorpion-like craft cutting through space with a deathly grace.
They surrounded the Mary-May in all directions.
One by one, Sara watched their interior lights grow dim behind their viewports and windows. It seemed that they too were affected by this strange part of the universe.
And yet, in spite of what Tai and the others called Hollow Space and its weird physics, the Markesian ships, fighters, freighters, and the one that Sara hated the most, the destroyer that had brutally cut the Venture in half, continued to fly in formation, navigating their way through the debris and hulks of the vast graveyard of dead craft, tightening the noose around the Mary-May.
Everyone within the Mary-May had put on their helmets as instructed.
Sara’s bloomed with condensation inside as she hyperventilated.
Kina turned in her copilot chair and pressed her helmet against Sara’s, enabling them to speak. “You know this species?” Kina asked. Her face was taut with concern and not a little fear.
“Yes,” Sara said. “They’re the ones that attacked us before we hyper-jumped and ended up here. Somehow they must have followed us. How could they have known?”
“They can’t. Everyone who comes here doesn’t jump here by choice. We don’t know how or why, but Hollow Space seems to suck hyper-jumping craft in at random.”
“So because they were close to us, they too got caught by the what? A force field of some kind?”
Kina shrugged. “The Scholars have been studying it for years. Even they don’t know how it works. They believe it relates to the dead jump gate on the edge of the sector.”