Pursuit

by Val St. Crowe

  “Still in space, sir. Coming for the planet, but not even to the atmosphere yet.”

  “Good,” said Gunner. He looked at the women. “Let’s do this.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, they were rolling the bolts down the hallway, heading back for the main entrance. Each of the women had one, and Gunner was rolling two, one on each side of himself.

  “Captain?” came Saffron’s voice. “How’s it going?”

  “We’ve got the bolts,” he said back. “Where’s the ship?”

  “Right on top of you,” she said. “It’s coming in to make its landing.”

  Damn, damn, damn. “Do we have time?” he said. “Can we make it out?”

  “I don’t know, captain, they’re coming in faster than I would have anticipated,” said Saffron, “but they do still need to land.”

  Gunner considered their options. Run for it, try to get back to their hexacraft, or hide. The base was big. They might be able to find a place to hide out undetected while the aliens searched the base. Maybe the Xerkabah would conclude they’d disappeared and move on.

  Of course, maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d find them. And if they were discovered, they’d have even less of a chance against the aliens than they might if they were closer to an escape vessel.

  Gunner didn’t want there to be any confrontation between them and the Xerkabah. No firing, no fighting. That was a fight he didn’t have confidence that the three of them could win. He couldn’t know what this ship was. Maybe it was a routine thing for alarms to get tripped. Maybe they’d sent out a handful of technicians to lock it down.

  Or maybe they had taken the alarm as something very serious, and an entire squadron of armed aliens was coming for them.

  He stopped moving, resting his hands on the bolts he’d been rolling, and trying to think.

  Eve and Pippa kept moving past him, but then saw that he’d stopped, and stopped too. They turned wide eyes on him.

  Their lives were in his hands. If he made the wrong choice, he could get them both killed.

  “Saffron?” he said. “You’ve got schematics there, is there someplace we could hole up until the storm passes?”

  “What?” said Pippa, shaking her head. “No, we can’t do that! We have to go. We have to get to the hexacraft. We have to get these bolts on and get off this planet. We don’t have any time to waste.”

  Saffron’s voice in his ear. “I’m not seeing anything right off, captain. You want me to look into it more closely?”

  He didn’t answer Saffron. “Pippa, the Xerkabah—”

  “We’re wasting time,” she said, and started rolling her bolt again, heading for the entry room.

  Overhead, there was a loud roar of engines as a ship whooshed overhead.

  Pippa ran faster.

  Eve looked from Pippa to Gunner and back again, and then went after Pippa.

  Gunner tensed. He was the captain. He was supposed to make these decisions. And he needed to be the older and wiser one. He recognized the spark in Pippa’s tone, youthful bravery and optimism. He wanted to tell her that it would pass when she had seen more bodies than she could count. That sometimes, the best course of action was not to fight.

  But the women were already ahead of him, and they were crossing into the main entryway now, and he was being left behind.

  So, he started rolling his bolts down the hall after them, anyway. And as he did, he felt a lightness in his chest, a brightness, an excitement. This was crazy. They were doing it anyway.

  The sun streaming through the windows in the main entryway was starting to look mature already. The days on this planet truly were short.

  Gunner caught up to Eve and went past her to get next to Pippa. “We don’t have time to go back through the window,” he told her. “Besides, they already know we’re here.”

  “So, what?” said Pippa.

  “Front door,” said Gunner, pointing ahead of them.

  They reached the door.

  Gunner flipped open the panel and it was much less confusing than the one outside the heating unit. There was an open button. He pressed it.

  And held his breath.

  But the massive front door slid open. It was nearly three stories tall, and it groaned under its own weight as it slid on its track.

  They didn’t wait for it to be completely open, but slipped through as soon as there was enough room to fit.

  Outside, the rocky horizon of Durga greeted them. There were still trails of smoke in the sky, remnants from the ship that had passed overhead. But the ship itself was nowhere to be seen.

  They took off for their hexacraft.

  Now, they were rolling the bolts over rocky ground, and it wasn’t nearly as easy as it had been inside the base, but they managed.

  Gunner brought up the rear, glancing over his shoulder every couple minutes or so to see if they were being followed.

  But each time, all he saw was rocky terrain and swaying grasses.

  Finally, the hexacraft came into view.

  And that was when Gunner felt a harsh burning sensation in his shoulder. He cried out, coming to a halt. He’d been shot. He looked behind him.

  Still nothing.

  But coming out in front of the hexacraft, facing them, were rows and rows of Xerkabah.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  There were at least twenty of them. They all looked human. They were wearing the black uniform of the Xerkabah army, with an orange insignia on the arms of their long-sleeved shirts. They had blast rifles—standard issue F68s—and they were opening fire on them.

  Gunner let out a throaty cry. This was it. The way it ended. He couldn’t see any way out.

  But if he had to go down, maybe he could do it in a way that helped Pippa and Eve. He threw down the bolts he’d been rolling and took out his plaspistol.

  He squeezed off two shots right away, and they both hit home, like magic, like he was on fire now that he was on his last run, his suicide run.

  Two of the soldiers went down, plasma holes in their heads.

  He kept pulling the trigger, but didn’t try to aim so much as he ran. He ran right at the soldiers, right into the center of them, firing his pistol all the way.

  Three more of the men fell as he ran.

  But they were shooting at him too, and he felt the searing pain tear into his arm, his leg, his side.

  He kept going.

  Nothing can stop me now, he thought grimly.

  The closer he got, the more accurate his shots got. Now, he was knocking them down left and right, even as they circled in on him.

  Three more down, no four more.

  That was nearly half of them. This was burning bright instead of fading away, and he was going to keep these fuckers occupied while Pippa and Eve got on that hexacraft and got the hell away. But he couldn’t spare a second to look and see if they were moving. He couldn’t even let them know what he was doing for them. He had to hope it worked out anyway. He had to believe that it would, otherwise he was doing all of this for nothing.

  But that was the way death was, in the end. Meaningless. He’d seen it too many times to think anything differently.

  Would his own death really matter? After all, even if Eve and Pippa got free, the galaxy was still ruled by—

  A plasma beam ripped into his cheek.

  He cried out and whirled, putting his pistol in the face of a soldier, pulling the trigger, watching his head explode.

  There was another soldier next to him. Gunner shot him too.

  Maybe it would be worth it to save Eve. Maybe this champion son she was supposed to have was real.

  In this moment, as the rest of the soldiers—eight of them—closed in on him, so close that their fire would take him down soon, very soon. In this moment, he clung to that belief. Saving Eve meant something.

  He pulled his trigger again. And again.

  And more of the soldiers fell.

  There was more pain. He was being shot all over. H
is arms, his torso, his legs. He shouldn’t be standing. It was a miracle he wasn’t dead.

  And he kept shooting. Shooting and shooting until he had some kind of crazy idea that maybe he might win and that he might—

  He pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  His cartridge was empty.

  Damn it!

  And now it was him and four of the men, and they all had their rifles leveled at him, and this was it.

  He shut his eyes.

  “Wait,” said one of the soldiers. “I think that’s Gunner Jisse. He look like the drawings they had made?”

  Gunner opened his eyes. Drawings? Of him? How did the Xerkabah know his name?

  “Maybe,” said one of the other men. “But aren’t the orders on Gunner Jisse to shoot on sight?”

  “I don’t know, maybe we should take him back to the—” The man’s neck exploded in a plasma beam. He crumpled.

  The man he’d been talking to was shot in the head too.

  The other two soldiers whirled, shooting at the same time.

  Eve and Pippa were too fast for them. They cut both of the remaining soldiers down.

  Gunner gasped at them, bleeding, his body an open wound.

  “Come on, captain,” said Pippa.

  * * *

  Eve looked down at the immobile form of the captain. He was lying in the hexacraft as they were speeding back to the ship. He’d tried to stay conscious, telling them that there was no way that was all of the Xerkabah. They would have sent groups of soldiers out to find them, and they’d run into only one of the groups. When the Xerkabah didn’t find them at the base, they’d go looking for them.

  The Xerkabah didn’t know about the outpost, so they might have some time, but the aliens would probably find them sooner or later.

  The captain said they might be followed, that they might be shot, that he needed to stay awake in case they needed him.

  But Eve had put her hand on his forehead and told him to rest, that they were okay.

  And, though he’d struggled, he’d done that. Now, he lay bleeding and broken. She and Pippa had used every bandage on the ship, but there weren’t enough to cover all his wounds.

  He was alive. He was breathing shallowly, coughing sometimes.

  Eve couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  He was very brave, the captain.

  She had never known anyone so brave. Back in the Cloister, all anyone did was try to stay clear of the aliens. No one ever fought. But the captain, he’d thrown himself at all those soldiers. He’d fought through them like some kind of angry knight, and he’d had no thought for his own safety. He’d just done it.

  He’d saved her life.

  And Pippa’s.

  She could see why the captain was meant to be the father of the champion now. That kind of bravery and daring needed to be in her son’s blood. He needed that pedigree.

  The captain slept. And Eve held his hand while he did.

  * * *

  Back at the Star Swallow, it was an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation. Everyone had to help get the bolts on and the new thrusters into the ship. Everyone except Calix and the captain, of course. The captain needed too much patching up, and Calix had to do the patching.

  So, Saffron, Pippa, and Eve did it. They watched the vid in the engine room, and they paused and played and paused and played so that they could go carefully and quickly and try their best to get it right.

  Finally, the bolts and thrusters were set, and Pippa went up to the cockpit to put in some settings on the consoles and run a few diagnostics.

  Two minutes later, her voice came filtering down through the PA. “The ship can’t find the thrusters.”

  “What do you mean?” said Saffron, who was sitting on the floor in the engine room, staring up at the shiny new thrusters they’d installed.

  “I keep running the diagnostics, and they’re not coming online,” said Pippa.

  Eve chewed on her lip. This wasn’t good. She wished she knew more. She wasn’t much of a help with this kind of thing, and it made her feel inadequate and awful.

  “Oh, sun and stars.” Saffron got to her feet and began walking around the engine room, looking everything over. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We followed that vid to a T. Everything should be fine now.”

  “Should be, but it’s not,” said Pippa.

  Eve shoved her hands in the pockets of the jumpsuit she was still wearing. It was strange not to be in her dress, which she was used to wearing, but she liked this piece of clothing better. It didn’t get in the way and get caught on stuff. “We turned everything on, right?”

  Saffron shot her a withering look. “Of course we did. You don’t know anything about—”

  “Actually,” said Pippa. “Can you go and check to see if we reconnected the main power cables?”

  Saffron’s features froze. “Damn it,” she muttered. She turned and headed over to the other side of the engine room. There was a panel open, exposing a mess of cables and wires. She reached inside and found two cables and plugged them back into their proper spots.

  Immediately, there was a rush of sound and light as the engine came back on.

  “That should do it,” said Saffron.

  “Yup,” agreed Pippa. “It’s recognizing it already. Diagnostic is coming back great. We’re in good shape.”

  * * *

  Gunner didn’t feel as thought here was a square inch of his skin that hadn’t been damaged in some way. It seemed to him that nearly every part of his body was covered in synth skin and bandages. He was sore and exhausted. He blinked out from the cot at the gathered members of the crew.

  Breccan was still unconscious beside him in the other cot.

  Saffron was next to Breccan, holding his hand.

  Calix stood in between the cots, looking haggard. He’d been working nonstop these past few days.

  Pippa and Eve stood at the foot of his bed.

  Gunner cleared his throat. “The thrusters work?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pippa.

  “Great,” he said. He shut his eyes. He wanted to go to sleep. But it hurt too much to sleep.

  “Captain?” said Pippa.

  He opened his eyes. “Calix, you have to have some kind of painkiller you can give me.”

  Pippa was still talking. “We need to know what to do, captain.”

  Calix looked down on him. “You want me to give you something? It’ll make your head muddled.”

  Gunner groaned. He started to try to sit up.

  “Hold still,” said Calix. He hit a button on the side of the cot, and it swung up into a sitting position.

  Gunner grunted in pain as the bed moved. He shut his eyes again, sucking in a few shallow breaths to calm himself. If he breathed too deep, it hurt. He tried to concentrate on the situation at hand. “So, the Xerkabah don’t currently know where we are,” he managed. The Xerkabah would have had no idea of the outpost, after all, or it would have been destroyed.

  Oh, wait. It had been destroyed. By the vidya. “Maybe they do know where we are, actually. If the vidya found that outpost, maybe they know all about this place. But they haven’t come for us.”

  “But they will,” said Saffron, her eyes still on her husband. “Whether or not they know where we are now, they will eventually find us and they will come. We need to get off this planet.”

  “Okay,” said Gunner. “So, we take off, then. We’ve got thrusters, we set a course for Hoder, and we blast out of here before they can do any damage.”

  “Really?” said Eve. “You’re still going to send me to Hoder?”

  “More determined to do that than ever, princess,” he said. Once she was gone, they’d be free to mind their own business again. Of course, there had been that weirdness with the soldiers before, when they’d said his name. He didn’t understand what that was all about, but he had been avoiding the Xerkabah for years until this girl had shown up. Once he got rid of her, things could go back to normal.<
br />
  “I thought you believed me,” she said.

  “Ain’t about that,” he said. “Never was.”

  “Captain,” said Saffron, “there’s only one problem with your plan.”

  “What?” he said, turning to her.

  “They’ll see us the minute we take off,” she said. “They’ll probe us and they’ll find our destination, and—when we get there—they’ll be waiting for us.”

  Gunner grimaced. “You sure of that? There’s no way we could go quickly enough that we avoid the probe?”

  “No,” said Saffron. “Even our ship picked them up the minute they were in system. Their instruments will see us as soon as we’re in the air.”

  “Damn it.” Gunner closed his eyes again.

  “I do have an idea,” said Saffron.

  He opened his eyes. “I’m listening.”

  “When they probe us, I could send them a virus,” she said.

  “That’s going to slow them down for what? Two seconds?” said Calix. At one point in the war, onboard system viruses had been deadly to ships, but now, all systems were updated so that they could isolate and get rid of the virus before it did any damage.

  “More like thirty,” said Saffron. “Their system will need to reset. Should be long enough for us to quickly put in our real coordinates and get out of the star system.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Gunner was strapped down to the cot in the medic bay, still without any pain medicine. He was hoping that once they were safely away, he could take some time to rest and recuperate. Most of his wounds were superficial and would be healed with some rest and the synth skin doing its thing.

  But he couldn’t rest yet, not until they were off this planet.

  He shut his eyes as the ship began to vibrate and go through its takeoff routine. He felt the ship begin to move forward, tipping into the air and accelerating quickly.

  Suddenly, the machine that Breccan was hooked up to started beeping.

  Calix, who was already strapped to a seat, unstrapped himself immediately, and got to his feet. He rushed over to Breccan.

  Saffron appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?”