Ashes and Metal

by Naomi Lucas

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On if I can find the parts,” he huffed. “But we’re surrounded by machines and we’re both damn good at keeping these things running. If we pull a transponder out of one of those ground vehicles I saw a little ways back and wire it directly to one of the secondary power rails in the ship to boost the signal, I can use it as a relay so the bridge won’t know where we are. The mains would be too dangerous. After that, maybe I can pull the two speakers out of this broken alarm and use one as a low-sensitivity microphone...”

  “I can help,” she quickly added.

  Her dad nodded. “You’ll need to. Your fingers are steadier than mine.”

  An idea came to mind as she watched him cut a wire. “Dad, what if...what if we get this to work? If we send out a beacon or get back onto the network, we’ll have to have a location to broadcast. No one’s going to put in the effort to triangulate us without a reward, and we don’t have much to offer. But maybe we can get a government cruiser to come if we tell them it’s a disabled pirate ship.” Elodie leaned forward. “We’ll need the ship to stop long enough for that. We can make the ship stop.”

  He lifted his eyes. “Break the machines?”

  “Yes!”

  Chesnik canted his head. “Near impossible with them running. But a good back-up idea. Hand me those tweezers.”

  The odds of single-handedly stopping the ship were slim, but it was possible. With the hope of a functional beacon, she felt little more comfortable. If we can get a signal out maybe someone will come. If we can hide long enough...we can survive!

  Her thoughts crashed back into the present. None of this took into account her deal with Gunner and the plans that were already set in motion. Gunner’s plans had nothing to do with staying put and waiting for an opportune moment. It made her itch not knowing where he was or what he was doing.

  He was fierce—terrifying, even. He had shouldered responsibility for their escape without a second thought. She was bound to him. The decision to follow her dad out of the brig still haunted her. He’ll return without me there. He’ll be angry.

  Won’t he?

  They had become close, sharing the same small space for countless hours with nothing but each other’s company to keep the madness and despair at bay. Even so, she had no real clue how he felt about her. He’s willing to risk his life for mine, for strangers he doesn’t know, but he would be risking it regardless for his ship.

  Elodie threaded her fingers together and brought them to her lips, wishing for clarity, wishing that... Gunner was sitting next to her right now instead of her dad.

  I like him. She strained her fingers. I...miss him.

  How did I become so attached?

  “You got something on your mind?” her dad asked.

  She glanced up to find him watching her. “I’m afraid,” she choked out. I am. Her gaze kept drifting to the door. “I don’t like not knowing what’s happening.”

  Or where Gunner was. Had he found her gone? Was he in trouble? The more questions that skirted through her mind, the heavier her guilt weighed.

  “Don’t worry about that right now. As long as we stay holed up down here it won’t affect us,” he said. “We got some guns, some tools, some food, and some water. They won’t look for us down here, not yet at least, and if they do, there’s not many of them on the ship. They’d have to climb through the machines single file or in pairs of two. We’ll be ready if that happens, we’ll take them out. If we stick together, we’ll be fine.”

  “And that beast? The one that tore those men apart?” Gunner.

  “Won’t be able to get past these metal doors without a keycard.”

  “Dad...” she began but trailed off. Elodie didn’t know how to tell him that she’d made a deal with a Cyborg. The words caught on the tip of her tongue and every second that passed, they grew harder to say.

  It left a sour taste in her mouth. Not only had she set current events in motion, she actually wanted the creature responsible for it by her side.

  Her choice in men was enough to get her committed. A Cyborg held her heart in the palm of his hand. She glanced back at the door. What have I done?

  “Ely. Remember when we were stationed on the Far Seeing?”

  “How could I forget?” she mumbled.

  “You’d just grown into a woman then, it feels like yesterday, being on that job. Maybe because what happened haunts me still. It was your birthday.” Her dad laughed. “And I gave you a flask of whiskey to celebrate. ‘Don’t leave the room,’ I said, ‘enjoy yourself,’ I also said.”

  “I remember.” Her eyes remained on the locked door behind him. She still had nightmares of that time.

  “And you did. I got to share a drink with my daughter, and for a little while, it was just the two of us. We could take on anything, you and me... I’d never heard you laugh so much in my life before that night. It was like all the years of stress melted away. I was so proud of you.”

  Her eyes darted from the door and back to him. “You were?”

  “Yeah. We made a great team. There wasn’t a rig in the universe we couldn’t operate and fix.”

  “There still isn’t,” she smiled, “and you taught me everything I know.”

  Tsk. “You taught me more.”

  “But it didn’t last...” She shook her head.

  “No. It didn’t.”

  The Far Seeing did feel like yesterday. She could still taste the bitter whiskey in her mouth. “You passed out.”

  “And I regret that to this day.”

  “I had to pee.”

  “And you left the quarters, a drunken rat.” He chuckled again but there was no mirth behind it.

  “You do know I forgive you. Never held it against you in the first place. I knew what alcohol did to a person and had been around it enough to know what could happen. What happened afterward,” she looked back at the door, “was always a possibility.”

  The conversation stalled between them and the distant, shallow pinging of the sirens was the only sound to fill the air.

  She had left their room in the middle of the rest cycle, drunk and uninhibited, to go to the lavatory. She’d been caught with her pants down when another crew member came in. It had been quick, the shock of discovery—terrifying and freeing at the same time. And although she was out of her mind and still giddy from the booze, she remembered the man’s face as his eyes zeroed in on her privates.

  She’d flown back to her quarters, woken her dad and before the alcohol had a chance to wear off either of them, they had deployed an escape pod and vanished into space, leaving everything behind.

  They’d purchased new identities to avoid arrest for stealing tech, dropping the pod at the first opportunity, and remained landside on a border planet for six months. That was how long it took for the money to run out, and then choices had to be made. Her dad signed up for another mining job. She had followed him once again.

  Another six years of living in a man’s world, another six years of pretending, passed by until they’d been caught and thrown into a brig.

  “We’ll make it through this. Like we made it through that,” her dad said.

  A thunderous roar from outside suddenly shook the room.

  “Elodie!” Her name took shape in the sound, horrible and thick. The door rattled and her dad shot to his feet.

  A gun was in his hand and he was struggling with the safety the next second. “What the hell!?”

  Elodie’s hands clenched and her heart pounded.

  Gunner. He’s found me.

  They stared at the door as Gunner pounded on the other side. Sweat dampened her palms.

  “Let me,” the roaring turned into growled words, “in, dammit!” The pounding increased in intensity, jarring the entire room. He was furious.

  “Ely, get back!”

  Metal caved inward.

  “I can’t,” she hissed, rising to her feet. Gunner came for me.

  The door shot
open and a man she barely knew stood in the doorway. A face materialized over the shattered threshold, shaded and framed in pulsing red. He was bare-chested, draped in ribbons of red, and the only thing she recognized was the blistering red orbs of his eyes.

  The outline of his body was partially hunched, crooked, and heaving, his breath rocking his entire frame. Steam from the machines behind masked his form in an obscure, terrifying halo-of-hell.

  Elodie’s lips parted, her mouth dried up. Goosebumps pricked her flesh. Shadows accentuated the monster’s features; the high-spiked ears, the partially-formed snout, the deep-set eyes sockets. The red glow coming from his pupils glinted off his metal teeth.

  The parts of him that were metal were covered in condensation, the rest blood.

  “Who the fuck are you!?” Her dad yelled, shielding her with his body as he raised his gun.

  “Gunner,” she whispered.

  “What. The. Hell!?” her dad stammered and yelled again when the creature didn’t answer, driving the two of them slowly deeper into the room.

  She grabbed the back of her dad’s shirt and pulled, never taking her eyes off of Gunner’s, which speared her on the spot. “Lower your weapon,” she begged. “Please.” It was meant for the both of them.

  “Like fuck, I will!”

  Gunner didn’t even notice her dad.

  “Please!” Elodie pleaded, stepping forward.

  “You weren’t in the brig.” His voice breathed fire. It burned the very core of her soul.

  “It wasn’t safe anymore,” she said, trying to exude calm in the frenzy of activity. Gunner’s face was half-sculpted in metal, and half-demonic with pointed, beastly features. His teeth were long and sharp, and his mouth was twisted somewhere between that of a snout and a man’s. But it was his eyes that set her skin ablaze. They were the only part of him that she would always recognize. Those eyes had become her anchor. Those scarlet orbs had burned away all need for her grey wall of detachment.

  Her dad grabbed hold of her and wrenched her close. Snarling, Gunner darted forward and grabbed him by the neck.

  Gunner held him there, blocking her view, and Elodie choked back her horror when the outline of his face went from merely bestial to truly wolfish. Every edge of his features severed, revealing gleaming planes of polished steel. She knew instinctively they were sharp enough to cut.

  “He’s my dad!” she cried. “My dad!” Her fingers tore across Gunner’s wounded, naked back. “Don’t kill him! Gunner!”

  Chesnik gurgled and grappled against Gunner’s grip. Elodie gave up pulling on Gunner, instead freeing a gun from the strap across his chest. She aimed it at him and thumbed the safety off. She hoped the gun wasn’t DNA locked to some recently-dead crew member.

  “Let him go,” she screamed.

  “He took you away!”

  “I left with him!”

  “Why?” The hold on her dad slackened a little, and the sounds squeezing from Chesnik’s throat gained breath.

  “Because it wasn’t safe anymore. Because he has a plan. Because he’s my dad!”

  Gunner abruptly dropped Chesnik. Legs buckling, her dad slumped to the ground, holding his throat. Elodie lowered the gun and crouched next to her father to shield and help him rise. Ragged, sucking breaths filled her ears, and tremors racked both their bodies. She heard Gunner take a heavy step back.

  When she mustered enough courage to turn around and face him head-on, the Gunner she knew had returned, as if he’d been there the whole time.

  He turned away from her and smashed his fist into a wall, puncturing a hole. Elodie startled back when he fell to his knees and his entire frame convulsed. Her dad took the gun from her hand.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Gunner growled as his frame seized and stiffened. “Another shot won’t do anything to me.”

  “Who are you?” her dad choked out.

  Gunner’s eyes met hers. “You didn’t tell him?”

  “I didn’t have time.”

  Something unreadable flashed over his face. Elodie positioned herself between the two men.

  Her dad turned on her. “You know him? Who is he?”

  “A Cyborg. I made a deal with him. He’s going to get us off this ship alive.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t have time!”

  They both glared at her. Gunner rose, shakily, from his knees, using a hand on the broken wall for leverage. She wanted to go to him but she wanted to flee at the same time. There was no pain in his eyes. Only ferocity.

  Her dad moved away and sat wearily back at the table. “So, there’s a Cyborg on this ship,” he groaned, lifting a hand up to rub his neck. “Explains the chaos. And you made a deal with him?” He shot her an incredulous look.

  “Yes.”

  “With what?”

  Elodie glanced from him to Gunner and back to him. “With what I have.”

  “Which is?” He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me... For fuck’s sake, Ely, does he know?”

  Gunner answered before she could. “I know.”

  Her dad lifted the stolen gun again and aimed it at him. “The deal’s off. Now. We want nothing from you. We’ll find our own way out.”

  A half-crazed smile drifted over Gunner’s lips, making her shiver. She’d never seen him look the way he did now. “The deal and its terms have nothing to do with you. And, Chesnik, is it? It’s time for your daughter to pay up.”

  GUNNER WAS HAVING A hard time keeping his systems running smoothly. Every other minute, they stopped and restarted. They rebooted. But each time they did, the process was shorter, his nanocells changing to battle Ballsy’s disruption. He was slowly returning to a fully functioning machine. But not fucking fast enough.

  Elodie was safe, standing several feet away from him, though her father had murder in his eyes. No more patience.

  It was gone. His muscles bunched and released and most of the bullets still embedded in his back popped out to hit the floor with ringing clangs.

  “Get out,” he growled at Chesnik.

  “Fuck you. We want nothing from you.”

  “It’s not your decision.”

  He shot a look at Elodie. She appeared lost. How could she not be? It was the choice between him, a maniac, or her dad, a mere mortal who risked his life to break her out of the brig. They both had risked their lives for her. But the difference, he knew, was that he didn’t make her life easier in the process. He made it harder.

  Gunner wasn’t going to leave the choice up to her.

  “If you don’t leave now,” he snarled, “I’ll have to force you. And if I do, you’ll never see your daughter again.” He meant it to be a lie, but after the words came out, he wasn’t so sure.

  To his shock, Elodie spoke out. “Dad. Leave.”

  Chesnik stared at her. “I’m not leaving you alone with him. He’ll have to kill me first.”

  “I made a deal. I did so willingly. I knew the risks and what I was asking for. I’m not a goddamned child! Listen to Gunner and leave.”

  “So you call...it by a name? What’s gotten into you, boy?”

  She held her ground. Held her own. But Gunner knew if she couldn’t persuade her dad to leave soon, he was going to force the issue and it wouldn’t be pretty.

  “Nothing. Nothing’s gotten into me.” Elodie suddenly turned on him and Gunner leaned back into the damaged wall. “Is it safe for him if he leaves?”

  “Yes. If he makes it back out of the underbelly but seeing—” a pulse rippled through him, stopping his words. Elodie had already turned back toward her dad before he could continue.

  “Please leave us. He says it’s safe. If he says it’s safe, I believe him. It’s part of our deal.”

  Chesnik rose to his feet. “What’s this deal?”

  “Our safety and the safety of those in the brig. He’s going to get all of us off this ship alive. That’s his end of the bargain.”

  “And you trust him?”

&nb
sp; Gunner watched her face. He wanted to know the answer more than anyone. Now that the question was out in the open, he couldn’t focus on anything else.

  “Yes.”

  Yes. The word punched him in the gut. It was everything. Elodie trusted him.

  Trusted him. Had anyone ever trusted him before?

  “You’ve lost your mind, girl,” Chesnik replied in a bitter, despondent tone. “Your damn mind.”

  “Get. Out.” Gunner wouldn’t tell him again. They shared a withering stare but Chesnik slammed the gun onto the table and moved toward the door. Gunner walked him to the exit.

  “Dad,” Elodie pleaded and took a step forward. Gunner stopped her with a dark glance over his shoulder.

  I’m not going to let you go. Not so easily.

  He had barely gained back the little bit of control he had. As Chesnik moved to cross the threshold, Gunner reached out and gripped the other side of the frame, blocking his way. He tightened his fingers, leaving an imprint on the steel. Chesnik looked up at him with alarmed resentment. Gunner made eye contact with the man.

  “Release the others in the brig. Keep them safe until I get back. Tell them you’re following my orders,” he said before he dropped his arm and allowed the other man to leave.

  Then he shunted the door back in place and broke the opening mechanism.

  GUNNER STORMED PAST Elodie and went into the lavatory. Her eyes trailed after him. She heard the water run for a time, then stop.

  A minute later he emerged in the doorway, dripping wet with a gun in his hand. The next moment, he was upon her, towering, seething, a glorious warrior possessed. Her own body tensed, half-naked under his long jacket, ready for the attack.

  The barrel of his gun nudged her brow, tilting her head back enough to catch his eyes. Gunner’s face was the one she knew, or had come to know, the pistol tattoos on his cheekbones aimed directly at his mouth.

  Elodie’s gaze followed the lines of his face, landing on his mouth, a flattened line that offered no sense of softness. She watched his lips as the gun pressed an imprint into her skin.

  “You’re safe.” His lips moved like pressed steel. The words rolled out slowly, with no sense of urgency.