by Mark Wandrey
I’kik swiveled an ear toward him, though her attention remained focused on the keys in front of her.
“Send however many you need to the third deck. Their path should be clear, and there will be room for at least ten. Eleven,” she corrected, pressing something else. “Essential personnel, stand by to abandon ship. The Paku may be out of the fight, but we aren’t losing her.”
Alan recognized a like-minded individual, no matter their actual species or background. The captain was giving up her seat on a ship to save more of her crew.
He’d long known Zuul didn’t surrender, and rarely retreated, but this struck harder. This was a captain who knew her responsibility toward the lives in her care, and offered her own to save one of his.
He saluted her, one commander to another, and she paused to return the gesture with a fist to her heart. Then she reached toward him, opening her hand, and pushed a data chip into his reflexively opening hand.
“Everything the drones put together on the system. I need time to get the Paku fighting ready.”
“Captain I’kik, I’ll get you that time.” With another sharp salute, Alan turned on his heel and left the bridge. The magnetic pull of his squad, and his children, increased his pace the moment the door slid shut behind him.
* * *
Shadow flexed his hands—or rather, attempted to, as he’d lost feeling in them half a dozen spins ago. His improvised fastenings had held, but he’d be paying for it in abused nerves alone, never mind whatever reaction his father would have to his lateness after his no show to muster earlier in the day.
Visions of death probably wouldn’t compel his father…though, if they managed to survive whatever was happening in the black outside the ship, maybe it would catch the colonel’s interest how quickly events had matched and followed his vision.
His mind circled around the unlikelihood of that a few more times, which made for at least some distraction from both the lingering dread of what he’d seen and the burgeoning pain in his abused limbs. Was there a technique he could learn to shut off the insistent alarms of his nerve endings until there was actually something he could do about them?
“Shadow!”
The shrilling alarm wasn’t his nerves, and he had to blame the repeated slams against the ship’s decking for his belated understanding. The pulsing noise hit the very edge of his hearing, meaning the Humans wouldn’t be able to hear it at all.
“I hear it,” he answered Rex, twisting in the general direction of his larger brother, “but I don’t know what it is.”
“Bloody Isgono could have taken a minute to teach us the damned Zuul alerts.”
“There was a safety briefing after we came on board,” Bana said, and the shifting of the ship was not kind enough to throw Shadow out of the reach of the sergeant’s glare. “There are three alerts inaudible to humans. What’s the pattern of this one?”
Ripley echoed the noise, dropping her tone to provide an eerie counterpoint to the sound beating against Shadow’s eardrums.
“Abandon ship.” Bana managed calm even in those words, and Shadow had never admired the old merc more. “Tell me you at least remember the evacuation plans.”
“Aye,” the mercs around him chorused, and Shadow vowed to pay attention at the next safety briefing, should he live long enough to experience one.
* * *
Ripley shoved her way into the copilot’s chair, glaring at Lieutenant Dick “Flop” Prendergast when he opened his mouth.
“Was about to ask for you,” Flop said, and she grunted in response as she strapped in. The Phoenix was crewed by two, a pilot and a gunner/navigator, with the pilot sitting forward, and the gunner/navigator behind and facing slightly to starboard. The other qualified pilot had still been on Starbright, as the Phoenix was only a backup and not used on operations. Mostly it served as a shuttle and for cadre.
“I was afraid you’d chuck a wobbly if I tried to rear-seat.”
“You’re better than nothing,” Flop said, about as close to a compliment as he’d ever offered her.
She hadn’t flown in combat before, but her reaction times were far faster than Flop’s, though not as assured or practiced. She’d rather fly than gun. Entropy take them all if she’d sit idly in the back while they flew through who knows what in hopes of some kind of safety to regroup in.
If there was safety to be found. She forced her ears upright and smoothed out her snarl. “Squad’s aboard, sir.”
“Let’s get out of here while there’s getting to be got.” He snapped the last of his pre-flight checks into place. Ripley finished securing the thigh board to her leg and flicked the switch to talk to the rest of the squad.
“We’re out in seconds, get strapped in and brace. It’s going to get bumpy real fast.”
The Paku still spun in the remaining crew’s attempt to keep the bulk of the ship in one piece.
“Decompression underway,” the intercom announced in Zuul. Any moment, once the docking door opened, they’d get the signal from the captain to disengage and make a run for it. The Paku would launch some ECM; hopefully that would cover the small ships dropping away. They’d have to run through the remaining missiles, ongoing laser fire, existing debris, and any additional mess that had been added to the fight in the time it had taken them to evacuate.
“This is avoidance, not engagement,” the pilot said, though Ripley didn’t know which of them he felt the need to remind. Given how the Paku had fared, their dropship had no business doing anything other than running as quickly as possible.
As the dropship finished firing up, a tiny Tri-V came alive before her. The Phoenix was decades out of date. The Tri-V was small because it was a major cost point, imported parts in an otherwise mostly Earth-made craft. The newer Wasp-class had a Tri-V immersive cockpit and the ability to be piloted by pinplants alone. On the display was Paku at the center, with tiny red darts to represent incoming missiles, intermittent flashes of blue lines for anti-missile CID file, and a couple friendly missiles.
“We’re in the dunny, aren’t we?” she hissed.
“Pretty much,” he said, and the Phoenix began to vibrate as her engines came online.
Ripley’s eyes picked up larger markers, all red. Ominous indications of the warships trying to kill them. But in the near distance was an arc of white.
“Planet?” she asked, touching the indicator for the white marker.
“Dwarf planet, that’s our target.”
“Roger that, we aim for the dwarf planet.” Her hands danced across the controls, entering the data into the nav-computer. “All set.”
“You program in anything new or pressing once we get moving, and I’ll keep us dodging what’s right in front of us. Hope we don’t need the explody things.”
“I look long, you look close.”
“Not a rookie anymore, merc,” he said and tossed a thumbs up over his shoulder. “Any second…”
“All shuttles, launch, launch, launch!”
“Let’s get ou—” Flop never finished the sentence. Something struck Paku a titanic blow, slamming them both against the side of the cockpit. Flop cried out in pain. Ripley was oriented differently, so she took most of the blow on the back; he’d taken it to the side. She could see a slight crack in the cockpit from his helmet impact.
“You okay?” she asked as the Gs built precipitously. She tried looking at Paku’s data feed, but it was dead. Bloody hell. “I think something happened to the ship,” she said, realizing how stupid that sounded.
“You think?” he asked, panting. “Releasing,” he said, and she could see his hand reach up ponderously, fighting the growing G forces.
“Flop, what’s wrong?” It was her father from the squad bay. He and the other nine members of their squad were in their CASPers and strapped in. The other squad and their service personnel would be aboard the two Zuul craft they called assault shuttles.
She keyed the channel to the passenger area, but the comms light stayed red. Something was
broken—she could only hear her father, not talk back to him. Entropy.
As she watched Flop struggle, she shook her head. Ripley had always been a little amused at the Humans’ lower resistance to high gravity. Zuul could easily tolerate 3Gs for extended periods of time, while the same was dangerous to the relatively weaker Humans.
Flop’s gloved hand hit the switch, which went from yellow, to green, then red. On Earth, red was bad. He pushed it again. Red to green, then red again, where it flashed and refused to respond to further prodding. His hand fell down with an audible thump.
“Grapple is toast,” he groaned. They were passing five Gs. His head looked up and found a control. The shuttle’s electromagnetic grapple was designed such that if there was a malfunction, it hung on, and didn’t release. A dropship banging around inside a bay was far worse than one that refused to launch. Usually. With a groan of effort, Flop got his hand halfway up before it fell back. “I…can’t…”
“Where is it?” Ripley asked, breathing hard to fight the weight.
“
“Where’s the breaker?” she asked again. No response. “Lieutenant!” she roared, and his head jerked. “Where’s the bloody breaker?”
“Pan…panel seve…seve…seven…” His head fell over, and he was nonresponsive at 6Gs.
Her father was groaning and calling out over the PA. Ripley ignored his call and closed her eyes, concentrating. She’d read the Phoenix manual mere months ago. She recalled the maintenance section on magnetic hull grapples. Since the Phoenix hadn’t been designed to dock with Paku, they’d simply grappled her to the deck. Either the grapples were fucked up, or the impact had caused an overload. Whatever the reason, the dropship was refusing to let go of its temporary home.
She found panel seven in her memory. It was just to her right, about shoulder high, unlike the pilot’s position, where it was overhead. At seven Gs, she had to strain hard. Still, it was doable. She caught the flip-catch, snapped it open, and disengaged the breaker. The Phoenix was flung out into space like a rock from a sling.
* * *
Captain Tucker gritted his teeth and tried not to think about their situation. A split second after Paku had ordered them to launch, they’d cut loose, and the ship had been hit by something big. The impact had slammed them against the bigger ship’s hull on the way out.
The shuttle was stuffed with all the troopers and a bunch of Zuul, and the aliens growled and barked in their language. His translator caught some of it, a mixture of random exclamations and curses. You didn’t have to speak fluent Zuul or be used to a drop in their craft to know it was going sideways.
The Zuul dropship—or assault shuttle, as they called it—spun wildly for a few seconds. He felt and heard the craft’s RCS, reaction control system, working hard to bring them under control. After a few seconds, it succeeded. The pilot kicked in the main drive and began an evasive pattern to make them a harder target.
“This is the tough part!” he yelled to his troopers.
“Piece of piss!” Corporal Salerson replied, getting a series of cheers in response.
Tucker nodded. You might as well relax and enjoy the ride on this sort of launch. However, on his pinplants, he hadn’t acquired telemetry on the Phoenix dropship with his commanding officer and the other half of the unit. Sensor data was showing Paku dropping away, besieged and fighting for its life. The other Zuul shuttle was in formation with his own, and they were both heading toward the only thing not a warship—a dwarf planet a light minute away.
Luckily for all of them, the Zuul assault shuttle was both fast and stealthy. The pair rocketed out of Paku’s engagement zone. There was still no sign of the commander’s vessel amidst all the interference and nuclear detonations. Tucker shook his head and sighed. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to become commander of Silent Night. He hadn’t wanted it at all, ever.
He’d have to trust that some measure of luck would kick in for both squads. With so much interference from explosions and attacks, surely something as small as an assault shuttle or dropship could slip through the noise and get to a docking. Silent Night didn’t specialize in space combat, but they did specialize in surviving to fight another day. He’d have to trust in that.
* * *
“It’s the Gheshu,” A’kef announced as a ship swooped in on them as they fled. Veska snapped her jaw in both surprise and relief. They’d been on the hunt for their lost light cruiser for so long, she’d despaired of seeing battle under a profitable contract again. She should have suspected the clever old captain of their clan’s fiercest ship had found an enormous conflict to be a part of.
“Is it still ours?” Makori asked, leaning around one of the Humans to show his attentive posture.
Veska scoffed in the back of her throat, no matter how carefully the enormous male pricked his ears forward. A’kef would tell them what A’kef chose to tell them. Makori had no business pushing for more from their Rei’shin, not in front of the handful of Humans they’d crammed into the dropship.
Though Humans were forever asking questions, and the Zuul they’d raised certainly wouldn’t have taught them better. Instead, the Human-raised Zuul asked nearly as many questions as the Humans, whether it was a proper time for learning or not. Likely these Humans would have no idea Makori was speaking out of turn, if their translators could even keep up with the multiple conversations. If she were truthful to herself, though she couldn’t imagine a galaxy in which the captain of the Gheshu had lost control of her vessel, Veska very much wanted the answer to Makori’s question, regardless of how it had been delivered.
“Transmission codes indicate yes, but the sheer mass of missiles make it hard to tell who’s firing at who, and we don’t know why they were firing at us.”
“So we’re making a run for the Gheshu,” Veska said, her left ear twisting back thoughtfully.
“That’s the best angle we have, given how we fell from the Paku and the pattern of the battle.”
“The Gheshu? That’s the ship you came out looking for, right?” One of the younger Humans leaned forward as well, making aggressively direct eye contact with A’kef.
A’kef flicked his ears, but inclined his head calmly. He’d spent as much time with the Human mercenary commander who’d raised Rex and his littermates as Veska had managed to spend with Rex. As her lifetime of fighting had shown, one could get used to nearly anything with enough exposure and the proper motivation. Even Human behavior.
“We have been in search of the Gheshu as you have been for your Starbright. I hope both our searches find success in this system.” A’kef gestured the sincerity of his words, though the twist of his wrist as he lifted a hand showed his doubt.
After all, something had thrown them out of hyperspace directly into a battle raging through the exact corner of the system they’d been dragged into. Coincidences were not impossible, but to find battle, and the Gheshu, after such an unheard-of occurrence? The gods would laugh to make such a thing only coincidence. They were here because they were meant to be here. The gods spoke where impossibilities piled on top of each other. A wise Zuul listened, even if they were Fi, and not Sei.
“Your lips to god’s ears,” the young Human responded, and Veska snapped her head back to regard him. This was the one who always managed to put himself in the presence of Sonya. Hewers? Had Sonya told him of the gods?
No, she reminded herself, flattening the bristling fur around her face. Rex and his littermates had been with Humans since before their eyes had opened. They were part of the gods, but had no way to know of them. Rex had mentioned the time they’d spent with Isgono, a Sei of Cho’Hosh, and the gods were not yet a part of those conversations.
Though Shadow…she thought Shadow might know more than some small part of the gods, though that path had never been hers. She forced her gaze away from Hewers, shaking her head roughly to clear it.
“Indeed.” A’kef touched the tips of his own ears, though he must know the Human didn’t spea
k of proper gods. He lifted a hand and clenched his fist to quiet the chatter in the assault shuttle. “We are going to run this assault shuttle to its limits. Everyone, save your breath.”
The Humans took a moment for their translators to do their job, then the one in charge, Tucker, gave an order. Veska didn’t envy what lay ahead for them—the shuttle at its limits would put the Humans far past their own. Even nanites couldn’t make that enjoyable.
* * *
Veska let her breath go in a wave of relief when their assault shuttle connected with the Gheshu’s deck. Perhaps strangers would wait outside with their guns, but at the very least, she could die howling with a weapon in her hand, not harnessed to the ship like a pup on moving day.
Indeed, as the doors opened, there were strangers with guns outside their ship, but the scent of them was familiar. Home, clan, family. Insho’Ze.
A’kef unbuckled and floated free first, and the Humans, still woozy from the punishing journey, had the sense to hold still.
“Rei’Shin,” one of the outside mercenaries said, slamming his fist to his chest and tilting his head to expose his neck.
“Bring me to the captain,” A’kef said. He paused at the entrance, and Veska knew he saw the sudden rapid twitching of the two guards’ noses.
“Are those—do you have Humans on board?”
“We do. They are allies—”
“Rei’Shin, with all respect and honor to you, Humans are not allies on this contract, and these are under arrest at once.”
Veska’s lip curled, and the heat of brewing violence climbed her limbs. Clan should not speak to her Rei’Shin this way. Only the captain herself, on her own ship, in the midst of battle, could countermand…
“The captain could not have known we had Humans on board, and therefore could not have extended such an order.” A’kef’s words carried a warning growl that flattened the guards’ ears. “They are allies and traveled with us for their safety under I’kik’s invitation.”