But Now I See

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Yishmeray rolled backward, his hands to his nose, with a muffled shout of pain, as Hayes lurched forward, reaching for Bellona with his metal hands.

  Tatiana used the distraction. She leaned over the side of the dashboard and called up the emergency menu and activated the items she wanted.

  All the red alert lights extinguished. From farther back in the ship, the shouting and fighting ceased.

  Ruh jerked, as the alert command flashed across the helm dashboard, then disappeared. The dashboard grew silent and black. He looked at Tatiana, his gaze questioning.

  She held still for three heartbeats, watching him, then relaxed when Ruh said nothing about what she had just done to Yishmeray or the two guards standing over him.

  Yishmeray cried out again, the sound thick and gurgling, pulling Tatiana’s attention back to him. He was sprawled on the deck, now. It looked as though Bellona had rolled right over the top of him. She was crouched behind his head, with her back to Hayes, who was still reaching for her. He had plenty of reach, with those long arms. The augmentation tendons stretched with them.

  Bellona leaned forward and propped herself up with her hands planted on the deck. She turned and sighted over her shoulder, then kicked out with her booted foot. Tatiana wanted to shout an alarm. Nothing human could overcome Hayes’ grip. If she let him get his hands on her, even her ankle, she was done.

  The powerful blow landed, instead, on the inside of Haye’s knee and slammed it sideways.

  Hayes howled, his hands dropping to his wounded knee.

  Yishmeray reached for Bellona, scrambling backward. He was temporarily blinded by the pain and his hands flailed, seeking her.

  Bellona’s leg was still raised, from the blow to Hayes’ knee. She brought her knee down sharply. The point of her knee rammed into Yishmeray’s middle, right over the diaphragm.

  Yishmeray grunted, the air bellowing out of him with a wheezy sound. His hands dropped and he laid squirming, trying to breathe. His face turned deep red as his mouth worked silently. His eyes bulged. His nose ran blood, which dripped to either side of his face.

  The two sentries on either side of Yishmeray had reacted instantly, only Bellona was moving too fast. As they turned their ghostmakers to point at Bellona, she thrust herself upward on the leg that had been folded beneath her. The other foot swung forward, driving her toward the closest guard. She took the step then kicked up.

  Her boot caught underneath the two-handed ghostmaker, snapped it out of the guard’s hands and up into the air in a high arc that came close to the roof. Bellona ignored the gun. Instead, she grabbed the guard by his now-reaching hands and tugged him forward.

  He staggered past her, straightening up with a surprised expression. That was when the other guard fired at Bellona. The bolt seared through the first guard’s chest and he dropped to the floor, his surprise frozen on his face.

  Bellona threw herself forward and down. Her palms slapped the deck once more. She flipped herself around in a tight, hard arc.

  Hayes was just recovering from her kick, his hands reaching out for her again. Her legs swung under his extending arms. She kicked at his other knee. This time, there was no lateral movement to the kick. The impetus was all backward, in the direction the knee couldn’t move.

  Hayes grunted again, bending over to grab his leg.

  Bellona used the kick as leverage to pushed herself off Hayes’ knee and complete the arc. Her legs scythed around, taking out the second guard’s calves. He gave a shout of surprise as he fell to the deck on his side.

  Bellona landed with her boots on the deck, one hand beneath her, propping her up. She reached up with the other and the ghostmaker that had been tumbling down from the high arc into which she had kicked it landed in her waiting hand.

  She pulled in her knees, dropping into another low crouch and spun around, aiming the ghostmaker. She fired at Hayes.

  Hayes’ hands shot up in front of him. The dazzling white bolt bounced harmlessly off the back of his hands with a sour whine and sizzle and struck the back wall of the bridge.

  Hayes tore the ghostmaker out of Bellona’s hands, gripped both ends of it and broke it in two. Sparks sprayed everywhere from the gizzards of the weapon, landing on Yishmeray, who threw up his hands to protect his face, and Bellona, who scrambled backward.

  Hayes ignored the sparks that landed on him. He tossed the broken weapon aside, staring at Bellona.

  She threw herself at him, diving low over the top of Yishmeray, who was breathing in gasping, pained pants.

  Hayes bent to meet her with his hands.

  Bellona slid underneath them and through Hayes’ legs. She scrambled to her feet and ran.

  There was another soldier at the mouth of the corridor, guarding it. She dealt with him by driving her shoulder into his stomach, caught the ghostmaker as he dropped it and ran down the corridor.

  Hayes straightened up and looked at Yishmeray.

  “You would let a girl beat you?” Yishmeray panted out, in Karassian. His voice was bubbly with the blood that would be running down the back of his throat. Then, “Get her!”

  Hayes turned and lumbered down the corridor, almost stepping on the downed guard. The giant staggered, his weakened knees barely holding him up. His metal hands slapped the walls, scraping them with a sour whine. He was using the walls as crutches to hold himself up.

  Yishmeray was still prone. He dropped his head back to the decking as Hayes disappeared, his breathing labored. The other two guards were still.

  Tatiana caught Ruh’s eye. She jerked her head toward the door. He had seen the flash command to evacuate. Right now, her crew were evading the Karassians, not engaging. They would be piling into life pods and ejecting, streaming off the Hathaway. Tatiana wanted Ruh to join them. That was the way they had figured it, shortly after the Eriumans had boarded the Hathaway, four years ago. Ruh had been impatient with the disaster planning and all the other changes she had introduced. He was still young enough to think that the worse that could happen always happened to other people, not him.

  Ruh looked at her now and shook his head.

  Tatiana crossed the deck. “It doesn’t matter how we reached this point,” she told him urgently. “What matters is that it has happened. Go. Now. While you have the chance.”

  Ruh closed his eyes for a second. His shoulders slumped.

  Tatiana could almost feel his guilt. “You made a mistake, that is all,” she said quickly and quietly. “Max was someone we could take at his word. Yishmeray is…not.” She didn’t say aloud that Yishmeray was a typical Karassian, completely unpredictable, volatile and crazy. It was impossible to get cozy with Karassians.

  Ruh nodded. She could see there was a lot more he would say, if they’d had time. “What about you?” he whispered.

  “Last off. Captain’s privilege.” She pushed him toward the corridor. “Go.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Yishmeray said, from behind them. His voice was strained and weak.

  Tatiana looked over her shoulder. Yishmeray was still lying down, only now he had the second, still-whole ghostmaker in his hands. The ghostmaker wobbled, but not enough to ruin his aim.

  Her heart sank. She had forgotten the other gun.

  Ruh sighed.

  Yishmeray rolled onto one side, holding the ghostmaker out with his upper hand. He pushed slowly to his knees, then lurched to his feet. His face was paler than it had been before, where it was not red with blood he had smeared when he had wiped it away. His eyes were bloodshot. The sleeve of his uniform was thick with the blood he had swiped from his face. It all gave him a maniacal appearance that was, in Tatiana’s opinion, a more truthful expression of his real self.

  There was a tramp of many feet on the decking along the corridor, which ran like a spine down the center of the ship.

  Yishmeray gripped the ghostmaker firmly, his gaze shifting to the corridor entrance.

  Six of Yishmeray’s men surrounded Hayes, as they moved back onto the br
idge. Hayes dragged Bellona by one arm. She slid across the decking, writhing and kicking, which was why the six soldiers were ranged around Hayes with ghostmakers trained on her.

  When Hayes halted, Bellona curled up, her knees to her chest, then kicked at his arm, her boot slamming into his elbow. His metal hand loosened its grip and she flipped herself onto her hands and knees, ready to push herself to her feet.

  “Oh, for the love of…!” Yishmeray began. “Sit on her! Hold her down. Move it!”

  The six soldiers standing around her slung their guns and piled on top of her, each of them aiming for a limb, their combined weight designed to drop her back onto the decking.

  “Keep her still,” Yishmeray said. “I’ve sent for a chemical cuff. That will hold her.”

  Tatiana realized his biocomp implants let him communicate directly with his ship.

  The six Karassians were struggling to keep Bellona still. She hadn’t given up. She squirmed and fought, using her teeth and her knees and her head. The men reared and slipped, jostling each other as they battled to pin her down.

  From the hole in the ceiling, a capsule elevator lowered, with a Karassian wearing green medical stripes on his collar standing inside the steel frame. When the elevator cage touched the deck floor, he stepped off, brandishing a power injector in one hand and a medical kit in the other. The chemical restraint Yishmeray had called for had arrived.

  Bellona spotted the medic from the corner of her eye and her struggles intensified. She surged up, shaking off the two men trying to hold down her shoulders, and reached for the man gripping her calf and trying to sit on it. She shot her hand past his arm and grabbed the hilt of a knife hanging on his belt, then yanked it out and slashed at the man’s arm as she fell back.

  The soldier yelped and jumped backward, scrambling to his feet.

  Blood fountained from Bellona’s thigh, through the tiny rent she had made in her trousers.

  Tatiana stared at the red stream, as the hot, coppery smell reached her, too shocked to move.

  Yishmeray swore. “Clamp it! Someone get a grip on the damn thing. Medic, get in there and seal the artery!”

  The medic, his brown eyes wide and shocked, moved toward Bellona. She was still struggling and tossing the soldiers around with her writhing. The medic hesitated.

  “Give me that,” Yishmeray said and yanked the injector from his hand. Yishmeray crouched down by Bellona’s head, leaned his hand and most of his bodyweight on her forehead and slapped the business end of the injector up against the base of her throat. It clicked and hissed, delivering the drug.

  He tossed the injector away. It skittered across the deck, to stop up against the comms dashboard. “Get in there,” he told the medic. “Know that if she dies, you go out the same airlock her body does.”

  The medic swallowed and bent over Bellona. Her struggles were weakening and slowing. The drug and the loss of blood would both defeat her.

  The medic opened the kit and settled on his knees next to her hip, mindless of the blood pooling around her. “Let me access the wound,” he said, picking up a derma-iron.

  The soldier who had clamped his hand over the wound lifted it away. Blood geysered once more.

  “Hold behind the cut,” the medic said crisply. “Reduce the blood pressure so I can seal the wound.” He spoke with authority for this was his area of expertise. He sounded confident.

  Tatiana let out a heavy breath, exhaling slowly. She had done nothing—she had not even used the moment of distraction to leave the bridge and find if there were any escape pods left for her and Ruh to use. She had been so astonished by Bellona’s relentless struggling against overwhelming odds.

  Yishmeray stepped back away from the tight knot of bodies surrounding Bellona’s still figure and around Hayes where he stood looking down at her with a puzzled expression twisting his heavy brow, the powerful hands hanging by his sides. The Karassian captain did a long, slow swivel, taking in the whole bridge, surveying the damage.

  The dead screens on every wall were blank, sightless eyes. The lights which had been cut by the Karassian excavation through the roof cast odd shadows, while other lights flickered, their power diminishing. Of the twelve soldiers who had dropped through the roof, only six remained on their feet and two of them were limping. Only four carried their ghostmakers. Four of them had not returned from searching the interior of the Hathaway.

  Hayes was favoring one leg, hopping awkwardly on the other as his balance shifted. He had scrapes on his arms and face that would later turn into spectacular bruises and his uniform was scorched and torn. No wonder he looked bewildered. It would be rare for him to experience injuries, Tatiana guessed.

  The medic got to his feet, closing the kit, his job done. His dark brown uniform looked black from the knees down, where he had knelt in the blood. The bright red arterial blood had spread farther out, smeared by boots and knees.

  In the center of the bloody pool lay Bellona Cardenas. Her eyes were closed, her arms out flung. She was still. The soldiers moved away from her, watching her warily, as if she might spring back to ferocious life at any second.

  Now she was motionless, the slightness of her body compared to Hayes and even the male soldiers she had defeated was more obvious.

  There was no sound on the bridge. The computers and AIs that made an almost constant humming, clicking buzz in the background, were dead. The ship hung from the Karassian clamps, inert and lifeless.

  Tatiana found herself staring at Bellona, awe holding her still. She had never suspected Eriuman women were so…unyielding. On her own, Bellona had very nearly brought an entire squad to its knees, then had unflinchingly taken the last step when defeat was certain.

  Yishmeray moved up to the edge of the thick, blackening puddle, looking down at Bellona, too.

  “Are all Eriumans like that?” Tatiana asked, thinking of Max and his empathy for Tatiana’s family. Had he been a rare exception?

  “No, they’re not,” Yishmeray said, his voice distant. He was thinking. For a biocomp to slow down his speech while he thought things through meant he had to be thinking very hard indeed.

  Yishmeray lifted his head and looked at Tatiana. The manic happiness had gone. In its place was a grave, contemplative expression. “This one is something special,” he said, his tone still measured. He looked around the ship. “Someone who can do this…” Then he shook his head. “We will never hold her as she is, with her free will in place. There is a way around that, though. A way to restrain her and use her at the same time.”

  “I thought you were going to use her as leverage?”

  “Not anymore,” Yishmeray said, glancing around the wreck of the bridge once more. “That would be a waste of talent.”

  Tatiana shivered. “She would no more consent to working with you than she consented to being your hostage.”

  Yishmeray grinned, the disturbing merriment returning to his eyes. “Oh, we won’t need her consent.” His tone was confident. “Hayes, take her up to the med bay.”

  Yishmeray moved back out of the way as Hayes stepped up to where Bellona rested. The giant bent and picked up her shoulders. The glossy black coils of hair trailed through the blood as he lifted her. Hayes’ right hand slipped. He looked at it, turning it, as if the weakness had surprised him. Then he bent even more, scooped up Bellona around the middle with his left arm and lifted her. She hung from his arm, her hands and hair and feet trailing, red droplets running from them. Hayes carried her as if he was holding a carrybag. He squelched over to the elevator cage and stepped onto the platform. Hydraulics hissed and the base of the cage scraped against the floor as his weight settled on it.

  Then it rose slowly up through the hole in the roof, taking Bellona and Hayes into the guts of the Karassian ship.

  Tatiana looked back at Yishmeray. He had his chin cocked up in the air, the distant look in his eyes. He was thinking, again. Processing far more quickly than Tatiana could and deciding what had to happen next.

&nbs
p; Then he met her gaze.

  “You’re not taking us as prisoners, are you?” she said.

  “If the woman was to be a simple hostage, then I would be happy for the Eriumans to know we have her. I might even have sent you as messenger boy. Now, though…” He shook his head.

  Tatiana sighed, letting out the last of her anger and resentment. Time was too short to hold on to those emotions. They blinded and confused the truth, which only now she could see clearly.

  She nodded.

  Yishmeray didn’t speak again. He moved over to the elevator, which had descended and was waiting, and stepped onto it. The medic joined him on the platform, which used up all the space.

  The elevator rose once more. As it lifted up, the remaining soldiers gripped the bottom of the platform and let it haul them up through the great rift.

  Tatiana grabbed Ruh’s hand and pulled him toward the corridor. As soon as they were in the wide passageway, she turned and slapped her hand on the door controls. The heavy bulkhead doors rumbled closed and air hissed as they sealed.

  “What are you doing?” Ruh demanded.

  “The Ralston is going to detach, which will broach the seal they have on the hole they made. The bridge will be exposed to vacuum.”

  As she spoke, the ship shuddered under their feet. On the other side of the door, she heard the cyclonic howl of air rushing out through the hole. She put her hand against the door, regret touching her.

  “We have to find a pod,” Ruh said urgently.

  “There will be none,” Tatiana assured him. “You know the standing orders. Use the pods and jettison the empties, so the enemy cannot use them. When we didn’t arrive right behind them, they would have followed those orders.”

  Ruh licked his lips. He was sweating. “Then we have to seal the hole. Limp back to Ceres. Find the pods and get them back.”

  Tatiana shook her head. “We have about a minute, Ruh. That’s all.” In her mind, she could see the Ralston moving over them, coming around in a big, gentle curve, to head back to where the Hathaway drifted uselessly in space, the mouth of the Ralston’s forward smart gun turning red as it reached critical.