by C. Gockel
Davies and the weere got low and put all their weight into sliding the door open. Alaric raised his phaser. He couldn’t risk a breach. The electricals he needed would be damaged by the drop in pressure, but he knew his ship and where to aim.
A shadow fell between the sparks and clanged on the conference room table—a thick chunk of hull. There should have been the smell of smoke and burnt metal and insulation, but all Alaric smelled was recycled air. An instant later, another shadow landed on the table with a softer thud. This time Alaric fired. His aim was true, and a man collapsed in a heap. Another man was already dropping from the hole in the ceiling, landing awkwardly on the downed man’s legs. Alaric shot him, too. Two down, but from what he’d seen in the holo, up to eight men could comfortably fit in this particular tick.
Davies roared. The door opened. The weere hopped over the sergeant, and Davies himself scrambled into the conference room a second later. Both of them had phaser pistols aimed at the tick. Alaric went next. He heard a screech of metal on the Merkabah’s starboard side. They were being boarded below—enlisted quarters by the sound of it. He signaled to the two men behind him to get inside and close the door. A small shape dropped from above and landed on the table with a clink. Solomon squeaked and dived under the table. At the same instant, Alaric realized it was a shock grenade. He was lifted from his feet and slammed against the wall. The light in his helmet still showed green. Somewhere someone said, “Goddamn, the Galactican suit held.”
Before the man had finished the sentence, three more men were dropping from the ceiling. The first man landed on his feet facing Alaric. His expression of surprise when he realized Alaric’s team was still standing was briefly comical—and then Alaric fired, and he was dead. Phasers from his men lit the conference room, and the other infected toppled, too.
Kneeling beside the table, Davies motioned for Alaric to get to the electricals while he covered him. Lowering his pistol, Alaric strode the few steps to the console at the far side of the table and logged in. Solomon scrambled up onto the table next to him.
Skipping the clunky interface, Alaric pulled up the command line prompt.
An infected man dropped from the ceiling—briefly catching Alaric’s attention—but he was shot before his feet touched the table. Were the infected even trying to stay alive at this point? Another dropped. This time Alaric didn’t look up as he was shot. Alaric entered the code for the self-destruct and his authorization. The countdown began. “Done!”
From within the crew’s quarters, he heard a loud clunk…and then another.
“That’s a mech suit,” one of his men murmured.
Alaric glanced at the ceiling. He hadn’t done this expecting to live, but it suddenly occurred to him that with the shielding of the tick, they might. He gestured with a finger at the hole in the ceiling, signaled for a minute, and made a sign for low G that all the Guard knew.
All the men nodded.
With a few keystrokes, Alaric decreased the grav to a tenth of standard G. Davies was springing up into the tick a second later. Another Guardsman followed him. There was the flash of phasers, and, seconds later, two more pirates were flung from the tick.
Davies’s voice crackled in his helmet. “All clear.”
Alaric heard the clang of metal on metal as the mech suit approached. He glanced at the monitor. The clock was still ticking down. He almost left the console, but then, on an instinct his father had drilled into him, he went in and checked the engine readouts. He found a flat line.
“It’s not working.” He swore. “The power levels haven’t increased.”
In his helmet, Davies’s voice crackled. “We can march down to engineering.”
The banging of mech boots on the deck got louder.
Solomon squeaked, hopped on the table, and his paws shimmered in sign language so fast Alaric struggled to understand. “Block the air recycling vents. Let oxygen build up along all the conduits. I’ll ignite them.”
The mech boots banged closer.
Alaric shook his head. “It will take too long.”
Solomon cut him off with a swift motion of his paws. “It will take too long for you. I will wiggle down to the core, wait until you are away, and the oxygen levels are dangerous.”
Alaric scowled, weighing this option. If he blocked the vents, every air conduit in the ship would become a ticking time bomb. A similar explosion had rocked the Leetier while Volka was aboard. That explosion had been localized to a relatively small area of the ship where oxygen levels were concentrated. This explosion would destroy anything worth taking aboard the Merkabah.
“Put me in a vent and close them,” Solomon signed. “You’ll see me next life, Hatchling.”
Alaric felt a hollowness in his chest but huffed, “Is that a threat?”
Alaric would swear that the expression on the werfle’s face was a smile. There was no time to argue, and the creature’s body was probably infected now anyway. Picking him up, he went to the nearest vent in the wall and tugged it open.
“Captain?” Davis said.
“Throw me an incendiary grenade,” Alaric said to one of the remaining men in the conference room. The man tossed it. Catching it one handed, Alaric handed it to Solomon. He had a feeling the creature didn’t need it, but said, “Just in case.”
“Captain, the mech is on the bridge!”
Solomon took the incendiary grenade in his middle paws, swiveled around, and dashed down the conduit. Alaric slammed it shut. There were vertical slats that were still open, slowly releasing oxygen into the ship.
“In the airlock!” shouted one of his men still in the conference room.
“Get to the tick!” Alaric commanded, going back to the console. He entered a few more commands. There was a snap from the vent, and he looked behind him. It was closed. Sealed vacuum tight. There was a thunk at the door, and another. He tapped a few keys. The computer was reporting every vent was closed off. He glanced up and saw the airlock door was flexing inward. His men had disobeyed. They’d stayed back to defend him and were standing on either side of the door. “Get in the tick!” he commanded. Stepping back from the console, he raised his phaser and fired at it. Sparks erupted from the monitor and from the door at the same time. The room went dark with smoke. His men were shadows on the table. Alaric jumped in the low G to the tabletop, and then into the tick. Raising his arms, he bounced off the craft’s ceiling, landed, and knelt by the opening in the floor. “Strap in and be prepared to release.” The weere man below soared up in the low G through the opening.
Alaric saw the eyes of the last man turned up toward them. Alaric held out his arm—the man caught it—and phaser fire ripped through the man and into the hull just centis from Alaric. There was a roar, and then there was silence. Once, twice, and again, phaser fire lit his vision. Breaches in the Merkabah and the tick must have happened at the same time, because pressure sucked at Alaric’s chest and back. He was flung up and away from the Merkabah and out of the tick. Plasti-tubing from the tick’s attachment was billowing around him and then he was beyond that, too. The arm of the Guardsman was still in his, but just the man’s arm…Alaric couldn’t see where the rest of the Guardsman had gone. He was meters away from the Merkabah, turning slowly in free fall. He found himself facing the mech suited pirate, standing in what was left of the conference room. One of the mech suited man’s hands was gripping a conference room chair that had twisted in the force of the vacuum but hadn’t given. Coolly, calmly, the man—or woman, or machine—raised an enormous phaser in Alaric’s direction. Alaric stared at death once again, and once again, he was livid. He raised his phaser and fired. The mech warrior lifted its face to the weapon’s beam as though to a sunbeam, mocking Alaric’s last act of defiance. And then the Merkabah erupted outward like a dark iron flower in bloom. The mech warrior went sailing past Alaric, the legs of its suit in shreds, phaser unfired.
Alaric exhaled. Solomon had succeeded.
His body loosened, and then he scream
ed. Pain erupted from his torso. A red light in his suit filled his vision, and then went to yellow and then to green. Alaric looked down and saw a shard of the Merkabah protruding from his abdomen, nearly long as his body.
His mind was filled with too much pain for anger.
In his mind’s eye, he briefly saw Alexis and his boys. He was ridiculously glad they weren’t here for this.
The last word that came to his lips was, “Volka…”
6T9’s vision went bright white. For a moment, he thought it was his Q-comm, but then Volka, James, and the others came into view. They’d “free-gated” to Time Gate 5. Soon they’d pick up Darmadi, and then 6T9 would kill him. The thought made his circuits spark in the pleasant way they did when he successfully completed a task like giving a human an injection so deftly they didn’t notice or so much sexual pleasure they were incoherent. It was a sensation of completion, of being close to success. Carl was in his arms. 6T9 disengaged one hand from the werfle, and, just by habit, touched his chest. He felt Eliza’s ashes next to his access key, and his circuits darkened.
What was he thinking? He couldn’t kill the man.
Carl squeaked. “Once-mom! Solomon, he’s dead!”
Sundancer’s hull became transparent—and for a moment, 6T9 thought of nothing. Time Gate 5 was a ring of silver blue titanium in the sunlight and midnight blue in the shade. Levels of lights should have been visible but weren’t. Debris was everywhere. On a hulking scrap of brilliant chrome the name Bernadette twisted in scripted letters. Ticks were hopping between bits of wreckage. Remains of passenger ships were dark. Fighters that were indistinguishable from each other were firing on one another, the blaze of their weapons the primary light source.
Volka bent at her waist and clutched the air in front of her as though trying to pull something from her abdomen. “Alaric’s hurt. He’s out there.”
Carl squeaked. “The Luddecceans have Republic envirosuits like ours. He was going to abandon ship—if all went as planned, he’s in vacuum.”
Volka scrunched her eyes shut. “Sundancer, find him!”
“We’ll get him to the hospital at Time Gate 1,” James said.
Volka might have nodded. 6T9 didn’t really see. He was thinking how dirty hospitals were. How often, even in this century, it was for people to come to be healed and die at a hospital of something quite unrelated. His Q-comm fired. Had he thought just seconds ago he couldn’t kill the man? That was wrong; he could kill now. He already had. And he hadn’t minded it.
“We better get off the bridge,” Young said. To the scientists, he said, “Move the equipment into the aft compartments.”
The team sprang into action, but 6T9 hung back. He pushed Carl into James’s arms.
“What is it, 6T9?” James asked.
Instead of answering, 6T9 said, “I’ll stay here and help pull Alaric aboard. I can use the pressure in my suit to adjust for the drop in pressure when Sundancer opens her keel.” Sundancer absorbed most of the air into her walls when she opened up—most, not all. The scientists theorized it was a self-cleaning mechanism. It did whisk all human detritus off her inner surfaces, but the drop in pressure was like a brisk current—not like being flung over a waterfall. Expelling some of the stored air in the suit would be wasteful for a human, but 6T9 didn’t need to breathe. It would be enough. Maybe Alaric was already dead or close to it. His circuits lit. Maybe Alaric just needed a nudge…
He closed the visor of his helmet.
“You’ve lost your head tic,” Carl observed with a wavering squeak.
“Volka, take Carl,” James said, thrusting the werfle in her hands and closing his visor.
She didn’t protest. Taking the werfle, she ducked her head and jogged into the aft compartments. Sundancer’s hull was transparent again, and phaser fire lit the bridge. In the light of that fire, 6T9 saw James’s eyes on him. James being here was a quandary. He couldn’t kill Alaric in front of James. 6T9’s Q-comm sparked with blinding intensity. But death later would actually be better. It would appear to Volka that 6T9 had helped save Alaric, before the man died tragically in the hospital. Such dirty places—
6T9 gasped, shocked by his chain of thought. His vision cleared. James’s gaze on him was steady, but there was a slight furrow between his brows. 6T9’s circuits misfired. He felt like he’d failed, though he’d done nothing wrong. He wished James would shout an accusation. He wished James would get angry.
The bridge was empty, and the aft compartments sealed, but when James spoke, he whispered. “After the Luddecceans captured and tortured me…”
6T9 blinked. Why was James bringing up something that had happened over a hundred years ago?
“…I thought about killing Noa,” James said.
“What?” 6T9 hissed, his fists rising in fury at the thought. Noa was no match for James in strength or speed even with her latest augments.
“When I first was able to change my code,” James replied, his voice very soft.
“I would never kill Volka,” 6T9 spat.
“No, I don’t imagine you would,” James replied.
6T9’s lips parted. He had hurt her though, and Carl, too. Accidentally. He had killed the men in Shinar accidentally. And he had proposed to Volka...accidentally. Now he was thinking of preparing an accident for Captain Darmadi.
“Make your decision fast, 6T9,” James whispered.
6T9 looked over his shoulder. In the burst of phasers, he saw a human body curled around a narrow, jagged, triangular piece of wreckage like a butterfly caught on a pin. He adjusted his vision, zooming in and seeing that the man was Darmadi. His envirosuit had done as it was designed and exuded a gel that congealed in a dense fibrous web that had incorporated the wreckage into its seal. Darmadi could still be alive. 6T9’s Q-comm went white, and he pictured the long shard going clear through Darmadi’s body. There wouldn’t be enough gel left to keep the vacuum from boiling him alive.
6T9’s eyes widened, shocked by his train of thoughts. “I don’t think I can decide.”
Sundancer’s hull became opaque. Her walls thickened. Sensors in the suit told 6T9 that she’d absorbed the majority of the atmosphere on the bridge into her walls. He thought Sundancer was preparing to scoop Darmadi up—but a millisecond later, a hole opened up in the floor instead. James was running forward and diving through the opening before 6T9 had processed what was happening. Why hadn’t Sundancer just scooped Darmadi up?
Snarling, 6T9 followed James, diving through the opening just as the other android had done.
James was using air pressure from the fists of his suit to reach the captain. In the instant before James reached him, 6T9 realized the piece of debris was protruding from Darmadi’s back, just barely covered by the fiber gel. Maybe Sundancer hadn’t scooped Darmadi up because his situation was so delicate? His vision went white. Just a few more centimeters and Darmadi would die…
If he killed Darmadi, Volka would never forgive him…
Ahead of him, James maneuvered behind Darmadi, wrapping an arm protectively around his chest. As he approached them, for just an instant, 6T9 thought his eyes and the captain’s met—but that must be a trick of the light. Darmadi’s body was crumpled. He was as weak and helpless as a newborn.
Easier to kill …
6T9 stopped his forward momentum. His Q-comm went blinding white. Anaphylactic shock would be such an easy thing to happen to a Luddeccean in a Republic hospital—and it would look like an accident.
In his suit’s speaker, Volka’s voice crackled. “Sixty, are you all right? Have you got him?”
His vision came back briefly. He shouldn’t kill Darmadi. But it would be so easy to expose the man to one of the deadly Galactic Republic viruses that he hadn’t been inoculated against…
“Sixty!” James shouted. “Make your decision!”
6T9’s eyes locked with James’s. “I can’t decide.”
The decision wasn’t his. His Q-comm and…and…his old programming or maybe his conscience, he
wasn’t sure which…but something was warring with his higher processing power as it insisted that he kill Darmadi. He wasn’t sure which side would win. He couldn’t guarantee Darmadi’s safety. Or even calculate the odds…what was the chance that he’d come out of a blinding flash of Q-comm inspired “insight” and find himself hovering over Darmadi’s corpse? If he couldn’t guarantee Darmadi’s safety, could he be sure of anyone’s? He hadn’t integrated his new programming successfully.
His ether began pinging with a number that registered as Five. Maybe because he didn’t know what to do with Darmadi, his body, or his Q-comm, he answered.
Time Gate 5’s voice crackled through the ether. “Android General 1, you’re here. I have Luddecceans aboard. Captain Darmadi ordered them to protect me, but I hear them whispering over their radios. They do not want to obey. Evidence indicates a potential attempt at my destruction. Please assist me.”
He looked toward Time Gate 5 and saw a porthole in an airlock door. There was a metal loop for maintenance ‘bots to tether themselves beside it. He’d been wrong. He could make a decision. There was a way to guarantee Darmadi’s safety—for now—and at least play the part of the angel Volka imagined him to be, the “angel” she’d fallen in love with. His eyes met James’s again, and he nodded at the other android. Opening his fists, letting the excess air propel him, 6T9 aimed for the airlock.
30
Disconnected
Galactic Republic: Time Gate 5
“Where is Sixty?” Alaric heard Volka cry, somewhere close but still too far away.
Alaric had locked eyes with the android Sixty a few minutes ago. He was certain that it had meant to finish him off. Its features had been hard and blank, the expression of a man prepared to kill. Archbishop Sato had claimed that Sixty couldn’t kill; Sato was wrong. Alaric didn’t know what had saved him—maybe Sixty just preferred for Alaric to suffer. Thankfully, Alaric was beyond suffering now.