“Just keep calm and get it done,” Diane told him.
Morrigan relaxed against a barricade. “Take your time. None of us had any other plans for today.”
“We want to resolve this without further bloodshed,” said one of the soldiers in the amplified voice.
“They’re taking up positions all around us as we wait,” Sylvia said as she watched Eldan open the panel and start to work on the wiring inside.
“If you have an idea to do something about it, go ahead,” I whispered to her. I yelled over the barricade, “We have demands! We want five million ... of your currency!” I looked at Morrigan. “Is that a lot?” She grimaced.
“Twenty million!” I yelled. “And a vehicle ready to take us off this planet.”
“We can’t let you leave,” answered the soldier. “The Fathom have made it clear that can’t happen.” Fear crept into his voice. They were probably all panicking about what would happen if they displeased the Fathom. At least that meant they were more likely to make mistakes.
I noticed we were missing someone. “Where’s Sylvia?”
“She took off,” Wade said, his right arm dangling uselessly at his side. “I guess she has an idea.”
“If we get the door open, we’re not waiting for her, right?” Morrigan asked.
“How’s it going?” I asked Eldan. He put up a finger and basically shushed me, engrossed in whatever he was doing.
A loud tone sounded, and the image on the screens above us changed to a picture of a planet.
“That’s Calipa,” Eldan said, finally looking up from the panel.
“Keep working,” I urged.
“Calipa has become an enemy of all of civilization,” said a female voice in a tone I immediately recognized as a Messenger. “Its people have murdered and rioted and sent a killer to Vesa to further tear us all apart. As valuable as the planet is to the new Galactic Alliance, we cannot let this cancer spread further, or the deaths will be innumerable. An example has to be made.”
“No ... no ...” Eldan muttered, completely forgetting his task.
Appearing over the planet was the Fathom ship, a dark mass with moving parts that looked like tentacles. Something flew fast from it, down to Calipa, and then the planet erupted, a large section of its landmass exploding outward like a geyser.
“Did they get away?” Eldan said as he desperately looked at his handheld. “Did they get away from the city?”
Diane approached him. “Eldan, you need —” Her tone was kind and comforting. That wasn’t going to do.
I shoved Diane out of the way — perhaps too abruptly — and crouched near Eldan and snatched away his handheld. I do not know about caring for people, but I know about getting things done regardless of circumstances. “Your family is either alive or dead. You need to get to them or get your vengeance. Either way, we have to get out of here alive.”
“But —” he reached for the handheld.
“Emotions are washing over you,” I said calmly. “They serve no purpose now. You can choose to experience them or not. What you need now is to be empty. You need to get the task done. Or this is all in vain.”
He gave me one last desperate look, but my expression was as unwavering as usual. He turned back to the panel, shaking a bit but continuing the work.
“We can’t let you leave!” shouted the amplified voice of a soldier, desperation echoing around us. “You see what they do!”
“We’re going to fight them!” I answered. “If you want to be in the way, so be it!”
“Sylvia says she’s in position,” Wade whispered to me.
“Great. ‘Position’ is exactly where I wanted her,” I said.
“She’s going to help cover us when we get the door open,” Wade explained.
“Will she be able to get back to us before we leave?” Diane asked.
“That’s the plan.” Wade tried to look stoic, but worry was creeping into his face. If we were being frank, though, this was the time for heroic sacrifices.
“Well, I’m just sitting here waiting on you guys,” Morrigan said as she sat with her back to a barrier. She looked at Eldan. “Things were getting emotional there for a minute; we back on track?”
Eldan ignored her and seemed to be concentrating fully on the wiring.
“Don’t make things worse,” Diane snapped at her.
“Do we need to have a little catfight if we survive this?” Morrigan asked. “It’ll be short.”
“I’m sure,” Diane retorted.
“Shut up, both of you,” I growled.
“Morrigan killed Diane’s friend and her friend’s family,” Dip told me. “It’s hard to expect her to —”
No. This is not something to care about right now. This is no time for feelings, and I don’t care how strong they are.
“Not everyone can flip it off like a switch,” Dip said.
Then they need to learn. I looked at Eldan, and he was so into the wiring of the panel, it looked like he had forgotten everything else — at least temporarily. If his family was dead, I assumed the news would make him pretty much useless to us, but we’d be off planet by the time he heard. Then that would be irrelevant.
“He’s your ally. You should at least hope his family is okay,” Dip told me.
Hoping doesn’t do anything. They’re either dead or they’re not.
I noticed Diane had closed her eyes for a moment. Praying? Something to do when there’s nothing else left, I guess. I had tried it before in desperation, though I could almost feel it offending the deity I didn’t really believe existed.
“This is your last warning!” shouted a soldier. His voice was shaky and scared. “You are surrounded. Drop your weapons and release the hostage, or we will come for you. And we will kill you!”
A glance over the barrier showed me over a dozen soldiers in cover — that I could easily see. “You know enough about me to know that doesn’t work out well!” I shouted back. Using fear to put hesitation in my enemies was my big weapon, but it didn’t seem like enough this time.
“Got it!” Eldan shouted. The flashing lights around the door stopped, and the metal grate began to rise.
I prepared to move right away. Surprise was about all we had. “If Sylvia is doing something, have her do it now!” I shouted at Wade. “Follow me!”
I leaped up and ran for the door, firing at the soldiers I could see. But I was exposed, and they had rifles. This wasn’t going to work.
There were explosions but near the soldiers. Now something like dark smoke erupted all around them, so I couldn’t see them. And there were gunshots, but they didn’t all appear to be in our direction. I ran into the port with the others following, just as the smoke began to reach us. I glanced up briefly to see a sky with nothing between us and it. Almost free.
“That one!” Morrigan yelled and coughed in the smoke as she pointed at a blue vessel.
She ran faster than us and reached it first. I booked it, as I didn’t put it past her to leave without us.
“The others,” Dip reminded me.
As I reached the door to the ship, I turned to see Wade, Diane, and Eldan running behind me. Through the smoke, poorly aimed blaster bolts flew, one barely missing me and melting a small patch of the paint on the ship near me. I could hear more shots, but not all of them were bolts flying our way. And then the firing stopped.
A soldier stepped out of the smoke. Before I could fire, there was a yank of my hand.
“That’s Sylvia!” Wade yelled, holding on to me with his one good hand.
Sylvia pulled off her helmet and continued running toward us. Everyone was in now except for her and me. More shots fired from the smoke again, some hitting the ship as Sylvia dived inside, me closely following her, closing the door as the ship began to ascend. There were more thunks of blaster fire hitting the hull, but we were soon out of the range of the small-arms fire. I slumped into a nearby seat, Sylvia sitting next to me.
“Are you okay?” Wade asked her.
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Sylvia looked confused, but then she saw the blood on her collar he was staring at. “Not ... mine.”
Something seemed off about her. “You did a good job in there,” I told her, though I thought that was pretty obvious, as she did basically save us all. Still, it was my understanding that was the sort of thing you tell teammates.
“It wasn’t too hard,” Sylvia said. “They weren’t the most experienced soldiers. I snuck behind their line pretty easily and just found one that looked my size, and —” She smiled and laughed, but there was a nervous quality to it. “We’re all victims of this, aren’t we? So did we get what we need?”
I smiled. “Mission accomplished.”
“Rico.” Diane motioned to Eldan, who was looking catatonic as he stared at his handheld. I had forgotten about him. He and his planet were irrelevant to the larger plans now.
“I haven’t ... haven’t heard anything from them,” Eldan said. “I don’t even know if they got my message to flee the city.”
“Tell him something like you’re sure they’re okay,” Dip suggested.
That’s a lie. And he’d know it’s a lie. It would be insulting.
Diane sat next to him and put her hand on his shoulder. No one had any words, but I thought of something truthful to say. “After an attack, communications are going to be down. Especially interstellar.” Of course, there was also the really obvious reason he wasn’t hearing from them.
I looked out a window near me and saw the comforting black of space. Usually I felt so peaceful there, but it wasn’t quite the same when I wasn’t alone.
CHAPTER 28
It made me uncomfortable every time Morrigan stared at me. And I think she stared at me to make me uncomfortable.
We had docked our escape craft with Diane’s command ship, the Prodigal, and jumped away to the safety of deep space to plan our next move and get some time to rest. Eldan was in the corner, trying to contact his family and get news from Calipa. None of that was good. Diane was tending to Wade’s broken arm in the medical bay, and I had to keep pushing down that stupid feeling I got whenever they were alone together. Sylvia had gone somewhere to get a shower and rest. And so I sat in the common area keeping an eye on Morrigan. It was hard to relax with her still here, and I really wanted to get rid of her one way or another. Overpowering her wasn’t an option, and I couldn’t think of any good way to trick her into an airlock. So we’d probably just have to wait for her to leave.
She took her eyes off me briefly as she got a response on her handheld. I listened to her side of the conversation. “Donner? They didn’t get you? ... I wasn’t sounding disappointed. Anyone else get away before they raided the office? ... Just you? ... No, I’m not coming back for you. Find your own way off planet. ... Yes. We’ve all got problems. Good luck.”
Morrigan turned off her screen and went back to looking at me. “We burned a good asset helping you. This better pay off.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said dryly.
“I have to admit your best is pretty good.” Morrigan walked over and sat on the bench next to me. I knew logically she wasn’t going to attack me, but my body did not share that logic and tensed until the two not-quite-fixed holes in my torso ached. “If you ever decide you’re done playing the hero or whatever game you have going, I think Nystrom is desperate enough to have you back.”
My old life. Kill for money I didn’t care about. The tension and the pain left, thinking about it. There was just numbness. “You think Nystrom will survive all this?”
Her red lips formed a smile. “We’re devious; we’ll be around one way or another. There’s always room for criminals in the universe. Competing governments, not so much.”
“I’m good for now.”
“Well, if things don’t work out with these people, or ...” She leaned closer to me and touched my chest. She could probably tell my heart was racing, which was more information than I wanted to give her. “If things don’t work out with you and Diane, look me up.”
She got up and resumed her seat in the chair across from me. Half my thoughts were about killing her. The other half ...
She was a distraction. We needed to get rid of her. I looked at Eldan, but he was not paying us the slightest bit of attention.
I heard laughter. Diane. She was walking in with Wade, whose right arm was in a sling, and they were smiling and laughing at some joke of his. I tensed for a moment but caught myself. Morrigan seemed to notice, though, from the amused smile she gave me. I was back to the killing thoughts.
“How’s the arm?” I asked. I realized that sounded like friendly concern, but I asked only because I wondered how useful he would be to us anymore.
“I won’t be able to fix it with what’s here,” Wade said.
“We need to get him to a modern facility,” Diane told me.
“We have to keep moving, though,” I answered. I thought the implications were clear.
Wade nodded and looked toward Eldan. “Any news?”
I shook my head. If his family were dead, he’d likely never get confirmation in an attack like that. They were just gone.
“I think I’m going to take my ship now and get going,” Morrigan said as she stood up. “I assume you all have planning to do that you don’t want to share with me, and I’ll let you at it. If you need my help or Nystrom’s, Rico knows how to get in touch.”
“Thank you,” Wade said, as Diane just glared at her.
Morrigan looked around. “Where’s the girl?”
“Sylvia wanted some time alone to recoup,” Wade answered.
“Well, when you see her, tell her I’m sorry for almost crushing her throat,” Morrigan said. “When everything you’re planning collapses and the old Galactic Alliance is finished, Nystrom would certainly be interested in employing her.”
“I don’t think she’s the criminal type,” Diane stated.
Morrigan laughed. “The Fathom are almost the undisputed rulers. Anyone who stands up to them is by definition a criminal. See ya around.” She turned, gave me one last smile that I didn’t return, and told Eldan to “buck up” as she walked past him toward the docking port to her ship.
Diane and Wade sat down, and I watched out the window as Morrigan’s blue ship disconnected from us and floated away to make a jump. “We need to talk about what’s next,” I told Diane and Wade, glancing at Eldan, who wasn’t really in the inner circle. Not that I worried about him.
“We need to update Redden,” Wade said.
“I have a room where we can meet and call him,” Diane stated.
“Let’s get that set up,” I said. “I’ll go get Sylvia.”
We stood up, and I headed for the sleeping quarters, glancing back to see Diane put a supporting hand on Eldan as she walked by him. He’d saved us on Vesa, but he was just a distraction now.
“That’s not a kind thought,” Dip told me.
I’m trying to save the universe. There’s not always time for kindness.
“You can excuse anything if you want to under the rubric of ‘saving the universe,’ but then where are you?”
I felt numbness in my body again and stumbled a bit, but I quickly recovered. I had to hold it together.
I came to a slightly ajar door and pushed it open to see Sylvia sitting on a bed. I startled her a bit, and she looked up at me with red eyes. She had been crying. I stifled a sigh; I really did not want to deal with more emotion. I wondered, though, why she was crying. Remorse over killing people on Vesa? The crushing despair of all the death and destruction in general? There was actually quite a bit to get emotional about if you were the type of person prone to such things.
“You need to say something supportive,” Dip reminded me.
I racked my brain for what someone might want to hear in a situation like this. “This isn’t all for nothing.”
She looked at me, her expression neutral. “What’s your deal again? You’re like a psychopath of some sort?”
“Yes. None of this
gets to me.”
“That must be useful.”
I shrugged. “It is, for killing. For combat. Not caring — being detached — is useful for things like that. Lets you focus. For other things — for dealing with other people — not so much.”
“It would be nice to just have a switch, wouldn’t it?” Sylvia asked. “Just turn it all off when it’s in the way.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Never having dealt with feelings like remorse or guilt, I was actually a little frightened of what those feelings might be like. I was happy to leave that to everyone else. “We’re about to call Redden. Morrigan left.”
“She seemed to make you uncomfortable.”
“We have a history,” I said. “By the way, she wanted me to tell you about a job offer. If the Galactic Alliance doesn’t work out, you can be a hitwoman for Nystrom.”
Sylvia stood up. “Great. Good to have something to fall back on.” We went to the small meeting room where Wade and Diane were waiting. On a screen on the wall was Redden.
“So we have what we need?” Redden asked. “It doesn’t look like there’s any going back to Vesa.”
“We have it,” I said from the back of the room. “Mountain Fall is an automated storage station that jumps to different locations in deep space every hour. We need the code for its jump pattern to be able to intercept it. That is apparently on the planet Guiliv. I have a number and passcode for some storage box.”
“Guiliv is known for its secure banks,” Redden said.
“Banks?” I laughed. “I guess I can assume the planet is human-run.”
No one else laughed. Not everyone found the stereotype of humans as a bunch of money-grubbing bankers funny.
“You must approach Guiliv cautiously,” Redden said. His face betrayed more emotion than I had seen from him thus far. “The attack on Calipa was a turning point. The more important planets had assumed the Fathom would want them intact, but now the Fathom have shown they’re willing to burn down the whole Galactic Alliance in order to maintain control.”
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