She began to retreat as soon as her feet touched the ground, and he didn’t blame her. They ended up back to back as the monsters closed.
“I didn’t bring a gun,” she whispered.
He continued to fire as he unholstered his spare and passed it to her. He felt her fumble with it as he drew a third one and opened fire with a weapon in each hand.
“You know we’ll die, right?” he asked.
“Just tell me how to shoot it,” she snapped.
“Easy. Finger on the trigger, push the safety off…” He killed one of the slavering nightmares as it leapt forward and had pulled the trigger on a second and a third before she’d worked it out.
“Aim and shoot,” he shouted and continued to turn as she huddled against his back.
“Got it!” she declared triumphantly, but a second later, one of the monsters clamped its jaws over her wrist and broke a bone.
She screamed and punched it with her good hand. A second one got past Frog and the rest swarmed in.
As the white room faded in around them, she curled onto her knees and huddled there to catch her breath. It took her several minutes before she registered her instructor was standing in front of her.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Tell Roma she can let me out now.”
Frog tilted his head and nudged her with the toe of his boot. When she didn’t immediately look up, he nudged her again.
“Now why would I do a thing like that?” he asked.
“Because I’m no good,” she told him. “Better you get rid of me now before I get someone killed.”
“Or we could train you so that doesn’t happen,” he suggested and signaled Roma with one hand behind his back.
The white room faded out and the training room replaced it, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“What? Put all that effort in when the Witch and her team are coming back and you won’t need me anyway?”
Frog lowered himself cautiously to sit in front of her.
“I’m fairly sure there will always be a place for you, Ivy.”
She responded with a short and brittle laugh. “Sure. You say that now.”
He studied her with a frown. “Is that what’s happened before?”
Her face froze and she straightened to sit upright with her hands on her knees. “I didn’t say that.”
But they were close to the crux of the problem and he knew it. He persisted. “So when you’re busy poking people until they lose their tempers, that’s what?”
Ivy’s expression hardened, but he was sure he’d seen her jaw tremble.
“Well?” he pressed.
“It’s me seeing if they still want me around,” she admitted finally.
“So, let me get this straight.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You insult people to see if they still want you around.”
“It’s not like that,” she protested.
“Uh-huh...”
“It’s not. I— Look, people tend to want me around for only so long. After that, they get polite, and I only find out how unwelcome I am by accident or when someone finally yells at me for still being where I thought—”
Her voice choked and she stopped, but he finally understood.
“Is that why you…”
Ivy nodded, her face pale, and her eyes shimmered with sudden tears.
“It’s easier if you boot me out before I think I’ve found somewhere…” She rose abruptly to her feet and her face twisted as she lowered her head. “Found somewhere…”
“Found somewhere to call home and then get booted out of it,” he finished, and she turned away as she nodded.
“Do you really think John would?” he asked, and she responded with an unhappy laugh.
“No, but that’s the thing, isn’t it? I’m here on sufferance because he…wants me here.”
“Say that again,” Frog ordered.
“He…” she began, and he cut her off.
“Who?” he interrupted and caught the first glimmer of a glare.
“John,” she snapped, then went silent.
“John what?” he coaxed. Honestly, it’s like getting blood out of a stone…
“John wants me here,” she said so quickly he wasn’t sure she caught the implications. He didn’t give her too much time to consider them.
“And we need you,” he told her.
That brought another tear-clogged laugh and she moved another step away. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Because last time I looked, I was nowhere near good enough.”
“But we can help you with that.”
“Sure, you can.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you probably can help me with that, but whether you will or not is another matter.”
Frog glared at her. “You truly are a piece of work, aren’t you?”
“My mom would probably agree with you,” she snapped. “She didn’t think I was worth having around, either unless there was ironing to be done, or floors to be scrubbed, or you name it. I was useful then.”
“Did you ever wonder why?”
The girl shrugged. “I used to but then I left. It was better that way. I didn’t have to try to prove I hadn’t been her worst mistake…” Her face crumpled again, and she turned away with her arms wrapped around her waist. Tears crowded her voice. “And now I know why.”
“Care to share?” he asked, and she darted him a look that said she didn’t.
He met it with a stare equally as hard and raised an eyebrow. “Well?” he asked and she caved.
“Because I have this thing that will eventually kill me. She simply wrote me off.” Ivy sniffed and took a deep breath. She straightened but didn’t turn. “I wasn’t worth the effort.”
She’d moved close enough to the wall to drive a fist into it, and he winced. While they were padded, the mats only absorbed so much.
“But that’s not what we’re saying,” he told her. “Is it?”
The girl punched the wall a second time before she rested her forehead against it. At first, she didn’t answer, but her shoulders shook.
Frog took a chance and took a step closer. Her shoulders stilled, but she raised her head from the mat.
“Is it?” he pressed.
She shook her head but kept it pressed against the wall.
“You have to say it, Ives.”
“How many times—” she began, but he cut her off again.
“Say it.”
“No,” she replied reluctantly and remained in the same miserable and defensive position.
For a moment, Frog wasn’t sure if she meant she wasn’t going to say it, or it wasn’t what he and the team were saying. He hesitated as he tried to work out how to get her to clarify while he watched her carefully.
Ivy didn’t turn and continued to cry silently with her face pressed to the wall.
“What are we doing, Ivy? About whatever will eventually kill you?” He mocked her gently and she stilled.
“Well?” he pressed when she did not answer.
“Helping me,” she admitted in a very small voice.
“Truly?”
She sniffed, her voice a little stronger. “Yeah? Roma says she’s already started the treatment.”
“She has?” He pretended amazement. “Are you sure?”
The girl sniffed again and nodded.
“But how do you know?”
“I’ve seen the charts.” Her voice strengthened again and she tilted her head so she could see him from the corner of her eye.
“Are you sure those are real? That she’s not making it up?”
Ivy pulled away from the wall and put one hand on her hip. “I’m sure she has better things to do with her bandwidth than mess with me. If she didn’t intend to help, she didn’t have to tell me she could.” She sniffed again. “She could simply throw me out on my backside and there’d be nothing much I could do about it.”
He snorted. “John wouldn’t be happy.”
; That startled a tearful laugh out of her. “No, but she still doesn’t have to help me—and I haven’t told John.”
Frog looked sharply at her. “Are you going to?”
When she laughed again, he began to understand that when it came to Ivy, laughter had nothing to do with happiness.
“Why? It’s not like he can do anything about it, and he’s got enough on his plate.”
“And you think he’d dump your backside in the dirt if he found out you were defective,” he added helpfully, taking a dig at her to see what she said.
To his surprise, she burst into tears, turned as though to run, then turned to the wall again and punched it twice more for good measure.
“Yes…no… I… It’s really stupid of me,” she wailed. “I know he wouldn’t, but—”
She dropped to her knees and sobs wracked her body.
“Your mom, right?” Frog said and moved closer.
“Ri…igh..ight,” she sobbed, and he knelt beside her and slid his arm around her shoulders. She tensed but didn’t pull away.
“Roma didn’t write you off,” he reminded her, and she sniffed and patted her pockets.
She didn’t see him drag a packet of tissues out of thin air, but she accepted them when he passed them to her.
“No,” she admitted.
“And she’s helping you, right?”
Ivy blew her nose and nodded.
“And John wouldn’t understand?” he asked.
She looked at him and her face crumpled. He pulled her close.
“The man will punch my lights out,” he muttered, and she gave a choked laugh. “The point is,” he continued and pressed his point, “we all know you’re defective.”
Ivy gave his shoulder a half-hearted slap but didn’t pull away, so he went on.
“And we’re willing to work with you on that, so you can be very sure we’re gonna want to help you with all the rest. It doesn’t matter how much you suck right now.”
Her next giggle sounded less miserable.
“So you won’t have to go it alone anymore. Okay?”
“What?” she asked and looked at him. “You mean the rest of you won’t eventually flake?”
“Or run you out when the fighting’s done,” he assured her, then drew back and glared at her. “Although if you keep making comments like that…”
Her face sobered and he regretted the words as uncertainty crossed her features.
Good one, Frog, he thought. You almost had it.
She pushed to her feet, taking the tissues with her.
“So…I get to stay…”
Frog got the impression that she either didn’t believe it or she was trying to get used to a whole new concept.
“You get to stay,” he confirmed, and she stopped but kept her back to him.
“And I get to learn how not to suck anymore.”
Frog sighed heavily. “I can’t promise miracles but we’ll try.”
Ivy wrapped her arms around herself, her body as tense as a board.
“And I won’t have to—” Her voice caught, but she rallied and tried again like she was working through a list and the last item was particularly hard to articulate. “Won’t have to try to—”
She stopped as if the last idea was too much.
“Pick up the slack?” he ventured, and she nodded.
“Fill the gaps you aren’t qualified for?” he suggested, and she nodded again, so he pushed it a little bit further.
“Do my job for me and get me blown to hell and back?” he prodded.
That time, she laughed.
Chapter Seven
Tension ran high among the crew of the Tempestarii who knew she waited but as yet weren’t sure for what. On every deck, the old hands talked among themselves and a semi-familiar shiver of anticipation rippled through them.
They were on a covert mission. A mystery ship needed repair, a mysterious VIP was in need of retrieval, and they would be tested but no one knew why.
“What kind of thing do you think they’ll test us for?” asked one of the team leads on a gun crew.
His colleague shrugged and paid close attention to the weapons housing she was currently dismantling. Tattoos rippled across her knuckles as she worked, the same symbol inked in purple and gold on every one.
If she’d stopped long enough for anyone to look closely, they would have seen that each gold-bordered circle contained a flower particular to Meligorn with thorns beneath it and the curled talons of a bird of prey curled beneath those.
“I don’t know what they have planned, but I want to be ready.” She pulled the housing clear and set it down carefully before she began to work on the mechanism inside. She looked at him. “I’ll head into the VR later. Target practice. Do you want to come?”
He hesitated, saw the earnestness in her eyes, and nodded. “I’ll call a team practice. If there’ll be a competition for whatever’s coming, I want our crew to come out on top.”
She grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.” She set her tools aside carefully, pulled her tablet out, and sent him a link.
He read it when his tablet chimed and his eyebrows raised. “The whole crew, huh?”
“I don’t want us to be caught unprepared.”
“It’ll put us away from the gun.”
“Yeah, but it’ll conserve our ammo.”
“Do you think we’re gonna need it?”
“Mysterious VIP…injured ship. I don’t know, Karl. Do you think we won’t?”
He conceded and hurried to the shift boss, who took one look at the booking and extended it to put it under their division’s name and make sure they had time every day.
“We have to beat the rush,” he said and began to order ordnance to be brought up to the guns.
“And hold-all tape,” the woman told him. “The silver kind. Order as much as you can.”
“Hold-all tape?”
“You never know when we’ll need it.” She frowned and ignored the looks that passed between Karl and her boss. “And we’ll need our suits brought into the gun lockers so we can have ʼem close.”
The supervisor gave her a startled look. “This isn’t the Knight, you know.”
“I know,” she said, “but we saw considerable fighting in that last battle and I want my suit nearby. There might not be time to go back to my cabin to get it.”
The section leader added another annotation to his tablet. “Noted. Now, get back to work.”
Similar preparations ran the gamut of the decks. In Bio, one of the older commanders turned to a chief.
“This feels like the old days,” he commented. “You know, when she was around.”
“And we were waiting to be boarded or help out in the next battle?”
“Yeah.”
They looked at each other for a long minute.
“When did you last go for combat training, Chief?”
The man gave him a quizzical look. “You know, it’s been a while.”
“And the crew?”
“I hear you, boss. They’ll need to go on a schedule, and the younger ones might not understand.”
“See if you can find some of the footage from that last battle. They’ll understand when they see that.”
Two decks down, the suppliers were going over the manifests.
“Do you know what this reminds me of?” one asked, and her colleague nodded.
“Yup.” He gestured to the panels they’d finished securing. “Do you want to move these closer to the docking bay?”
She nodded. “And I want my old blaster out of storage.”
“And the special harness?”
“Yeah. I need to do my job and not be constantly snagged on things.”
“How sure are you?”
“You know that restless buzz I used to get?”
“Yeah…”
“I ran three laps of the deck this morning.”
Their gazes locked and he sighed.
“Next time, wake me.”
> They returned to work, but as memories surfaced, they added something else they wanted to the list. Their juniors listened with varying degrees of confusion. Some wondered if their chiefs had officially lost the plot and others tried to think of a polite way to suggest they take rejuvenation.
One or two began to take notes.
The Tempestarii listened, made her own observations, and transitioned again.
The intercoms pinged as she returned to clear space.
“All-Crew, All-Crew, All-Crew.” The announcement sent a ripple of anticipation through the decks, and the teams downed tools. Those who’d been asleep woke with a start and some reached for weapons that should have been safely stowed in lockers.
When the ship saw that her captain had their attention, she signaled him to proceed.
“Testing is about to commence. All crew are to assemble in their section briefing rooms in their teams. I repeat. Testing is about to commence. All crew are to assemble in their section briefing rooms in their teams.”
People began to move, but Emil’s stern command stopped them in their tracks.
“Once this broadcast is over,” he added.
The crew stilled. When they were listening again, he continued.
“Everyone will move with their teams when their section is called. They will proceed to Shuttle Bay Five to wait for testing and then proceed to a second shuttle bay as directed once the test has been completed. That is all.”
“Yes!” the woman from the gun crew hissed. “This is it.”
“What is?” Karl asked.
“The test,” she whispered. “This has to be it.”
One of the junior members started to look worried, but the section leader was already moving down the lines.
“You heard the boss,” he snapped. “Get your tails to the assembly hall and make sure you stay in your teams. Move! We don’t want to keep the captain waiting.”
“That’s not the only person we don’t want to keep waiting,” the female gunner murmured as she closed the gun housing and stowed her tools.
Tension ran high as they gathered. It ran higher still when the captain began to call each section to the shuttle bay.
Engineering was the first, but the head engineer called five names and had them stand beside him.
Michael Anderle - [Heretic of the Federation 03] Page 11