The Defiant

by C. Gockel

  In the trees, another grenade went off.

  “You, sex ‘bot!” snarled the general from 6T9’s right.

  The general would kill Volka, Alexis, and the infected. 6T9 swung his stunner to the general and shot him in the chest; the man had a better than 99% chance of surviving. 6T9’s head jerked to the side with the force of unthinkable thoughts. He fired his stunner at the infected—but not the children. Stunners weren’t safe to use on children.

  Crouching, Volka ran across the street and put her back to the wall of the abandoned building they’d been in earlier. The infected, still unarmed, came from the left and the right, the children skipping lightly over bodies. None were coming from the abandoned building they’d passed through—but it didn’t mean it was safe. He wanted to warn Volka—had to, by his programming, despite the vileness she was committing—but then he saw her taking out the single shock grenade. He ran to stand beside her, back to the wall, and laid down the cover he could against the adults in the mob. Popping the pin, she threw it into the building and then fired past 6T9, where children were hopping over the bodies toward them. She didn’t miss a shot. Not once. The infected children didn’t cry out, but the air was thick with the chemical signatures of burnt skin, blood, and bone.

  Another child skipped faster than would have been possible on a planet with higher gravity from the side 6T9 covered. 6T9 lunged, hoping to restrain the child, but she dodged, and he could do nothing for Volka as the child came dangerously close. But the shock grenade detonated, and its blast wave knocked the child from her feet.

  Springing up, Volka ran into the abandoned building; 6T9 followed. Volka paused at the opposite doorway, and then shouted, “It’s clear!”

  She bolted toward the flower trees, and 6T9 followed, Alexis over his shoulder, stunner in his hand. His sex ‘bot body moved automatically, leaving his higher processor free to whir through all the ways this disaster of loss of life and cruelty could have been avoided…and to recognize the sound of small feet that were following them, though losing ground. Would the infected children follow them into the forest where they would be mauled by trees just as mercilessly as Volka had phasered them?

  Another grenade exploded from the trees North of the camp.

  The freighter lifted, and its guns screamed into the forest in that direction, aiming for the source of the grenade blast. Carl’s ruse was working. The phaser cannon’s shots lit the night, and 6T9 could see Volka clearly. In his mind he could also see the bodies of unarmed men, women, and children smoldering in the street.

  He’d never seen the real Volka at all.

  Volka reached the springy turf of roots before she reached the trees. “Carl, we need you,” she snarled.

  She felt Carl’s answer in her heart. “Run, Hatching! Run. I’m calling Sundancer and trying to find out where we are from the flowers. If they can just show me the whole night sky.”

  Hardly comprehending his words, she ran. The Dark was behind her, and she flipped open her visor so she could follow 6T9’s and her own scents to the rocky ground where they’d left Carl’s body in his sausage suit. She heard 6T9’s heavy footsteps behind her, made heavier by the weight of Alexis on his back.

  She’d stared down the barrel of his stunner earlier. He’d wanted to shoot her. He had his reasons. He had his programming not to do harm. She didn’t have any feelings about that. Not really…even though the children she’d shot were imprinted in her mind in photographic detail—their faces as they skipped and hopped toward her, their bodies shattered and lying on the ground afterward. Yet she did not feel anything about it. Maybe a bit of emptiness, that was all, but it was superseded by a massive frisson of fear and necessity. They had to save Alexis. They had to survive until they were aboard Sundancer. The ship couldn’t move as fast when she wore the armor. How far away was she? How long would it take her to find them?

  A root caught her ankle, and Volka went sprawling.

  Carl’s words pierced her heart. “Hatchling, I’m out of ammo! They’ll figure out no one’s here soon.”

  Rolling over, Volka blasted at the offending root. It pulled back, but another grabbed her other foot. She fired at that, and another whipped around her waist. She rolled away and clambered to her feet, vaguely aware of Sixty, a hesitant, heavy shadow on the periphery of her vision. Smelling stone and Carl’s werfle form, she bolted forward. The trees didn’t resist—she was moving too quickly, or Carl was “persuading” them again. Ahead, his “werfle” form was still crying.

  “Leave me!” Carl shouted.

  Volka growled. She was two meters from the clearing, now glowing in a bright burst of moonlight. One meter more…and she was there. 6T9 didn’t follow. Her shadow stretched before her, covering the sausage suit. One more meter…a very small leap in low G. She snatched Carl’s werfle body from the ground, and the world went briefly orange. “Jump!” Had Carl said it? Had Sixty? Was it her own mind?

  Volka leaped. A phaser cannon roared, and rock exploded behind her, pelting her back and legs. She landed with her body stinging, but her visor didn’t flash and warn her of any punctures. She veered to her left, and phaser fire lit the ground where she would have been. Carl’s necklace crackled. “I can’t persuade the trees and the pirate-ship, Hatchling.”

  She squeezed him tighter, heard 6T9 just to her left, and veered toward the android. There was more fire to her right. The pirate-ship didn’t know where they were. No sooner had she thought that when there was a whine overhead. She glanced up and saw a drone. A light from the drone blinked directly into her eyes, but then a stunner blast hit it and the machine erupted in sparks and crashed.

  Lowering his stunner, Sixty said woodenly, “They know we’re here now.”

  Volka charged southwest, to the right, but hopefully ahead of where the ship must have blasted away the ground cover. Phaser fire flashed behind her into the forest where they would have been if she hadn’t zig-zagged. Another whine went off above her, and 6T9 shot again. A drone erupted in static, but she heard more coming from all directions and smaller blasts. Drones were firing, and the freighter's malfunctioning engines screamed closer, presumably recharging its weapons.

  She leaped over rocks and found herself facing a wall of trees so thick she wasn’t sure where to go. “Under the leaves!” 6T9 said, and she darted forward, seeing the logic—hide first, find the way out next. Phaser fire lit the scene, and the rocks she’d just jumped over burst into millions of gravel-sized pieces that fell like hail on the leaves above them. The scene did not dim…the phaser cannon was ripping through the sky, tearing up the ground, and in seconds would tear through them. Volka growled in fury. She’d failed!

  A roar louder than thunder split the night, making the ground reverberate, and then there was a black shadow above her head. Phaser fire ricocheted off the shadow; where the phaser had struck, Sundancer’s surface was milky white and glowing.

  Dumping Alexis, Sixty took out his folded tablet and began doing something. Drones zipped down from the sky, and Volka began shooting at them with her rifle. One exploded, and then another, but another took its place, and another. Their phaser chargers lit up; they were ready to fire.

  “Stop shooting, Volka!” Sixty shouted.

  Volka shouted in rage and frustration but didn’t shoot them. She couldn’t shoot all of them…

  She blinked and found herself in Sundancer’s interior with a large section of leaf, dirt, 6T9, Carl under her arm, and Alexis unconscious on the floor. They lifted…and then jerked.

  “What happened?” Volka whispered. Through the hull above her, she saw that the armor had peeled off, and now the phaser fire was harmlessly bouncing off the ship, but the prototypes of phaser weapons attached to the armor were gone—of course the pirates would have aimed for those, thinking they were real—and the back of the ship was strangely dark. They weren’t moving, either.

  Answering her unasked question, Carl squeaked. “Sundancer landed on a giant flower, destroyed its leaves, and n
ow all the flowers in this bunch are all too pissed for me to do anything about it! They’re using their sap and the quantum wave to keep Sundancer from burning them off.”

  “What?” Sixty said.

  “They’re not so much fire resistant,” Carl said. “As wave warping resistant.”

  Blinking in confusion, Volka looked down and gasped. The floor of the ship and its sides were pink. They were clamped in a giant bloom—no, blooms. Before her eyes another attached itself to the hull, covering up most of the starboard side. Sundancer pulled against them, but they didn’t break.

  Volka exhaled. Another “weapon” their starship wasn’t immune to.

  The phaser fire stopped, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose.

  There were more ships out there now. Another freighter appeared, and a sleeker vessel Volka thought she recognized. Was it the sleek one from the Luddeccean System’s pirate time gate?

  “Sixty!” Carl said. “That fighter has a weapon of the Dark.”

  Sitting down next to Alexis, bowing over the tablet, 6T9 said, “Readjusting armor to cover.”

  A hatch in the sleek ship opened. The black shadow of the armor stretched agonizingly slowly across the hull. The little machines that “dressed” Sundancer heaved against the clutching petals.

  There was a glint from the hatch of the sleek pirate ship. A projectile emerged, hung beneath the ship for an instant, and then plunged toward them. Volka could only stare as the missile streaked toward Sundancer.

  In her arms, Carl snored.

  Volka shook and sat down, clutching Carl to her. It was only when she was sitting that she realized the ship wasn’t shaking; she was just feeling Sundancer’s terror. “We’re here too, Sundancer, this time.” It was a horrible comfort. They would die together.

  Near Sundancer’s bow, the little machines stretching the armor erupted into sparks and then jerked forward, covering Sundancer’s bow entirely—although the armor was stretched so taut there were diamond-shaped gaps. Volka saw and felt the moment of impact. Sundancer jerked, and Volka felt the Dark in every pore of her skin and tasted it in her mouth. Gray spread over Sundancer’s hull, not like organic veins, but in ugly gray diamonds that looked like scales…the shape of the armor’s gaps.

  “Adjusting the armor,” 6T9 murmured. A cloud rose from Sundancer’s surface.

  “What?” Volka whispered.

  “Steam,” 6T9 answered from the floor. “The Dark’s weapon neutralizes Sundancer’s abilities—her ability to travel silently at the speed of sound, to light jump—obviously her ability to create heat as well. But the armor isn’t alive. Its ability to create heat isn’t neutralized, except where the blooms have encased the ship, but those areas must be absorbing the infection. It might spread through the plants to Sundancer, eventually.”

  Volka might have been dismayed, but the ugly gray scales in the hull turned to white and then became translucent.

  Volka laughed in relief and joy that spread from inside out. Sundancer was relieved as well. “It worked.”

  The steam blew away and she could see the ships above them.

  Sixty, sounding every bit the machine he was, just said, “The armor, unlike Sundancer, isn’t completely resistant to phaser fire. They’ll destroy the armor next, and then, if they’ve got another missile, they’ll drop that. We’re still stuck in a clump of flowers.”

  Carl snored…loudly.

  “Maybe if they phaser it, the flowers will burn away?” Volka said. Surely a great deal of fire would be too much for “wave warping” flowers to control? They’d made it so far…to die so stupidly…

  Sixty replied evenly, “They’ll use the drones. Their phasers are small and precise. They won’t risk letting us go.”

  Sure enough, hatches opened in the ships above them, and hundreds of drones zeroed in on Sundancer like wasps. The phaser fire at first bounced off the armor, but then Sixty cursed, “Rusted gears,” and the armor started peeling away, and then flaking into bits like chips of paint and finally dropping from view. Bit by bit, the hull was completely uncovered.

  Carl snored again. Alexis, the woman they’d come for, didn’t make a sound. Volka swallowed and whispered, “I’m sorry I failed, God.” She hadn’t failed her own test… but what good had it done? She gazed up at the pirate fleet, noticing for the first time how decrepit it looked. The single sleek ship dropped lower.

  “Not taking any chances missing us,” Sixty said matter-of-factly.

  The sleek ship’s hull opened, and Volka could see the head of another Dark missile inside. She swallowed and pulled Carl against her stomach. She tried to reach to Sundancer. “I love you,” she tried to say. Her gaze went to Sixty. He was looking at the ship above them, face expressionless. It struck her that usually he held her in times like these.

  Volka felt nothing about that. Not really.

  The missile lowered but didn’t quite drop. Part of the launch sequence, Volka supposed…or maybe just torture. Her vision blurred, and instead of the pirate fleet and their wicked drones, she saw a galaxy spinning and felt warmth bubbling out from her stomach…a last goodbye and I love you from the starship? More warmth pricked her eyes.

  And then Volka saw fire.

  28

  Fission

  Uncharted Space

  It took Volka a few minutes to realize that she wasn’t seeing a vision produced by Sundancer. She was seeing a real explosion. The ship that had been about to fire on them was a ball of flame and so was the freighter with the malfunctioning sparking hover engines.

  The other ships were scattering like lizzar in a thunderstorm.

  Sixty’s tablet erupted in static, and then Alaric’s voice filled the bridge. Volka’s attention jerked to the device. Alaric was there, and then he wasn’t, and then he was again. “Sundancer, this is…Captain…of the Merkabah.”

  There was a pause, and a staticky, “Do…you have…her?”

  Sixty responded, “We have Ms. Alexis Darmadi. She is suffering from a stun but is otherwise well.”

  There was more static, Alaric winked out for a moment, and Volka imagined him taking a deep breath. She swallowed. And then Alaric was in the screen, crystal clear—perhaps because the Merkabah was drawing closer. Solomon sat on Alaric’s shoulder, head bobbing. When Alaric spoke, his voice was smooth and uninterrupted. “Do you require assistance?”

  Solomon squeaked on his shoulder, and Volka felt the other werfle say, “Thank you for the flower-tree’s star maps, Carl. We were able to piece together your location from them.”

  Carl’s necklace crackled. “Finally! Once-mom, don’t do that to me again.”

  Volka exhaled. She wanted to reach out and touch the screen but didn’t. “We’re stuck. We can’t be hurt by phaser fire. Could you get us out?”

  “With pleasure,” Alaric replied. The Merkabah swooped down from the sky like a great black bird. There were two other identical ships beside the Luddeccean vessel that bolted off in different directions, presumably to go after the pirates.

  Phaser fire streamed from the Merkabah’s forward cannons. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but then the air shimmered, and petals curled back. Sundancer shot forward and up behind the Merkabah, the remnants of Sundancer’s armor falling behind.

  Alaric murmured, “Interesting plant life.” As he would. She remembered him in Sundancer’s vision inspecting the sunflower.

  The Merkabah rose toward the upper atmosphere, and Sundancer followed her. For a moment, Volka’s vision was Sundancer’s memory—and she saw the Merkabah from a different angle, the planet S33O4 a blue star shimmering in the background. Volka felt hope and fondness and understood. Sundancer remembered the other ship—the Merkabah’s crew had saved her, and Sundancer was fond of the ship, or the crew, or both.

  Volka was still fond of one member of the crew, even if her feelings had changed…matured maybe was the word. He wasn’t hers, and that was all right, even for the best. She could never be with him openly, and he had childre
n now. She looked down at the mother of those children, and her breath caught. She saw gray at the edge of her vision. Volka took a deep breath, and then she smelled it.

  Alaric’s voice crackled from the tablet again. “I can escort you back to Luddeccea so there are no misunderstandings.”

  Volka didn’t answer. Her throat was too tight. She had to tell Alaric, but her mouth felt dry.

  Sixty finally broke his silence. “Captain Darmadi, we’d appreciate that escort. What is happening in the pirate camp?”

  Volka looked back. What she saw didn’t surprise her really—a giant mushroom cloud rising where the camp had been.

  In the tablet’s screen, Alaric reached up and scratched Solomon behind the ear. “Tactical nuke. Our intelligence indicates that the Dark is isolated to the camp.”

  Sixty’s chin dipped. “There were prisoners in the camp. Civilian prisoners. Children.”

  Alaric frowned. “All in latter stage of infection according to Solomon’s—our intel. Our priority was to sterilize the planet, so it doesn’t become a reservoir for the disease.”

  “The Republic is working on treatment for everyone,” Sixty replied, his tone icy.

  Volka looked again at Alexis, hoping she’d imagined what she felt. Unconscious, Alexis looked frightened, not like the disagreeable human she’d always been to Volka. Carl had said Alexis had sacrificed herself to save a shuttle full of innocent people. The cloud of gray still clung to her.

  Carl’s thoughts intruded in her own. “The Dark in her is so faint…I think it must have just happened.”

  There was still hope for Alexis…but not on Luddeccea.

  Volka turned back to the tablet, and her gaze met Alaric’s. “Captain Darmadi…” Maybe it was her expression, maybe it was that she’d addressed him formally, but his features lost their hard edge, and his Adam’s apple bobbed.