by Joshua James
The orbs closed and their rockets whistled around the Boomerang, flying thick and fast. The ship jerked one more time when a projectile struck her tail end, and Jood unleashed the cannons. They sliced in a wide semicircle, decimating every orb in range.
Ten of them detonated, and the shock wave knocked the Boomerang back the other way. Jood kept up a steady hail of fire on the enemy, blowing up one after another. The Boomerang careened wide and rotated in a complete circle. Quinn struggled to steady her, but after a few seconds, the Boomerang drifted to a halt.
“That’s it,” Quinn called over her shoulder. “I can fire the tender again, but we’ll only turn in a circle. What do you want me to do, Dad?”
At that moment, another blow hit the hull. The Boomerang floundered in helpless circles again, and Jood popped off another cannon blast. The laser sliced through the cloud. It ruptured two orbs and glanced off a third. It shattered the top curve, and a spray of debris scattered through the air.
The sphere whipped around, and the crew all stared through the cockpit window at the sight. Hovering there in front of them, close enough to see clearly, the cut-in-half orb revealed a tiny cockpit inside its dense outer covering. Whatever material constructed that thing, it normally hid the pilot inside it, now revealed in plain view for all to see.
Eli blinked, but the vision didn’t change. A man sat in the cockpit, glaring at the Boomerang through a protective helmet. Two eyes, one nose, one mouth—everything about him looked as human as anyone Eli had ever met, right down to the two arms moving over the controls. The gloved hands articulated five nimble fingers each.
As that realization dawned, Yasha whispered behind him. She hardly breathed, but her voice murmured in his ear. “Amir! It’s Amir Sulemani. It can’t be!”
An old maxim crossed Eli’s mind. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
Almost simultaneously, Sulemani stabbed his finger at his console. Two rockets unlocked from under his vessel. They trailed through the sky, converging on the Boomerang. Jood fired again, and this time, he blasted Sulemani’s craft to a million tiny fragments. The remains of the orb exploded in all directions, and the rockets crashed into the Boomerang.
“We’ve got a hull breach!” Quinn cried. “We’re losing attitude control.”
“Hit it!” Eli bellowed.
“We can’t maintain a straight course!” she screamed back. “We’re going in circles.”
“Just do it! I don’t care where we go!”
She punched the throttle. The Boomerang lurched, but she didn’t go anywhere. The ship traced an orbital path around the swarm before the vessel turned her nose straight into it.
Jood fired three more shots into the cloud. “Our laser cores are depleted, Eli. I am diverting all power to propulsion. We have no more weapons to fire.”
The Boomerang slowed, but its momentum carried it directly into the path of the swarm. More of those spheres zipped back and forth across Eli’s view. They released their rockets in a continuous hail against the Boomerang.
The ship lost forward propulsion. Quinn’s hands moved more slowly over the controls. Eli’s heart sank when he saw her stop and lean back in the chair. She didn’t turn around. She kept staring at the scene outside the window.
All at once, a bone-shaking blow struck the ship. It hurled the Boomerang sideways and dislodged Waylon from his place at the bulkhead. Yasha staggered before she caught her balance.
Eli righted himself in his chair just in time to see a dozen of those things rise out of nowhere, all firing on the Boomerang in unison. Their rockets charged for the cockpit. Eli cringed, bracing for impact, and the missiles smashed into the window with colossal power.
The ship hurtled backward. The force ripped Eli out of his seat. Bodies sailed past him to slam into the window. The next minute, another explosion shattered the vessel from behind. The blow yanked Eli off his feet. He flew through a whirlwind of tossed limbs and broken glass.
He crashed down on the cruel metal floor. His head hit the bulkhead and stars burst in front of his eyes. He swam out of unconsciousness. Distant thuds vibrated the ship underneath him. He blinked the fog out of his head and found himself staring through the destroyed window.
A hot, howling wind rushed into the cockpit. Hundreds of those things whizzed back and forth, firing everywhere. The Boomerang hovered helplessly in the air, but for how much longer?
He tried to get up and discovered a weight pinning him down. He checked to make sure he wasn’t injured. Then he realized a body lay sprawled over his midsection. A rounded back sloped down to a head lolled against the floor.
Eli went through another confusion of ideas and sensations before he put two and two together. The body belonged to Yasha. Her legs stuck out at angles on his other side. Her weight wouldn’t let him get up.
He had to get up. He had to get to the command console. He had to...do something, even if he couldn’t figure out what just yet. Once he got upright, sitting in his correct place, something would come to him.
Eli touched Yasha, but she didn’t move. He patted up her back. She was breathing, at least. He prodded up her spine. She didn’t appear to be hurt, either, apart from getting knocked unconscious by hitting her head against the floor.
He grabbed her by the back of the neck to pry her up. If he could only move her, he could get to the controls. Then he would be able to...
The moment his grip closed around her neck, a flash hit him in the head.
Nineteen
He leaped back, but his fingers remained clamped around her neck in an unbreakable clasp. He ordered himself again and again to let go, but that horrible jolt of energy forked into his brain before he could stop it.
He winked into the yard, running around with the dog. Little Yasha laughed and leaped around, teasing the animal with a stick. The dog bounded at her to catch it and tackled her to the ground. While he watched, the woman came out on the porch. She laughed and called them both. Happiness and tranquility radiated out of the memory.
Another explosion shattered Eli’s mind and he flashed to... He grappled his brain into strange shapes trying to locate the time and place. He was back on that moon, with thousands of those orbs lined up in rows as far as the eye could see. They weren’t activated yet. They sat dead and motionless, with that big screen to one side.
Eli lay flat on his back, staring up at the sky. Three men and one woman towered over him, punching and kicking and clubbing him with objects. He felt their strikes from a long way away, but he didn’t feel any pain. Through the horror of that moment, he recognized that this had never happened to him. He was seeing another one of Yasha’s memories.
In the confusion and terror of the nightmare, he recognized his assailants’ faces. He recognized them with Yasha’s awareness. She knew each and every one of them only too well. A tall, grey-haired man stood off to one side. He observed the beating, stroking his beard in a continuous idiosyncratic movement.
In the timeless void of dream, Eli snapped alert in a split second. He lay flat on his back against the Boomerang’s cockpit bulkhead. His fingers ripped off Yasha’s neck with no effort from him.
“EMP!” Jood lunged for the engineering station. He vaulted over Waylon and Quinn, who were lying unconscious on the floor. He caught the controls. “She disabled us again.”
Through the window, Eli stared at hundreds of spheres raining onto the planet. The Boomerang tilted in all directions. The propulsion of the starboard tender stopped the vessel from tumbling head over heels to her destruction, but this couldn’t end well.
The horizon shot past the window. Eli made another effort to get out from under Yasha, but he hesitated to touch her again. He scooped his arm under her stomach and rolled her over. He checked again that she was breathing, then jumped to the command console.
“The hull breach is interfering with our stability,” Jood said.
Eli focused all his attention on the instruments. “I’ll secti
on off the galley and the aft compartment. I’m sealing all bulkheads behind the cockpit.”
“That did it,” Jood replied. “The landing gear is stuck, and I must maintain attitude control to ensure we land in an upright posture. They will have to be released manually.”
Eli messed with the controls for a minute, but he gave it up. The landing gear wouldn’t release. “Leave it to me. I’ll handle it.”
Jood looked up, but his features gave nothing away. “You must be careful, Eli. With the hull breach drawing air into the ship, you might get caught in the flow.”
Eli punched a series of commands into his console to unlock one or two bulkheads, but not all of them. He got out of his seat and moved away. “You don’t worry about me. Just get the ship on the ground. I’ll take care of myself.”
He didn’t wait around. He plunged out of the cockpit and hustled down the gangway. He came to the first sealed bulkhead and heard the wind roaring behind it. He would have to get creative to release the landing gear in time.
Eli cast his mind around his ship. He knew every inch of her. He grazed his fingertips over the cold steel running to his left. She groaned and strained against Jood’s efforts. She complained to Eli that she couldn’t, she didn’t want to. She begged him to take pity on her and let her do things the easy way.
She always told him she couldn’t and didn’t want to, but she always did. She always came through for him. She never let him down, and she wouldn’t let him down this time. He told her so through his fingertips.
He came to the sidewall and dropped to his knees. He unlocked a vent cover near the gangway catwalk. It offered barely enough space for him to get inside, but he didn’t need to wedge his whole body into it. If he dangled from his waist, he could reach the landing gear—at least one half of it.
He wriggled into the hole and flattened his stomach against the catwalk. It dug into his flesh, but from here, he could see the landing gear wedged in place. He pushed against it. Nothing happened.
Frigid blasts of icy wind ripped through the ship’s underbelly. It pierced his cheeks and tears sprang to his eyes, but Eli blinked them away to squint at the landing gear. A piece of twisted metal braced against the pivot strut. It must have come loose in the battle and stuck there. It held the landing gear retracted, and wouldn’t allow it to lower.
He stretched against the sharp edge of the gangway. It cut deeper, but Eli pushed himself to his limit. He struck the pivot strut with his fist, but nothing would budge it.
He raced through every possibility, but he didn’t find anything down here to help him. He hauled himself out of the vent and returned to a service locker behind the cockpit. Explosions went off beyond the command station. He didn’t have much time before the Boomerang crashed in a ball of flames.
Eli snatched a heavy spanner from the locker and dove back down the hole. The wind shrieked louder than ever. The Boomerang must be close to the ground now. He wound back the spanner and pounded against the obstruction. He bared his teeth and roared his rage at it. He delivered another blow, and the wedge tore loose. The landing gear purred down into place. Eli stared through the opening at the orange-yellow soil coming at him a mile a minute.
He yelled in spite of himself, thinking his end had come, but the instant the landing gear locked in place, the Boomerang slowed. It didn’t slow to a landing speed, but he sensed through the hull a barely perceptible nudge against the ship’s fall.
The planet rushed into view way too fast. Eli didn’t have time to pull himself back inside. He didn’t have time to get into a safe position—if one could possibly exist. He threw his arms over his face again, and the Boomerang smashed into the ground with a deafening boom.
Eli flopped against the brutal edge of the hole one more time, and his upper body struck the hull. Shattering pain fired through him and he collapsed out of his wits.
He had no idea how much time must have passed before he came to his senses. He blinked blood out of his eyes and stared down at a bare, dry, dead field of gravel. He was on Epsilon. He wasn’t dead. The Boomerang still held him up, but he almost hated to get up to find out how much damage she must have sustained in that fall.
Eli’s stomach turned when he tried to pull himself up. His head hurt. Everything hurt. He grasped the ledge, but it still took him several minutes to crawl back and prop himself on the gangway.
Silence echoed all around him. Was he the only one left alive? That horrible thought drove him to his feet. He teetered against the bulkhead before he floundered forward to the cockpit.
Twenty
Eli stared into the cockpit at the destruction waiting for him. Tim went from one body to another, checking everyone. He shone a light into Yasha’s eyes and listened to her lungs.
Tim patted Waylon down. The big man leaned against the bulkhead and wiped blood off his mouth with his shirt sleeve. He shoved Tim away. “I’m fine. Leave me alone.”
The doctor turned to River. “Are you hurt anywhere, River?”
She rubbed her side. “I’m banged up, but I’m okay.”
Tim walked around the pilot’s station and stopped. He stared down at the floor without moving. Eli swallowed hard, watching him.
Tim crouched down. Eli slipped forward to see him kneeling over Quinn. Her blonde hair covered her face; she was lying on her stomach across the cockpit wall. She didn’t move when Tim touched her. He grasped her behind the neck exactly the way Eli had grabbed Yasha. Eli experienced a moment of déjà vu when her memories rushed into his mind, but he didn’t lose his awareness again.
Tim supported Quinn’s head with one hand and pulled her over with his other. He turned her onto her back and laid her down. The instant Eli laid eyes on his daughter, the bottom fell out from under his feet. A million tiny pinpricks dotted her face.
Quinn stared up at Tim through pools of blood clouding her eyes. The whites glowed with bright red blood trapped beneath the surface. A harsh line of red cut across her lower jaw. Everything below it stood out bright red. Above that line, all those microscopic blood blisters peppered her pink skin.
She sniffed, panting to catch her breath. As soon as she exhaled, a trickle of blood ran out of her nose. It streaked down her cheek and dripped past her ear. Her gaze darted around Tim’s face.
Eli caught a fleeting glimpse of Tim’s stricken expression, and his world crumbled. If Quinn’s appearance didn’t tell him everything, Tim’s features confirmed it. “You’re gonna be okay, baby,” he stammered. “We can fix this.”
Quinn turned away. Her gaze scanned the cockpit. She looked at Jood standing by the command console, and then she spotted Eli. Just for a second, he didn’t think he could do this. He’d said and done so much that he regretted. And now, to stand by and watch her die? That was impossible.
“Dad,” she rasped.
All his defenses crumbled, and Eli sank to his knees at her side. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m right here.”
He lifted her gently off the floor and felt blood on her back. His fingers swam in it, but he ignored that. What did that mean in the grand scheme of things? His only daughter’s body hung limp and dead in his arms, but he hugged her to him. He bent down and kissed her bloodstained forehead.
“Dad...” Those blood-red eyes staring up at him didn’t look like hers. This blob of destroyed flesh couldn’t possibly be his beloved child. “Dad...”
“I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
“Dad...” She gulped again. “Go to Earth.”
He stiffened and started to shake his head. A thousand arguments pushed those words out of his mind.
“Dad...I...I believe in you. Take Yasha to Earth. She...she can save Earth. Please, Dad.”
Eli forced himself to look down into those demonic eyes. His mind said, I can’t do that. His heart and soul said, I won’t do that, but something else spoke through his voice. He swallowed hard. “Okay, sweetheart. You don’t worry about that.”
“Promise me, Dad.” Her voice took on t
hat hard edge that told him there would be no discussion. “Promise me you’ll do it.”
Eli turned his head away and wound up looking at Yasha, lying unconscious and unaware a few feet away. He could think of a lot of things he’d rather do than take her to Earth.
Quinn croaked in his ear. “The captain who saved those Xynnar wouldn’t run off and leave billions to die.” Her voice dropped to a breathy whisper. “I believe in you, Dad.”
That voice called up forgotten memories from his days in the Squadrons. He remembered as if it was yesterday what he was thinking when he’d decided to rescue those Xynnar.
He was thinking he wasn’t the man to leave defenseless people to die without doing something. He was thinking his career in the Squadrons wasn’t worth his self-respect. He was thinking he didn’t need the Squadrons as long as he could look himself in the mirror every morning.
He wasn’t a different person. He was still the same man he’d been back then. Quinn was right. Somehow, she knew it when he didn’t.
He discovered her staring at him with eyes cut straight out of Hell itself. He couldn’t look away. He locked his gaze on her. “I promise you I’ll go to Earth.”
Quinn’s body shuddered in his grasp. She didn’t take her gaze off him. She relaxed with her eyes still fixed on him.
Tim’s husky snarl cut the silence. “You goddamned bastard! I’ll kill you for this.”
Eli didn’t look at him. He laid his daughter back down on the floor, and a gush of blood poured out of the side of her mouth. She stared up at him with her eerie red eyes. She didn’t look away. Even in death, she challenged him to keep his promise.
He straightened up. He gazed down at her and didn’t look away, not even when Waylon barked from across the cockpit, “You don’t seriously intend to go back to Earth, do you? You’d be arrested and thrown in the brig, you know.”