by David Ryker
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m ready.” I touched my finger to the AI chip on my helmet. “Greg, sitrep?”
“We’re still engaging, but have fallen back to draw their fire. Pilots MacAlister and Sesstis are still alive, but are under heavy fire. I would recommend hurrying.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “We’re on it.”
As I said it, the doors at the end of the room burst open and two Free rebels rushed in — both biggish guys, out of breath and carrying rifles. “They must have come through here,” one said, panting.
“This is the only place that vent comes out,” the other one added. “You circle left, I’ll go right.”
I swallowed hard and felt my heart kick up. I tapped the AI chip again. “Greg, I could really do with some help here.”
“Of course. Active targeting engaged. I recommend turning to face the assailants. Chances of survival are greatly increased if you do so.”
I wasn’t sure if he was kidding. I sighed and twisted on my heel, ignoring the pain in my ribs, and flexed my fingers around the greasy grip of my pistol. Alice was tucked in against her counter. I could hear her breathing in my ear, softly. “On my mark. You tag the one on the right, I’ll get the guy on the left. Ready?”
I tried to say no, but I didn’t have chance before she said, “Now!”
She popped up from behind the counter and I followed on instinct. She wheeled left, took two steps and put a bullet in the first guy’s chest. He reeled backward and she put another two above it. One hit between the collarbones, and the other struck him just below the eye, sending him spinning to the ground. I watched, frozen. In my peripherals I could see the second guy rounding, rifle coming up. Everything slowed down. I saw Alice, the guy she’d shot falling, and my target, rising to pump her full of bullets. I saw it all happening—unless I did something.
My hand moved, my teeth clenched, and my finger pulled twice. I barely aimed, barely thought. The only thing that occurred to me was that if I didn’t put him down, he was putting Alice down, and I realized then that killing wasn’t hard. Killing for no reason was hard. But if there was something to shoot for — a reason to kill— then pulling the trigger was a lot less complicated.
The first round hit him mid chest on the right side. The second went straight through his temple. I stood like a statue, barrel smoking in my outstretched hand.
I heard Alice sigh in my head and then felt her hands on my shoulders. “Come on — there’ll be more coming.”
We got into the hallway and started running. We stopped twice at stairwells to consult the fire escape plans bolted to the walls. It seemed like the only place big enough to keep thousands of soldiers locked up that was able to be secured was a huge vault two floors down — a self-contained room with blast-proof doors that would have been used for secure storage, development, or anything else that needed to be kept locked away and protected. It would stand up to everything except an orbital strike — which was what the Free were counting on.
We made for it quickly, my rib screaming at me as Alice hammered along. She pulled away at one point, as something between a stitch and a knife stabbed me in the flank. I doubled, my hands on my knees, panting hard. “You go,” I wheezed, massaging my side. “I’ll catch up.”
She nodded to me. “Alright.” Her eyes lingered on me for a second before she turned and disappeared around the next corner. I had every intention of following her until I saw someone else.
We hadn’t come across any other Free since the kitchen. We guessed that everyone else had made it outside to try and combat what they had to assume was a Federation counter attack. They’d need to neutralize it and get off planet as quickly as they could, or risk getting caught in the blast. No one was going to risk getting left behind either. No one, it seemed, except for the only Free rebel I’d ever met.
I dragged a couple of breaths into my lungs and glanced behind me, just to make sure I wasn’t being snuck up on. But as I did, in the crosscut of the nearest intersection of hallways, the blonde rebel slid to a halt, breathing hard. She rested her hands on her knees, just like me, and sucked in lungfuls of air. She’d been running.
My eyes stayed with her for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating or not. Maybe I’d taken a bullet in the kitchen or breathed in a few too many smoke-filled breaths in the vent. I blinked a few times, but she didn’t disappear.
She turned away and looked down the opposite corridor, and then glanced in my direction and froze. She stared at me for a moment that seemed to stretch out forever, and then she bolted.
“Hey!” I yelled, taking off after her, pistol in hand. My side ached, but it didn’t matter. For some reason, I couldn’t help but chase her. I don’t know what it was — something between bruised pride and an unrelenting curiosity built on a bedrock of empathy.
Her long legs carried her like a racehorse, and by the time I even caught another glimpse of her, she was disappearing through a steel door at the end of the hallway.
I made up the ground as quickly as I could and burst through, throwing my pistol up at the last second, realizing I could have been bumbling into an ambush. But, I wasn’t, and there was no one else around.
I was in a room the size of an assembly hall. In the center, a Federation tilt-wing that would have rolled off the assembly line a century earlier sat, the Federation logo sprayed over. The rear doors were open but otherwise the room was quiet. Along one wall was a huge shutter, and through it I could hear the muffled sounds of gunfire and explosions. I racked my brain to get a sense of direction, and figured that this had to be an auxiliary hangar that led into the main hangar of the base, and that beyond that shutter, the fight would be raging and hundreds of Free rebels would be waiting with guns.
I swallowed hard, forcing down the knot of sickness in my gut, feeling the gun slick in my hands, and made for the rear doors of the tilt-wing.
25
“Freeze,” I said.
She did. She lifted her hands slowly from the controls and held them over her head, but she didn’t make any attempt to get up from the pilot’s chair. The buttons and controls were lit in front of her, casting a dim green glow in the cabin, the ignition sequence half started.
I’d stalked up the ramp and through the cargo bay, made the climb to the upper deck and then crept into the cockpit, not announcing myself until I was close enough not to miss — but not close enough to get hit again.
“Get up,” I growled, keeping the muzzle trained on the back of her head.
She turned a little so she could see me, and sighed. “Please,” she muttered.
“Up.”
“I have to unbuckle myself,” she said quietly, reaching for the harness on her chest.
“Slowly!” I half yelled, trying to keep the gun steady.
She nodded. “Just— just don’t shoot, okay?”
I didn’t reply. I just waited for her to get up. Really, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’d half expected to find her in the cockpit, have her lunge at me, and then put a bullet in her. But now, with my gun pinned on her, defenseless once again, that doubt crept back in.
She raised herself from the chair and turned around it, ready to step out, and then she did it. It was idiotic — she was almost six feet away. There was no way she ever could have reached me, and looking back, I think she knew that, but it was the only play she had. If I wasn’t going to shoot her, then I likely would have imprisoned her and then handed her over to the Federation. She’d already made it clear that she wasn’t going to entertain that idea.
Her hands stretched out, muscles tensed, eyes full of fear. I skipped backward, angled down and fired. She yelped, and twisted in the air, and then sank to the floor, blood pouring from her thigh. I’d hit her about halfway up on the outer side. Didn’t look like I’d struck bone, but it was enough through the muscle to put her down. I sighed and stepped back a little more. She clutched at the wound, half sobbing, half cursing herself.
“Jus
t fucking do it!” she yelled without warning. “Just finish me.” She stared balefully at me from under hooded eyes. “Just don’t hand me over to the Federation.” The words dripped from her mouth like venom.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I said incredulously, as if I’d even entertain the idea of executing someone in cold blood. “But I wasn’t going to let you kill me, either. You already got the drop on me once. I wasn’t buying it a second time.”
She stared at me in confusion, and then it dawned on her. She couldn’t see my face, but she knew who I was in that second. “It’s you.” She shook her head. “The goddamn kid. So what are you going to do with me then?” She raised an eyebrow, her voice thin all of a sudden.
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I didn’t really like the options. Either I was going to put a bullet in her, or I was going to hand her over to the Federation and let them do it. Both resulted in her death, and I was sure that if I told her it was the second, she was just going to let the pressure off her thigh and bleed herself out.
“Well?” she scoffed, thumbing at the spreading crimson stain on her trouser leg in an attempt to squeeze the blood back in, or tourniquet it with her fingers.
“I’m thinking” was all I could say.
“You know,” she said quietly, shaking her head, “I was just trying to get away. When shit started hitting the fan — your doing, I’m guessing — I was in detention. You know they threw me in lock-up when I got back. Suspected desertion. Didn’t quite buy the story that I managed to escape on my own while everyone else from the transport died.” She laughed abjectly. “When I told them what happened with this dumb Federation kid-pilot, they told me that I was lying — badly. They said that no Federation pilot in the universe would be dumb enough to let a Free rebel sneak up on them and then disarm them. I told them I killed you with your own gun.” She looked up at me, staring into the muzzle pointed at her head without a hint of fear. “They didn’t ask, but I knew that was the question they were wondering. What I did with the pilot I disarmed. They liked that part — the only part that was a lie.” She stared at her leg, soaked with blood. “I let you go. You know, I thought, here’s a kid who’s not been so fucked by their propagandized bullshit that he may still have a chance to get out and do something with his life. And not just throw it away like the rest of us.” She took a slow breath and let her eyes wander to the ground at my feet.
Alice’s voice crackled in my ear suddenly. “Hey, Red — I’ve got the prisoners, or I’ve found them at least. Where the hell are—” I tapped the side of my helmet, cutting her off mid-sentence.
I let the blonde go on, seeing myself in her with every passing second.
“But I was wrong,” she said quietly. “I gave you that chance, and here you are — good deeds come back to bite us, don’t they? You know the whole world is fucked when the people who do good get punished and those who take and kill and hurt people without remorse are the ones that are rewarded.” She spread her arms. “Well, come on then. Claim your reward and climb the Federation ladder.” Her voice was cracked like old veneer.
My throat was tight. “You said you were in detention,” I squeezed out. “How’d you get out?”
She smirked a little, looking drawn in the halflight all of a sudden, a pool of red forming under her leg. “I was being questioned when things went wrong. The whole fucking base shook. We heard the blast — knew it was rail by the way the lights dipped. Felt it as the ceiling caved in the hangar. The guy interrogating me pushed back from the table and ran out of the room. After that, I was alone. When I figured that no one was watching me anymore, and the explosions kept on coming, I knew that it was too late. I had to get out. I had a chair, so I used it. Took me until now to smash the door handle off.” She shook her head again. “You ever try to break a door handle with a chair? It’s no fucking picnic.”
I swallowed, trying to stay focused. “And now what, you’re joining the fight?”
“I’m running. They didn’t like my story — so if they survive, they’ll come back and kill me for attempted desertion. The Federation and the Free differ in a lot of ways — but in a lot of ways they’re just the same. So no, I wasn’t joining the fight. I was running. I want off this planet, and out of this fucking fight for good. The Federation left me for dead and now the Free won’t have me either. I was just going to find a nice peaceful planet somewhere very far away and not think about either of them ever again.” She smiled at me, showing off straight white teeth. Her eyes were full, blue and bottomless, shining with tears. “Because honestly, what’s the point in any of it? Huh? What are you even fighting for? Why don’t you just kill me and take the ship yourself? Fly off into the sky and never look back. It’s what I was going to do. It’s what you should do. It’s what anyone who can gain the clarity to see what the Federation and the Free really are should do.”
My mouth wasn’t my own as the words began to form in it. “What if we went together?”
Everything was still. She looked at me unwaveringly, her face a mixture of suspicion and fear, eyes twitching with trepidation, as I reached up and took my helmet off. I didn’t know what the hell I was saying. In that moment, everything was peaceful. The thought of a peaceful life, away from all of this — away from the pistol in my hand and the Federation logo on my chest — seemed perfect.
But then it faded away, as quickly as it came. I stared down at the Free rebel that had jumped me, that I’d shot, and that I’d just offered to run away with, and realized that I didn’t even know her name. That I didn’t care about her. That I didn’t know her.
I looked over my shoulder at the door and thought of Alice. Thought of what we’d come through already. Thought of what would happen to her if I left. Where she’d go and what she’d do. I thought about her going into the next battle, with guys like Jonas at her side — people she couldn’t rely on. I swallowed hard, and let her face float in my mind. I sighed and closed my eyes, turning away.
I stepped toward the door and laid my hand on the frame, not looking back. “I’m sorry I… I’m sorry about your leg.” I took another step. “I hope you find your peaceful planet, and that it’s everything you want it to be.”
“Wait,” she said quietly. “Where are you going? We can—”
“My fight’s not over yet. Not until I don’t have anything left to fight for, at least.” I hit the door panel with my clenched fist and heard it slide shut behind me.
In a blur, my feet were back on the smooth concrete of the hangar floor.
The doors to the tilt-wing rose behind me and sealed, and then the roller shutter started clanking upward, exposing the hangar beyond. It was quieter now. No one was running or yelling and the sound of fire had dwindled to a distant rumble. Either the fighting was over, or Mac and Fish had retreated. Either way, in that moment, I didn’t care. In the distance I could see the burning wreckage of the read end of the pinned transport, crushed under the collapsed roof.
I watched the flames lick the smoky air as the tilt-wing trundled slowly forward and then pulled right, heading for an open door at the far side.
It picked up speed and left a trail of blue jet wash in its wake as it zoomed into the morning sunlight and then banked into the sky and out of sight.
My heart beat slowly in my chest and the pistol felt heavy in my fingers.
“Red?” came a familiar voice.
I turned, watching Alice come through the door. I could hear voices beyond —shouts and commands. The prisoners. She’d gotten them out. I smiled. “Hey.”
“Are you okay?” She sounded concerned and jogged over, helmet under her arm.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“You killed your comms? What happened?”
“I, uh…” I stalled for a second. “I got into a scuffle. They cracked me with the butt of a rifle, blew out my comms — I had to ditch it.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. It didn’t look like she was buying it, but she didn’t pry. “What happened then?�
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I followed her eyes to the fresh tiremarks leading into the hangar and toward the door. “They got away.”
She nodded slowly, accepting that much. “Mac came in while you were off comms. They had to retreat — low on ammo, but they said that the Free rebels started to split, anyway.”
I smiled slowly. “That’s good. And you got the prisoners out.”
She smirked a little. “Yeah, there was no one guarding them. Guess the Free never figured on us attacking or making any sort of rescue attempt. They had them locked up in a storage vault downstairs — was a cinch to crack.” She shrugged, but I could see the sadness in her eyes. The Free had just locked them up and left them to die — obliterated by their own forces as the base went up, or just to starve to death if it didn’t. I tried not to think about it.
I looked back into the hangar, watching as the liberated Federation soldiers started to appear, heading for the door as they poured out of the base. “That’s good.”
She licked her lip slowly, and then bit it. “For a second, I thought you’d gone.”
I furrowed my brow. “Gone? Gone where?”
She shrugged in my peripherals. “I don’t know. Just gone. I came back up, looking for you, heard that tilt-wing spooling up, and I just thought…”
I grinned, to myself more than anyone else. “Don’t worry, you can’t get rid of me that easily.”
She seemed to hear the sadness in my voice and nodded. “You did well. I’m— I’m glad you were here.”
I turned to her now, the sadness gone, replaced with a sort of hollow numbness. I couldn’t say what lay ahead, or whether I’d made the right call, but as I stood there, framed in the doorway of the base, staring at her, the words just seemed to come to me. “You know what, for what it’s worth — me too.”
Prologue