by Robin Lovett
The enormity of the hub, though half the size of a Ten Systems warship, encompasses thousands of docking bays and dwarfs our small speeder. We slip easily into the pitch-dark bay I chose, near the functioning ones, but far enough away it’s very unlikely another ship will try to use it.
Once we’re fully inside, no sensor closes the bay door behind us like it’s supposed to. There are no lights of any kind. The electrical power supply is completely shut down, as I suspected.
I shake my head and unbuckle my seat belt. “Where are your space suits?” We’ll have to go out in the airless space to get inside the hub.
“There’s one thing I can try first. Hang on,” he says calmly, like he’s talking about making breakfast. He floats back to the speeder’s external door.
“Don’t open that,” I bite at him. How stupid is he? “The air’s not breathable.”
“There’s an internal and external hatch. I’m only going to open the internal one.” He engages the unlocking mechanism, and one filmy layer slides to the side. He places his palm to the clear external panel, and his hand starts to glow.
And the light travels through the door…
The light blue energy from his palm shoots out in a straight column to the control panel in the docking bay. It lights up, red and green indicator lights and a power screen, and, abruptly, the docking bay door closes.
“Holy shit,” I blurt.
He gives me a half smile. “Check the external air sensor.”
I move back to the ship’s console, and the flashing light that denotes the air outside is full of enough oxygen for us to breathe. “We’re good.” I give him a smile. “Impressive.”
He nods. “Put your weapons on.”
I grab my belt from the compartment. “Here.” I hand a blaster to him. “Take one.”
He shakes his head and gently pushes it back to me. “I don’t need it.”
“Koviye, this isn’t a mission to take risks. I have no intention of losing you.” My heart stutters in my chest, and I realize I’m afraid for him, afraid that, without a weapon, he’s going to get himself killed.
“Jenie.” He lowers and softens his gaze on me. “Given what you just saw me do, can you agree to trust me? I am perfectly capable of defending myself.”
It finally starts to make sense. “Can you use your Exstare to…fight?”
He nods. “Something like that. Ready?”
I grab my helmet and put it on, securing it to the latches in my armor. “Ready,” I say, but my voice comes out scrambled, disguised by the mechanism that presses against my throat from the inside of the helmet.
His eyes widen in shock. “Gods…I’d never know it was you.” He stares me up and down.
My shining ebony armor hides everything about me: my gender, figure, race, features, my voice, everything. I tap the designation number emblazoned on each of my shoulders. “This is how you know it’s me.”
He looks at my shoulder and mouths the number. “044997.” He cringes. “You were known by a number?”
“More or less,” I say. “My friends knew me as Jens, my gender-neutral name.” Which was actually male, since the Ten Systems military is one-gender, all male. “Let’s go.”
He drifts into invisibility, and it’s my turn to be worried. “How am I going to know you’re there?”
“I’ll let you know,” he says, his voice floating in the air. His invisible hand brushes against my gloved one, and there’s a jolt of comfort that comes with his touch. It should probably unsettle me. But it doesn’t. Even if I can’t see him, he can still touch me; I can still feel him.
He lifts my hand and puts it to his invisible lips. “Be careful.”
I squeeze his fingers. “You, too.” I hate the sound of my own voice now. It’s not me, inexpressive and mechanical, so I don’t say anything else.
We exit the ship and push off in the zero gravity to the door into the hub. It opens with a press of a button to a vestibule. The door closes behind us, and a gravity regulator brings us to the weight of our feet.
One more door and we’re inside.
He touches my hand, so I know where he’s standing. “I’ll sweep the northern extension receptor and the center internal file storage unit,” he says, reviewing our plan.
“And I’ve got the south end receptor and the main satellite transmitter.” Though I’m praying the south receptor tells me the message was never sent to the transmitter because that either means Dargule’s message has already sent, or I’m going to have to sneak—or fight—my way through a dozen Ten Systems guards at least to get to the transmitter’s computer.
“You’re sure you want to take the transmitter?” he asks. “I could—”
“I’ve got it.”
“I may be able to move faster than you since I’m invisible, so I’ll meet you there if I can.” He taps the commlink on his wrist, the one I programmed with my helmet’s communication frequency. “Be sure to talk to me. Update me whenever you can. I’ll talk to you every step of the way.”
That is, assuming the communication signals don’t get scrambled when we’re at opposite ends of the hub. “Unless I call you for backup at the transmitter, meet me here.”
He sighs heavily. “Okay.”
“Here we go.”
I open the door, and we’re in a hall of near darkness, not even lit by emergency lighting. I turn on my helmet’s headlamp to light my way. Koviye’s invisible hand starts to glow and shines on his path.
I glance back at our docking bay number over the door and repeat it out loud. “Remember it. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” he says. “You either.”
I nod, disconcerted I can’t see his face as he replies, then I turn the opposite direction from him. There’s no one in sight, so I take off at as fast a run as I can manage without my boots slapping too loudly on the metal flooring.
I navigate the maze of hallways, the layout nothing logical or predictable, relying on the map I’ve memorized like a picture in my head. I assume Koviye memorized it, too, though I forgot to ask him. I finally reach the section headed toward the south end receptor, and the hallway is lit.
I can’t run anymore, since someone is likely to walk up and see me at any moment. I set my back and shoulders stiffly in the posture I was forced to work in every day for fifteen years, the on-duty Ten Systems soldier posture. It makes me sick to my stomach to do it. I have a flash of memories, and a burst of all the hatred I feel for the Ten Systems storms through my blood.
I turn toward the south receptor and hold up my head, my helmet level with my shoulders, and march. It’s not a walk, or a pick up your knees movement exactly, but it’s a gait designed to “maximize the movement capabilities of the armor.” Actually, it just makes us all look like robots who move, act, and turn the same way. Anything to make us as non-individual as possible.
But assuming I haven’t forgotten anything, which I haven’t, no one walking past me will see me as any different from any other soldier on this gods-forsaken hub. It also slows me down, but it’s necessary; on my second turn, dozens of Ten Systems soldiers and other alien riffraff are walking through a busy intersection of the hub.
“I’m almost at the northern receptor,” Koviye pipes in the communicator in my ear.
I have to stop myself from making a loud noise of jealousy or piping something sarcastic. With my scrambler, anyone nearby will be able to decipher what I say. I can only respond in Ten Systems protocol sentences. “Message received.”
“Oh, shit, you can’t really talk, can you?”
“Affirmative.”
“Did you run into some soldiers yet?”
“They are present.”
He chuckles in my ear. “Shall I sing you a song while you walk?”
I’m at least allowed to smile in my helmet. “Negative. That is unnecessary.”
He starts to sing a variety of pitches in Fellamana, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.
I can’t
think of a military response except, “You are a disturbance.”
“Anything to make your trip more enjoyable.”
I want to ask him how no one has heard him, how he can already be near his destination, but there’s no way for me to do that without revealing too much to a listener. “What is your status?”
“I’ve reached the northern sector, so I’m almost there. Where are you?”
“The southeast transport zone.”
He talks to me some more, descriptions of the people he’s seeing, the number of Ten Systems soldiers he passes. When he gets to the receptor, he talks me through how he sneaks up on its computer console and taps into the record files.
I hold my breath while he checks through the search functions. I move as fast as I can through the too-bright, smell-infested corridors, bumping into aliens from all sectors of the galaxy. All of whom have made nefarious deals with the Ten Systems to do dirty work for them, most betraying their own people in the process.
“Damn,” Koviye swears through my commlink. “It’s not here. Moving on to the central storage unit.”
“Fuck,” I swear. I finally reach the south sector and make the turn to the receptor hanger.
“Soldier,” Koviye mocks. “Was that Ten Systems-approved language?”
“Shut up.” No soldier’s going to report me for swearing. We all did it. As long as it was only in the Ten Systems official language, no more than a reprimand was given. Of course, if you swore in your native language by accident—minimum one-week solitary imprisonment.
I reach the receptor and unbelievably find it unguarded. “Someone must have mixed up their shifts,” I whisper. “There’s no one here.”
“You’re at the northern receptor?” he asks, his breath moving fast like he’s running.
“Yup.” I hack into the search function for the messages, type in Dargule and Hades. Over a thousand messages come up. “There are too many messages to sort through.”
“Can you delete them all?”
“It would take too much time for me to stand here.”
“What about only the ones that haven’t been forwarded on yet?”
I hesitate my fingers over the screen. “But what if it has been forwarded on?”
“Does it matter? If it’s already been forwarded, there’s no point in this anyway.”
I groan in frustration, though I know he’s right. “Okay. Deleting unforwarded messages from Dargule and Hades.” Which is still a surprisingly high number. “Over fifty messages. Deleting all.”
“There’s a chance that’s all of them. It would make sense. Every message from the time he suspected your whereabouts.”
“Let’s hope. But it means I still have to go to the transmitter.”
“I’ve reached the main storage unit.” I hear tapping through his microphone. “Maybe there won’t be— Fuck.”
“What?”
“There’s, well, damn, I’m going to have to destroy it. That’s the only option.”
I turn and start my walk toward the transmitter. “What do you mean? I’m re-entering the crowd. Switching to Ten Systems speak.”
“The storage unit doesn’t even have an access computer. Like it’s storage only, and no one can actually access what’s in there.”
“Information does not compute.”
“The access must be somewhere else. Somewhere the information from Nemona didn’t tell us.”
None of this information is good. “That is not possible.”
“Doesn’t matter. I have to destroy it.” I hear a boom so loud in my ear, I cringe inside my helmet.
I have no idea what he just did. “Which procedure did you use?”
“My Exstare.” Alarms bells sound through his microphone first, then lights start flashing in my hallway, the functioning ones anyway. “I’m meeting you at the transmitter. Maybe this will distract them, and it will be unguarded.”
“Outcome is unlikely.”
“If you say so.”
My palms start sweating. Not in fear though, in an itch to pick up my blaster. In an itch for a fight. I’ve been trained for it, indoctrinated by the Ten Systems to enjoy it.
I suppress it, try not to think about it since it’s not an instinct I want to indulge. Fighting is what I’m trained to do. And I’m going to get to. With an explosion like that, they will double the guards around the transmitter, not lessen them.
There’s so much chaos from the alarms and the explosion, soldiers running places, I’m able to run at full speed to the transmitter.
I round the final turn to the main transition center and say to Koviye, “Almost there.”
“Good. I’m going to create another diversion to draw them away from the transmitter so you can access it.” Now that our presence is known, it’s even more imperative we destroy the transmitter, so they can’t alert any more Ten Systems ships we’re here. But I don’t want Koviye to get hurt in the process.
“Koviye, maybe—” There’s another explosion sound, then static. “Koviye?” No answer. Nothing but electric fuzz in my ear. “Koviye?!”
I run harder, my heart racing, screaming in fear. He’s not dead. He wasn’t hit. It’s just the commlink. His commlink went dead—that’s all. He can’t be hurt. He can’t be gone. They can’t have hurt him. He has the Exstare—he—
Has no way of protecting himself. No armor, no shield, no way of blocking a blaster’s laser.
“Noooo!” I scream at the top of my lungs, and my whole system lights up with an animal ferocity I have no desire to suppress.
I run full out, as fast as my body can move. Three Ten Systems soldiers block my way, shoulder to shoulder. “Stop. You are unauthorized,” one shouts at me.
Fuck that.
I pull both blasters from my belt, aiming for the chinks in the necks of their armor with well-trained accuracy. ZAP, ZAP, ZAP—one, two, three, down.
I leap over their unconscious bodies, now stunned, lying on the floor.
Koviye, Koviye, Koviye—the comm in my ear is still nothing but static. But he’s alive. He has to be. That’s the only possible outcome I can fathom from this.
I reach a corner, and five laser blasts come flying at me from the same direction. Two glance off my breastplate, and the others I dodge, leaping behind an operation console. I wait, letting them shoot at me, noting where the blasts hit, where they’re aiming, calculating where they’re shooting from based on the trajectory.
I picture where they are. I can tell their exact locations just from their shooting patterns. There are five of them, two behind a waist-high barrier directly behind me and three down the hall to my right crouching in doorways.
I stand and go for the first two—ZAP, ZAP, ZAP, ZAP—two shots per mark and down they go. I dive into a roll, twist, and hit the other three—ZAP, ZAP, ZAP.
I don’t even wait to see them fall. I know I’ve hit them. I run. I don’t care about the transmitter anymore. I just want to get to Koviye. Another explosion sounds to my right, and I jolt to a stop, peering around a corner.
And freeze, with my jaw open.
A dozen Ten System soldiers crouch behind barriers that—BOOM!
A bright flash of light zooms from somewhere to their right, as though from nowhere, hits the wall behind them, and explodes, covering them in metal debris.
“Jenie!” Koviye’s voice calls to me, and I look toward where the flash of light came. He becomes visible just enough for me to see him. “Go! Get to the transmitter!”
I don’t have time to rejoice or get excited to see him alive. Another shower of laser blasts comes flying from behind me.
“Go!” Koviye shouts and goes invisible again.
I run past him and from the corner of my eye see another bolt of his light flash from the other side of the doorway. Damn, he moves fast.
One more turn and I arrive at the enormous satellite tower of the transmitter. It’s wrapped in a glass window with an administrative computer console on the inside. And it’s emittin
g sparks.
I race up to the console and find it barely functioning. There’s no way to access the mainframe computer. The access panels were hit and destroyed. Probably on purpose, by orders of the Ten Systems officers when they realized there were intruders.
But the transmitter itself is still functioning, the lights still flashing every five seconds, denoting a transmission is in the process of sending. I have only one choice—destroy it.
I yank open the operating power supply below the console and locate the central power couplings. But I stop. If I do this, it’s going to blow up the entire north sector of the hub.
Koviye and I are going to have to run if we’re going to make it out of this alive.
The static crackles in my headset. “Koviye? Koviye, can you hear me?”
“Yes, dominaq, I hear you.” His voice comes bright with excitement, and there’s a silence on the end, like the explosions have stopped.
“I have to destroy the transmitter.”
He pauses, his breathing heavy on the mic. “Which means blowing up the entire satellite.”
“Yes.”
“But that would—”
“Destroy half of Lolly Galactic. Yeah.”
“Could we make it out in time?”
“I can set it with a fuse. We will if we run like hell.”
I hear a flash of wind. “Do it. I’m coming to you.”
I cut through the necessary wires and crack open the safety panels with my boot. I pull out the small explosives kit in my weapons belt and set up what the Ten Systems calls a “fire fly.”
The spark is tiny as a fly, but installed properly, attached to the right wires, it destroys everything on the same circuit system.
It occurs to me that there are security cameras in here. That my shoulder with my ID number stamped on my armor is visible. They’ll know it was me. A known fugitive on the run with the rebellion.
This hub is surround by twenty different systems. The chance of them guessing where we are, based on knowing I was here, is unlikely, but for good measure, I sync up the security cameras for the whole space station to the explosion as well. Then they won’t know it was someone from the rebellion who was here. Nemona will have destroyed all the tracking systems on the Hades, so it’s no longer transmitting its location. Destroying this transmitter will hopefully get rid of all the Hades’ previous transmissions of its whereabouts since it entered the system where the Fellamana planet is. We can hope. Though we won’t know for sure until the Ten Systems does or does not come after us. This is the best we can do to protect us and the Fellamana from future assaults from the Ten Systems.