by T. Y. Carew
“Time’s up,” Dr. Cardew called back over her shoulder. She raised her own gun and faced the next bulkhead door. “Everybody ready?”
***
“…att… coming… you.”
The message made Mattie jump. Her hand rose to her heart, and she glanced at the others. “That’s not good.”
“Maybe he got loose,” Drew offered glumly, staring back at the bodies of the Dairos.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Xander said, his laser pistol held loosely at his hip. “But I think the message was clear.”
“They’re coming,” Matt said.
Xander nodded, his lips pressed into thin lines. “Beltine, Cardew, doesn’t matter. This is about to get ugly. Trey, the charge ready?”
The Lentarin checked the explosive one more time, grimaced, and nodded. It was the first of several they'd need to set around the facility. Kelton had planned for this contingency with input from Drew and Trey. Blowing a few key structural points should, in theory, weaken the refinery to the point where the structure imploded in on itself. They’d placed the first as inconspicuously as possible under one of the bodies. The bug belts had stopped working sometime in the last ten minutes. None of them knew why.
Something banged on the other side of the bulkhead door. Mattie readied one of her zappers and gripped an Adamanta sword in one hand. Trey rejoined them, readying his own pistol and Adamanta dagger as the others all checked their gear one last time.
“All right,” Drew said, “I’ll set the breaching char—”
A cog on the bulkhead door whirled around, and the door slid open sideways, disappearing into a crevice in the wall. Smoke rolled through, black and viscous, so thick they could barely see. Laser fire pelted the walls around the door, and a beam scraped across Tyra’s arm. She screamed and her pistol clattered to the floor as her fingers worked uselessly on that hand.
“Sister!” Trey roared, and knocked her to the floor. Closest to the door, Drew dove sideways, accidentally colliding with Xander and sending them both crashing down. Only Matt was left standing, and she reacted purely by instinct, throwing her zapper as hard as she could right into the face of the Dairos beyond, its gun leveled at her head. Its finger moved towards the trigger but her mind was faster and the zapper burst to life. True to its name, it shot a highly concentrated burst of electricity into the Dairos, hitting not just the Beltine but its two closest brethren as well.
“Grenade!” Xander shouted at her, and she saw it in his hand, a flashbang, and she dove too, hitting the ground and coming up facing away from the door as Xander tossed the device inside the next room. The boom rattled her spine, but her colonel had trained her well and she was on her feet again in another moment, the sword leaving her hand and flying through the door. She paid no mind to Tyra wailing in agony on the floor, or Trey covering his sister, firing wildly into a mass of Beltine beyond. Matt saw enemies, and she did what came naturally.
The Adamanta blade found a new home in a Dairos skull, nearly cleaving it down to its mandible mouth. She jerked the blade back up and fanned it outwards, severing the next one’s arm at its elbow despite the heavy carapace exoskeleton. Matt drew two more blades and concentrated, thrusting them at a wave of Dairos. The three blades did not dance. They cut. Matt wielded them with impunity, without a care as to how much this might be taxing her, and she roared as two of the blades jammed deep into a Dairos; guts and chest, chopping and dropping the Beltine as its laser rifle fired uselessly into the floor.
A Kyraos stormed through their ranks, protected by four of its underlings, and she made that her next target, but before her blades could find the creature, another zapper flew through the door, this one bobbing and weaving uncertainly, not controlled with nearly her mastery. She glanced aside at Xander, who held a hand out like that might help him guide the device. It crackled to life, dropping the Kyraos and one of the Dairos, and Matt grinned at him, the full fury of the battle taking over now.
Drew rose to his knees, pistol gripped between his hands, his aim controlled and true. For once it seemed that Trey and Drew’s roles were reversed. Trey was usually the steady gunner, a reliably great shot, and Drew tended towards excitability and over-leading. But now he tracked each target, his gun only firing with each exhalation of breath while Trey was still firing wildly into the quickly thinning ocean of Beltine bodies. Xander had to jerk Drew back away from the door as the tech reloaded.
“Cover,” the colonel shouted. “Let’s get her to cover.”
Trey snarled at Drew when he came close, his hand never leaving his sister’s arm. “Help me!” Drew shouted in his ear, and it finally broke Trey’s spell. He glanced from his sister to Drew, and snapped to his feet, grabbing Tyra under her shoulder while Drew got her good side.
“I can do it,” Tyra snapped at them both, and lunged away from them to collapse behind one of the conveyor belts. “My gun!” she shouted.
Matt, still working the blades through the Beltine, drew a dagger and it floated down towards the pistol. Like a golfer trying to sink a distant putt, she whacked the butt of the gun with the hilt of the blade, sending it skittering across the floor towards Tyra. The dagger rose up and flew straight into the chest of the next Dairos who dared step in front of the door.
Tyra snatched up the gun in her good hand. The few Dairos left got a taste of her revenge when she brought two of them down with smoking holes in their chests. More bangs, this time coming from neither side but somewhere deeper within the facility. Two of the four remaining Dairos stiffened and dropped their guns. They both began to march forward mechanically, paying no heed to their brethren still firing at the intruders. The Kyraos controlling them must have been killed or gravely wounded.
Xander slipped around the door, pistol raised, and fired three fast shots. One only nicked a Dairos, but the other two shots found their mark and the Dairos fell flat on its back. The final Beltine in that room fired at Xander, but a moment later, the gun fell to the floor, its clawed hand still wrapped around the grip. Mattie’s sword zipped back and then up through its gut. She twisted the blade and the Dairos fell bonelessly.
Another bang, another scream. Silence.
Xander reloaded and wiped the sweat from his brow. Matt figured it was probably more from the Adamanta control than the actual firefight. Even just in training the weapons vexed him. In a full-fledged combat situation, she knew the Adamanta exhausted him.
“Everyone good? Tyra, can you keep fighting?” Xander asked.
“Until they sing the dirge for me, Colonel,” she grunted.
“She means yes,” Trey said.
“Trey, see to her arm. Everybody else, reload and get ready. We’re still in the thick of it.”
“Just heal the worst of it, brother,” Tyra said. At Trey's hesitation, she shook her head. “The damage has been done and there may be others who need our skills soon. Best to focus on what we can do.”
“Cool heads, people. We got really lucky that time,” Drew said as Trey cut away the singed material on his sister's jumpsuit and focused on healing her with their odd Lentarin gift. “I can’t believe I’m the one having to warn you guys about that.”
“He’s right,” Xander said. “Every one of us except Drew made ourselves a target. We need—”
We. Know. You.
The words pressed in at Matt's skull, and she dropped her blades, grimacing. Xander rushed to her, but she didn’t hear him, only the voice in her skull. Memories, images flashed through her mind. Some were confused and jumbled, but soon her mind began to seize on certain ones.
There she was, on her parents’ station, lifting the Adamanta for the first time. Meeting Xander and the crew of the Contessa sometime later. Signing her parents’ names on the memorial wall in her condo. Stabbing them with Adamanta blades as they cried her name.
Fighting to save Xander from the Anassos aboard the Excelsior. Falling onto his lap. His confession of how she made him hopeful for the future. His corpse underneath her foot as she ki
ssed Simon.
Drew, dead, thanks to her severing his spacewalk umbilical cord and overriding the doors so he couldn’t get back in the ship. Tyra and Trey lost in an explosion she’d set off when she jury-rigged the Contessa. Kelton face-down at his desk, one eye still twitching from the poisons she’d slipped into his drink, the hive ships dropping from orbit out his grand windows, a thousand Dairos fighters disengaging to rain hellfire upon billions.
We know you.
Xander grabbed her shoulder, and she snapped out of it. Matt blew out air she didn’t even realize she’d been holding in.
“Hey. Hey!” he shouted at her. “You okay?”
Weakly, she nodded. “The Anassos. It’s coming.”
Chapter 6
“Where is this thing?” Dr. Cardew muttered. She was glued to her personal device even as the latest battle wore down around her. They’d been forced on a zig-zag pattern away from the edge of the honeycomb structure, passing somewhere near its middle if Simon had to guess. Two more of the guards and three of the civilians were gone now. At least their deaths were sudden. One of their wounded—Royce Payton, the same man who’d given Simon his personal device to send out the SOS—kept moaning over and over again anytime he was moved. Gut shot. They’d sealed the wound, but given the ugly coloration of his skin, he’d already gone septic. Maybe if they could have gotten him on board the Exemplar, the doc in the holding area could have done something, but he might as well have been on Netera. They had no chance of getting to him in time to stop the inevitable.
As if he’d read Simon’s mind, Kingston finished off a protein bar, tossed the wrapper aside, unslung his rifle, and stepped over to the wounded man. Without preamble, he put the barrel to Payton’s head and fired. Only a couple muffled screams greeted this. Most everyone was screamed out by that point, the horror settled deep into their bones.
Cardew shook her head, still studying her screen. “Shame. He was a bright one.”
Beside Simon, Lieutenant Lawrence murmured, “Five of them left.”
She was right. There were still plenty of civilians and crew members left who hadn’t turned traitor, but only a handful of Cardew’s people remained. Her, Kingston, two guards, the nav officer. That was it. That couldn’t be right, though. In the last room, there had been more, hadn’t there? He glanced backwards. No, the math was right. No one else was there.
“Next firefight,” he whispered. “Take Cardew out first, then him.” There was no need to qualify who “him” was. It was clear who was the number two here.
Kingston turned, an eyebrow cocked. “You know what’s funny, Doc?”
“What’s that?” Cardew asked, not seeming to care much.
“A few years back, I took a bullet for a politician. It scraped along the side of my head, really messed up my ear. It’s the sort of reason why Simon hired me in the first place. Bulletproof, I think he said in our interview session.”
“Hurry this up, Kingston,” she said.
“I only mention it because it’s the sort of thing you’d think he’d remember, seeing as how he was so certain he knew the names and faces of everyone on board. Attention to detail, that’s my boss’s specialty. So you’d think…” The rifle fired, and Lawrence crumbled, screaming as she clutched at her kneecap. “…he’d remember I had a bionic implant in there. Better hearing than most.”
Simon charged him, eyes wild. “You son of a—” The punch connected before he realized he’d thrown it, but it didn’t faze Kingston. The burly ex-bodyguard dropped his rifle and grabbed Simon around the throat. First Kingston dragged him back towards the lieutenant and kicked the trembling gun in her hand away from her. Then he hefted his former boss straight up in the air, his fingers tightening so hard around his windpipe that Simon felt something pop.
“Be grateful I didn’t kill her like I did Sally,” Kingston growled into his face. The world stopped for Simon, and he stared down at the man, numbness spreading through his heart. For once in his life, Kingston’s eyes truly lit up with good cheer. “You didn’t put it together, did you? For a smart guy, you are just amazingly blind. Who’d you send to look for her? Who talked to the police? Who has a girlfriend with one heck of a riverside apartment? Wish I'd killed her sooner. She was the one who blabbed about you and Cardew to the military. That's why they were right on us.”
Simon hurked, his vision starting to go black. He tried to kick Kingston, tried to wriggle free, but it was useless. Cardew finally looked up from her screen, glanced back over her shoulder, and started to speak, but whatever she was going to say was lost when the door to the next room opened. Kingston dropped Simon, and he scrambled backwards away from the giant man, trying to get to Avery if for no other reason than she was the one friendly person he could cling to in their last moments together.
Even as Cardew’s men scattered, throwing gas grenades and firing into a wave of Kyraos and Dairos, Evelyn grinned widely at the creature in their midst. “Oh, there you are,” she said, and clapped.
***
The crew of the Contessa stepped gingerly among the bodies of the Dairos. A few still twitched, so they knelt to finish them off wordlessly. The room finally cleared, they took cover and aimed their weapons at the next bulkhead-styled door. Matt sent an Adamanta eye towards it, but it didn’t open the way the other one had. Drew crept up on it from the side, tensed and ready to run if it flew open. It didn’t. Xander nodded at him, and Drew holstered his pistol to dig out the breach charges.
“You okay, Matt?” Xander asked her.
“It’s… telepathic,” she muttered. “Not like what you described, the mind spike thing. This is like it's... it's talking to me. And it's pulling images from my head, memories, thoughts, nightmares. All of it. It's like... it's like it's searching for something.”
“Military secrets? Our Adamanta mines?”
Matt shrugged. “I don't know, maybe. But it doesn't feel like it. This is way more personal than that. You don't hear it?” Everyone shook their heads.
“All right, Xander, we're ready,” Drew said. He stepped away carefully from the door and ran to rejoin them behind a massive table flipped over on its side. Detonator in one hand and pistol in the other, he glanced at the colonel for the go-ahead.
“Three... two...” Xander fell silent, lifted a fist, and gestured down at the door. Drew detonated the charges.
The door blew open into the anarchy of a firefight, though this one had been resolved and the victors clear—barely. A dozen bodies littered the floor, mostly human, some Dairos, and one Kyraos stared up, the glittering black eyes focused on nothing at all. In the corner, huddled behind a pair of storage tanks, were three of the Exemplar's people, two in jumpsuits and a thuggish-looking man in a security uniform. The guy in the guard's uniform whirled on them, laser pistol in hand. Before he could fire, before he could even get off a warning shot, one of the civilians behind him drove forward and hit him with a tackle hard enough to make spittle fly out of his mouth. His pistol fired, narrowly missing Tyra.
“Why am I the target today?” she bellowed. “Put down your gun, you idiot!”
“Do as she says,” Trey hissed. “I'm the only one who gets to murder my sister.”
The guard, still trying to aim, never saw the Adamanta blade drop from above, but he certainly felt it when the hilt cracked him over the skull, dropping him to the floor. The civilian, arms still wrapped around him tight, went down with him, and began rising up to drop a knee over and over into the man's ribs.
“Bastard!” he screamed again and again until Drew ran forward to pull him off the cowering guard. He tried to shove Drew away, but his rage broke in one great sob of despair. “Mia, they forced Mia in here first and now she's dead, she's dead, they're dead.”
The other civilian, a gray-haired woman with a few cuts and bruises, nodded grimly. Trey dug out a pair of plastic restraining cuffs from one of his many pockets, and Xander held a gun on the guard while the Lentarin wrapped them around his wrists. Drew, a pract
iced peacekeeper, tried to maintain a calm demeanor. “I need someone to tell me what happened here. Short and sweet version.”
The woman stepped forward, swiping at the grime and sweat on her forehead. “My name is Reilly, sir. Captain Ramos, he and Cardew split up to find the Anassos. They want to capture it.” She took a quick deep breath and let it out in a shaky laugh. “They're insane if they think they can take it alive.”
“No argument there,” Drew said sympathetically. “Where are Ramos and Cardew now?”
“We were just separated from Ramos. He went through that one there—” she gestured at one of three doors identical to the one they'd just burst through. “Still has some civilians left with him. Vitaly wouldn't go on any further. He and Mia... well...” She smiled bitterly. “And I was too slow for Ramos's liking. Old injury. He told Davis here to take us back to the ship, but that was just for show in front of the others. He was just about to kill us and make it look like the Beltine did it. Cardew and Ramos, they don't have too many people on their side, so they're trying to keep things together.”
“And Cardew? Where's Cardew?”
“Give me your personal device.” Drew handed it over after unlocking it, and the woman tapped through a few screens to get to a drawing app. Quickly, she made a rough approximation of the Beltine refinery. “Here's where we are. That's the door you just came through. Back this way...” she drew a jagged series of interconnecting lines, interspersed with X's. “...is where we were separated. The Exemplar is right there, too. They went through this door. Comms chatter with their group cut out entirely about half an hour ago.”
“Any more civilians along the way?”
She nodded. “A few wounded. The Exemplar's a big ship. She needs a lot of crew. Cardew and Ramos know this.”
“Simon Dantos,” Xander said. “Do you know if he's still alive?”
“No clue. Sorry. He was when we got separated.”
Xander rubbed his jaw. “Okay. Okay. Thank you.” He knelt next to the sobbing man, and gently said, “Sir. I need you to go with my people. They're going to help you back to your ship.”
