Time Bomb

by R. M. Olson

  She was going to get everything she wanted. When she’d first come here, she’d have been happy to blow this entire crew to pieces just for a taste of revenge against whoever had done this to her family.

  It was strange how things changed.

  Now she had her family back, but losing the crew made her feel like another part of her was being torn away. She could hold onto one, but not the other.

  Still—she shook her head and tried to smile. A few weeks. That’s all she’d had with this ridiculous, genius, crazy crew. A few weeks wouldn’t take long to heal.

  She was almost certain.

  She straightened and sighed, heading for the main deck.

  Lev was waiting for her, sitting on one of the padded chairs. The deck was empty apart from him, the warm yellow artificial lights casting soft shadows from the tables and benches. He gave her a brief, wry smile as she came in, and gestured to the chair across from him. His face was calm, like it usually was, but his foot moved restlessly against the leg of the chair. She frowned. She’d never known him to fidget.

  She pulled out her chair and raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Well?” she said after a moment.

  He sighed. “Ysbel,” he said. His voice was quiet. “I—there’s something I’ve known for some time. I had always intended to tell you, but I never seemed to find the right time.” He gave a rueful smile. “Or maybe I’m just a coward. That’s also a possibility.”

  Her frown deepened. “Well? Go ahead and tell me then.”

  There was something about his voice, his posture, that made something inside of her twist with a faint dread. Whatever it was he was about to tell her, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  He took a deep breath. “Ysbel. As you know, I worked for the government for several years before I … left their employ.”

  “Were arrested, you mean,” she grunted. He nodded.

  “Yes. And while I was working there …” he paused again, closing his eyes for a moment. “Ysbel,” he said quietly, “While I was working there, my superiors came to me with a problem. They said there was a rogue agent who needed to be extracted from some outer-rim agricultural planet, and they needed someone to come up with an extraction plan.”

  She stared at him for a moment. Her heart was pounding, and her hands were almost trembling, something sick and cold lodged in her stomach.

  He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying. She must be misinterpreting him.

  “You—” she began hoarsely.

  He opened his eyes and met her gaze. “Yes, Ysbel,” he said quietly. “That was me. I was the one who planned your extraction five years ago.”

  “I—” Her voice didn’t seem to be working.

  She had to have misheard.

  Lev. The man who had strong-armed Masha into going down to the prison planet to rescue Tanya. The man who had sat on his cot in prison and asked her to tell him about her wife, and then let her talk until she couldn’t talk any longer through the tears. Endlessly polite, always courteous, with his calm, thoughtful expression and his measured tone.

  But … she’d seen his face, when Jez was hurt and they were breaking out of prison, that cold, calculating thoughtfulness that wasn’t thinking of anything but how to produce the maximum amount of pain with the minimum amount of effort. She’d seen something in him then that she hadn’t known was there.

  And suddenly, she was very certain that he could have done it. He could easily have done it, and he might not have thought about it twice.

  “Whatever it is you’re thinking, Ysbel, believe me, I’ve thought it already.” His tone was a little wry, and there was a tension underneath it that probably came from fear. “And whatever it is you want to do to me, I deserve it. I know. I could tell you I didn’t know it was you, I could tell you I didn’t realize they were going in to kidnap an innocent woman rather than a rogue operative, but the truth is, I didn’t even try to find out. It was a job, and I did it.” He paused a moment. “And I’ve finally realized that nothing that I say or do, from here on out, will ever change that, although believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “I—I believed you were my friend,” she whispered.

  “I believed I was too,” he said quietly. “I’m—I’m sorry, Ysbel. I’m sorry.”

  The one who’d found her family, the one who saved them.

  The one who’d sent them there in the first place.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think, because the blood pounding in her head made it impossible.

  She’d trusted him. And he’d known, this whole time.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked hoarsely.

  He lifted his palms, that wry half-smile still on his face. “Because as I said, I’m a coward, Ysbel, as well as a murderer. I have no excuses.”

  She half stood. She felt lightheaded somehow, dizzy, as if the world had turned upside down.

  The pistol she always kept in her belt was already in her hand somehow, pointed at his forehead, and her hand was steady, even though the rest of her felt as if she might shake to pieces.

  “I’m going to kill you.” She hardly recognized her own voice. “You destroyed my family. You hurt my children, you hurt my wife, you burnt my home to the ground. You destroyed me, Lev, and I will kill you for it.”

  He should have stood up, probably, should have run. Some part of her wanted him to run, because some part of her still looked at the scholarly, slightly disheveled young man, with his tousled hair and his thoughtful, piercing eyes, and saw a friend. A person she’d trusted with her life, and who had in return been able to trust her with his.

  But he didn’t. He sat there in his chair watching her, and he didn’t move. There was regret behind his gaze, and she couldn’t tell if it was for himself, or for her.

  “Hey. Ysbel. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  She looked up. She still felt half-way dizzy, and the blood pounding in her brain made it hard to focus on anything, but she saw the lanky pilot leaning up against the doorway to the room.

  In the back of her mind, she noticed Lev turn as well, an expression half of irritation, half of guilty relief washing over his features.

  “Jez—” he began. Jez gave him a quick smirk.

  “Not your business, genius-boy. I’m talking to Ysbel.” She turned back to Ysbel, and there was something sharp beneath her grin. “Listen to me, Ysbel. That’s my damn copilot. And if you want to kill him, you’re damn well going to have to kill me first.”

  “That would not even be a problem, you idiot,” Ysbel hissed. “You stay out of this.”

  “Nah,” said Jez, still grinning. “Not going to stay out of this.”

  “Look at you.” Ysbel’s voice was shaking with anger. “You can hardly stay on your feet, you damn fool. You really want to get in my way?”

  Jez smiled lazily. “Well, here’s how I see it. So maybe I’m not up for much right now. If you remember, by the way, I got these saving your damn skin and breaking your wife and kids out of prison. But you’re probably right. You could probably kill me.” She straightened, wincing slightly at the movement, and her eyes were hard as steel. “But here’s the thing, Ysbel. You touch him—you touch one damn hair of him—and I’ll make you wish you were dead. I promise you that.”

  Ysbel glared at her for a long moment. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might break through her ribcage.

  Lev had destroyed her. He’d destroyed her, and he’d hurt Tanya, and he’d made her children grow up in a place that was the closest thing to hell she could imagine.

  And he sat here in front of her, defenceless. He wasn’t even going to try to stop her.

  And across from her, the lunatic pilot girl who’d risked her life, taken a beating that probably should have killed her and almost had, to save Ysbel. More than that, to save Tanya and Olya and Misko and every person on this ship.

  She was shaking, and she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to fire the pistol she had poin
ted at Lev’s head. But then, her hands had always steadied when she was holding a weapon.

  “I’ll do it, Ysbel,” Jez said softly. “Zhurov couldn’t kill me four days ago, and believe me, he tried. You really want to do this?”

  She could almost feel the tension in the air, crackling out from the pilot, the fear that surrounded Lev like a fog.

  At last she shoved the pistol back into its holster and dropped her hand.

  “For you, Jez,” she said quietly. “Because you saved my family, I will not kill this boy. Not this time. But I’d better not see his face again, because believe me, if I do, dying is the best he can hope for.”

  Jez didn’t drop her gaze from Ysbel’s face, and she was still wearing that faint, dangerous grin, but at last she nodded.

  “Fine. I’ll make sure he stays out of your way, and you will leave him the hell alone.”

  “Jez,” said Lev, faint resignation in his tone. “I am capable of speaking for myself.”

  “Not sure you are,” said Jez, without taking her eyes from Ysbel. Lev sighed and stood.

  “Listen. Jez, there’s nothing I can do to convince you to stay out of this, is there?”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Alright.” He turned back to Ysbel, and she turned to face him. She could still feel Jez’s eyes on her, sharp as razor blades.

  “Ysbel. I’m sorry. Believe me, this was not what I planned. But—” he paused. “The next planet we stop at, I’ll leave. You don’t deserve to have to deal with this. That’s all I can do, but that, at least, I will do.”

  She stared at him, her eyes narrowed.

  She was so angry she could hardly breathe.

  “I hope very much that you do that,” she said, her voice soft with anger. “Because I owe Jez a debt, and I’d hate to have to find another way to repay it.”

  She caught a movement from the corner of her eye, and she spun. Tae stood in the doorway. His face was stricken, and he gaped at the scene in front of him.

  “Lev? Ysbel? What’s—” he began.

  Jez leaned back against the wall casually. “It’s fine, Tae,” she said, sparks still cracking from her tone. “Ysbel here decided to kill Lev. But I talked her out of it.”

  “I—what?” Tae glanced between Ysbel and Lev, then back to Jez.

  Lev shook his head, shooting a mildly irritated glance at Jez. “It’s not—”

  “What’s happening?”

  Masha’s voice was crisp and sharp. Jez turned slightly, her grin becoming a little more dangerous.

  “None of your damn business anymore, Masha. Back the hell off.”

  “Jez—” Tae began through his teeth.

  “As long as I am on this ship, Jez Solokov—” Masha said over him.

  “Ysbel, my heart? I’m going to—” Tanya stepped through the door, glanced around her, and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps I came at a bad time.”

  “Nah,” said Jez expansively. “Join the party. We were all just having a discussion.”

  “Discussion?” asked Tanya, glancing meaningfully around the room. “Is that what you call it when at least half the room wants to murder the other half?”

  Jez’s grin widened. “Yep. Because if you want to see what happens when it stops being a discussion—”

  “Jez, cut it out,” Tae snapped, taking a step towards her. Ysbel was faintly impressed. Even she would have thought twice about approaching Jez when she was in this mood.

  And then the deck jolted and shuddered, and she grabbed for the table edge to keep her balance. Tanya fell against the wall, Lev grabbed a chair, and Masha, Tae, and Jez landed on the floor, Jez swearing loudly enough for all three of them.

  “What—” began Lev, his face slightly pale.

  Ysbel knew that feeling, though, knew it through her bones.

  Ship’s guns.

  The ship jolted again, and Jez scrambled awkwardly to her feet, cursing fluently and creatively. She and Ysbel locked eyes.

  “They’re shooting my damn ship,” she said.

  Tanya, and Olya, and Misko.

  “I’ll get on the guns,” said Ysbel, and she turned and sprinted from the room.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jez swore as she staggered down the short corridor to the cockpit, arms outstretched to catch herself as she half ran, half stumbled.

  Lev, the damn idiot, was behind her, she could hear his footsteps, and Masha too from the sound of it.

  She reached the cockpit as another bolt hit them, and she just managed to catch the back of the pilot’s chair to keep herself from being thrown into the wall. She cursed again and pulled herself into her seat, strapping down.

  “Hold onto something,” she called over her shoulder. “This is about to get interesting.”

  She pulled up the holoscreen and touched the controls with the tips of her fingers.

  Damn. Maybe interesting wasn’t a strong enough word.

  There were six or seven ships around them, and from the look of them, they were orders of magnitude worse than what they’d faced the day before. They were close enough that she had visuals on one of them through the front cockpit window, sleek and deadly against the black of space.

  Lev staggered to his feet and managed to pull himself into the copilot’s seat.

  “Give me specs on those ships,” she snapped. She yanked down on the controls and hit the starboard stabilizers, and the Ungovernable flipped up on its side, barely missing another blast from the ship in front of them. Another blast jolted across her holoscreen from behind, and she shoved the Ungovernable’s nose down as it cracked over their heads, sparking across the edge of the shields.

  “You on the guns, Ysbel?” she called into the com.

  “I’m here, but the guns aren’t working.”

  She glanced back at the screen, looking quickly over the red damage report.

  “Must have been hit in the stern. Knocked the guns offline. They shouldn’t have had anything powerful enough to do that,” she said grimly. “Stay up there, just in case they come back on.”

  “They won’t come back on,” said Tae in her earpiece. “Not if we got hit where I think we did. I’m going to have to get up there and fix them.”

  “Then plaguing get up there!”

  “They’re hydo-class ships,” said Lev from beside her. “They shouldn’t have guns that powerful, but it looks like someone modded them. How are our shields?”

  She glanced down at the screen again. “Not good. I didn’t have them on full power when we got hit, and we lost a capacitor.” She yanked the ship’s nose up again. Her beautiful ship, usually so responsive it could have been reading her mind, was sluggish under her hands, and she swore to herself, gritting her teeth. “I’m sorry, baby,” she whispered. “Just get us through this, and I’ll fix you up, I promise.”

  “You’ll need to get us out of here.” Masha’s voice was businesslike. “We’re not equipped to fight back at the moment.”

  “Tae?” she snapped.

  “Sorry.” Tae’s voice over the earpiece was strained. “It’ll take me a few minutes. The wiring’s been fried, and I have to pull it out and re-wire.”

  She chewed her lip for a moment and glanced out the front window. Another ship had slipped into view to join the first, blocking out the stars behind it. “We’ll have to make a jump.”

  “Hyperdrive?” asked Lev.

  She nodded. “Don’t like going in blind, but we’re not outrunning them, not like this, and I don’t want my angel hurt any more than she has to be.”

  “Give me twenty seconds, I’ll get you a course.”

  “Lev, I suggest quadrant three,” said Masha.

  Lev nodded, expression tense as he typed something into the com.

  “Got it,” he said, looking up. “Go.”

  She glanced at the coordinates and hit the com. “Hold on to something.” Then she pulled back on the hyperdrive and shoved the throttle forward.

  And just as space began to stretch and
distort around them, something slammed into the side of the ship, jerking her hands from the controls. The strange hypnotic colours and patterns of the space between hyperjumps appeared, but they were distorted somehow, and the Ungovernable was trying to shake itself out of her hands. Lev clung to his seat as the ship jolted and rolled, and she could feel through her fingers the Ungovernable screaming, breaking apart.

  “We’ve got to come out,” Masha said through her teeth, and Jez almost swore at her, but she didn’t have the time because her ship was breaking up, and she and Masha and everyone on this ship was about to be crushed into nothing. She wrestled with the controls, fighting against the force that was hammering against the ship, pounding it into pieces, but it didn’t respond, and she couldn’t hear the ship talking to her anymore, and in an instant of clarity she realized that if she somehow survived and the Ungovnerable didn’t, she wouldn’t care because if she couldn’t get back into this cockpit, life wouldn’t really be worth living anyways.

  She glanced at the holoscreen quickly, then winced.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she whispered. She gritted her teeth, grabbed the throttle, and jammed it all the way forward. The ship shuddered and jerked and the scream of tortured metal scraped against her ears, and right before it became too much to bear, she jerked hyperdrive backward. The Ungovernable shuddered again, harder, and for a moment she knew that this was the end, and they’d be torn to pieces and scattered across deep space and still every single piece of her would miss this perfect, perfect ship—

  And then the ship jerked one last time, and the distorted view of hyperspace slipped away, and they were surrounded once more by the black nothing of deep space.

  She closed her eyes and drew in a shallow breath, and then another.

  Then, not wanting to do it, not wanting to know what her gut had already told her, she touched the controls.

  There was no response.

  But she’d known there wouldn’t be, because the faint hum that sang through her bones like a melody, that was the heartbeat of the running ship, was gone.

  The Ungovernable was dead in the sky.