by Ben Wolf
“…but nothing else is right, sir.”
“Explain.”
“There are casualties in the docking bay, residual damage in the network from some sort of cyber-attack, reports of prisoners escaping from the brig and boarding a Whip-Class transport, and—oh, God…” Reyes stopped.
“Spit it out, Officer.” Gable frowned. All of that was bad, but not insurmountable. Not with the full power of the Avarice at his command, even as castrated as he felt in trying to use it.
“C-Captain,” Reyes managed to say, “there’s something wrong with the antimatter warheads. They’re… arming.”
Gable’s eyes widened, and he glanced at Commander Falstaff, whose gaze flitted from screen to screen in the bridge.
“Which ones?” Gable demanded.
“A-All of them, sir. They’re… they’re all armed and activating!”
“Fire them!” A litany of curses rifled through Gable’s head, and he glared at Commander Falstaff. Admiral Sever should never have left Gable behind. “Launch them all now! Get them out of the Avarice before—”
A flash of pure white light silenced Captain Gable forever.
Arcs of lightning ripped through the Avarice from the inside out, sending surprise, shock, and then sheer glee spiraling through Justin’s chest.
He’d done it. Well, Keontae had done it, but he’d gotten him there.
As their transport docked aboard the Nidus, the Avarice tore itself apart in a brilliant display of light, explosions, and absolute mayhem.
Glorious. Fucking. Mayhem.
Justin reveled in the sight from the floor of the Nidus’s docking bay. A lot of people had died aboard the Avarice, but they’d made their choice to side with ACM, and they’d attacked the Nidus. Now, thanks to Keontae, they’d paid for it.
It felt amazing.
[Hoooo-wee!] Keontae hooted. [Now that’s a fireworks display worth watchin’!]
“Damn right it is,” Justin replied.
He noticed Val, Zed, and Ritz alternating astonished glances between him and the fractured Avarice, now significantly darker as the remnants of the antimatter missiles ate at the edges of the shattered ship in bright white light.
“I mean, damn right it’s gone,” he told them.
Zed and Ritz nodded. Zed’s crazed golden eyes had narrowed as if he was smiling, but it was hard to tell with the bottom of his face missing. Ritz wore a gigantic crooked smile under his telescoped eyes.
“You should’ve seen it up close,” Ritz said as his eyes retracted into his head. “Absolutely breathtaking.”
“I’m fine right here.” Bear’s mech suit skidded to a stop next to them.
He’d seen Avarice at the peak of its detonation, and then he’d taken to dashing and looping around the wide-open docking bay in his mech suit, sometimes on the ground and sometimes in midair, just enjoying his newfound freedom. With each movement, the mech shuddered and wobbled as it negotiated with Bear’s girth, but it didn’t give out.
“Gotta say,” Bear said, “my old Farcoast mech was good, but dammit, these ACM ones are smoother than a cue ball in a bucket of grease. Better firepower, too.”
With that, he launched back into the docking bay, spinning, spiraling, and gliding with all the grace of a Galaxy Games figure skater.
[If ever a guy were meant for a mech suit, it’d be him,] Keontae said.
Justin glanced at Val. “You believe me now?”
She shook her bald head, still holding her pulse rifle and still wearing a navy-blue ACM officer’s uniform. “I don’t believe any of this, but I’m here… so I guess you were right. And I definitely owe you one.”
“Same,” Ritz said.
“And you have my thanks, too,” Zed uttered.
“I’m back in my happy place,” Bear called between dashes. “So I owe you one, too.”
Justin grinned. “Funny you should mention it. I could actually use your help with something…”
When the Avarice flashed with white light and exploded, Admiral Sever had to double-check to make sure it wasn’t a holographic projection on the dome over Nidus City. A look through one of the soldiers’ binoculars confirmed it.
The Avarice was gone. Destroyed, somehow, from within.
A part of Sever seemed to disintegrate along with the ship. How could this have happened?
Only one explanation made sense: an antimatter missile had detonated while still inside the ship. Sever recognized the stark white energy that had rent the Avarice into pieces.
According to Coalition Law, the missiles weren’t legal, but they were supposed to be foolproof and perfectly safe. Countless protocols, both human and computerized, were in place to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. The missiles weren’t supposed to arm while aboard the ship, and they sure as hell weren’t supposed to blow.
Yet they had. And the ensuing chain reaction had shredded the Avarice beyond recognition.
Trillions of credits, hundreds of thousands of man-hours, and thousands of lives all gone in an instant. Flippantly. Wasted.
And that included Commander Falstaff, the only man Sever could trust implicitly. And I’m the one who sent him to his death.
The sick feeling in Sever’s chest blossomed into rage, and he wanted to scream. Instead, he handed the binoculars back to the soldier who’d provided them and clenched his free fist and his teeth.
It had to be sabotage. Someone had called nearly all of his soldiers back to the Avarice, and then it had exploded. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Whoever had done it, if they hadn’t died along with the Avarice, they would die for their recklessness. Of that, Sever would make certain.
For now, all he could do was redouble his focus on the mission. With the Nidus’s miserable Farcoast army already wiped out and its officers killed, Sever could easily overtake the ship and return it to the core planets or to the nearest ACM fleet.
But first, he had to find his quarry. He had to fulfill his mandate from ACM corporate.
He needed to find Vesh more than ever.
“Enough gawking. We’ve got work to do. I have a special task for twenty of you.” Sever explained his orders, checked the indicator on his wrist, and said, “Everyone else, follow me.”
Hallie wouldn’t be quick enough while lugging her satchel around. She hated to leave it behind, out of her sight, but if she didn’t stop the titan, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
The idea crossed her mind to use its contents now. After all, it was a weapon, and it might be enough to bring down the titan.
But she couldn’t. It wasn’t really her decision to make. To loose something of that magnitude… the potential consequences could be…
There was still possibly another way, so she had to give it a shot. She couldn’t risk the fallout from using the weapon. It was too risky. So she tucked the satchel behind some equipment where it blended in innocuously enough, then she headed toward the access door.
It slid open, and the roar of the pulse cannon raked her ears. How the titan could stand it, she had no idea. If Luke were still alive, she would’ve asked him why weapons designers had bothered to make energy weapons so loud, especially when they no longer had to.
But Luke was gone, along with who knew how many of her fellow scientists and the Viridian’s crew… and possibly Bryant. And she was the only one who might have a chance of stopping the onslaught.
Now in the main corridor again, the one perpendicular to the corridor where Captain Marlowe and Arlie were pinned down, Hallie pressed her back against the wall and crept toward the commotion—and the titan—as fast as she dared.
She saw Bryant lying there, still unmoving. God… is he dead?
Whether he was or not, she had a plan to execute. There, in his holster, sat the repeater that Luke had modified. Strong enough to shear clean through metal and concrete in an absurdly large blast. Would it be enough to get through the titan’s shield?
Hallie honestly didn’t know. But that wasn’
t her plan anyway.
As she moved even closer, she saw the titan’s violet-colored right shoulder come into view. He was standing almost sideways to the corridor he was firing into, meaning his left shoulder was positioned even farther into the corridor. It also meant he was more or less looking away from her.
Good.
But the longer she delayed, the more likely he’d move forward or kill either Captain Marlowe or Arlie with one of his shots. Their concrete cover wouldn’t last forever, and she imagined his pulse cannon still had plenty of charge in it.
A trickle of concrete dust dropped onto the titan’s left shoulder, coating part of it with gray powder. The ceiling above him was still shredded, as if hot metal claws had raked across it and punctured it in dozens of places.
Maybe this will actually work.
With sweat stinging her eyes and trickling down her back, Hallie rushed over to Bryant, praying her shoes wouldn’t somehow overpower the deafening sounds of the pulse cannon firing. Whether they made too much noise or not, the titan stopped his onslaught.
He’d realized she was there. How, she didn’t know, but that didn’t matter now. She had seconds to act, or it would all be over for her forever.
Hallie reached Bryant and yanked the plasma repeater out of his holster. She took aim at the titan’s head as he turned his upper half toward her, blinking his black eyes hard.
Then she raised it to the concrete ceiling over his head—the very same concrete his pulse cannon had already turned into Swiss cheese, weakening it.
She hoped it would be enough.
Hallie lined up her shot and fired.
20
An impossibly bright orange light screamed out of the repeater and carved into the ceiling.
The thunder of crumbling infrastructure shattered Hallie’s forced sense of calm. The ceiling above the titan collapsed in an avalanche of concrete, asphalt, and raw sewage from the two pipes that wrenched free and broke open. The deluge pinned him to the floor and then buried him.
Hallie dropped the repeater as soon as she fired it and hooked her arms under Bryant’s shoulders and hauled him away from the falling debris. As she did, he stirred and woke up, and for the first time she noticed blood coming from the back of his head. A streak of red marred the concrete as she slid him along.
“What… the hell just happened?” he mumbled.
By now, the avalanche had stopped, and clouds of dust had billowed over them, both stinging their eyes and obscuring their view.
“Oh, you know,” Hallie said as she helped him up to his feet. The stink of raw sewage finally hit her nose full force, and it was even more terrible than she’d imagined it could be. “Just handling some shit for you.”
Bryant’s nose wrinkled. “I’ll say.”
His footing wobbled, and Hallie used her body to brace him. “Easy there, soldier. I think you have a concussion.”
Bryant’s focus remained on the gigantic pile of broken concrete. “I bet he does, too.”
Hallie huffed. “At least.”
“Did you grab my rifle?” He looked down at her with hazy, squinty eyes.
“No. I had to get you out of there so you didn’t get crushed.”
“Oh. Thanks.” His head lolled some, and he blinked several times. “I need to go back and get it.”
“I’ll get it,” Hallie insisted. She walked him to the nearest wall. “You stay here. Work on righting your internal gyroscope. Lean against this until I get back.”
As she approached the pile of rubble, she, too, never took her eyes off it. She’d labeled the big purple guy “the titan” for a reason, and the collapsing ceiling, even though it had to be well over a ton of concrete that fell, might not have finished him off.
She spotted Bryant’s rifle and snatched it up, then a voice called to her through the cloud of concrete dust lingering in the corridor.
“Hallie? That you?”
Captain Marlowe.
“Yeah,” she called back.
“Is he down?” Captain Marlowe asked.
“I’d say so.” She quipped, “Dusted him real good.”
“That’s an understatement. You even had the decency to bury him.” Captain Marlowe emerged from the dust cloud, first as a silhouette, then as his full self, again with a metal stick clenched between his teeth. Arlie followed. Both of them had to hop over the ever-widening lake of sewage spilling onto the floor to reach Hallie. “How’s Bryant?”
“Alive. Maybe concussed. Back there, resting.”
Captain Marlowe glanced at the rifle in her hands. “You planning on holding onto that for awhile?”
Hallie looked down at the pulse rifle. It weighed less than she’d expected—certainly less than it looked—but it was still heavy. Carrying a rifle and her satchel would be a lot. “No. I figured I’d give it back to Bryant once I—oh!”
Her satchel. She’d left it in the access room. The titan was down, and she needed to go back and retrieve it. It was hers to protect.
“Hold on,” she told them. “Or… go check on the others. See if anyone else got hit.”
Without waiting for a response, Hallie turned back, hurried over to a still-wobbly Bryant, passed him his rifle, and then headed for the access door.
She found the satchel right where she’d left it, and she snatched it up and slung it over her shoulder again. Relief filled her body all the way down to her toes.
Hallie was glad she hadn’t used the weapon. It had all worked out, albeit just barely. She’d made the right call.
Back in the main corridor, the junction was quickly becoming impassable thanks to the raw sewage, so she took Bryant through the access pathways back toward where Captain Marlowe, Arlie, and the rest of the crew might be.
They met up near the access door Hallie had been hiding near, and she did a quick headcount.
Only half of the Viridian’s crew had survived, and Cecilia was also missing—until Hallie saw Cecilia’s familiar form lying limp on the concrete just beyond the other survivors.
Emotion swelled in Hallie’s chest and choked her up, both for Luke and for Cecilia. They hadn’t deserved this fate. Neither had Captain Dawes or any of the Viridian’s crew.
Well, maybe the loudmouthed one who had it in for Justin—Lora. But she’d survived and stood there with her arms folded, looking like a powdered gray ghost glaring at Hallie.
Forget her. Hallie looked away. And forget the others… for now. You’re not done yet.
“I wish we could bury them,” Hallie said, resisting tears, “but I know that’s not possible. I just hate having to leave them in the sewers to rot.”
Bryant touched her shoulder with his hand. “They would understand.”
“Can we at least drag them into one of the access rooms? There are racks in there. It’s at least a sort of burial.”
“Good idea.” Captain Marlowe shifted the metal stick to the other side of his mouth. “At least that way, there’s some dignity in their deaths.”
Hallie blinked back her tears and nodded at him. “Thank you.”
With all the bodies moved to the racks in the nearest access room, the group ventured out of the sewers and back toward the surface.
Hallie followed Captain Marlowe up the ladder to the street level, glad to be out of the sewers and away from the smell. And from the death they’d left behind. She hoped they wouldn’t have to go back down there.
Once the full group made it up top, Angela tended to Bryant’s head while the others brushed off as much of the concrete dust from themselves as they could manage. The city around them glowed with a myriad of colored lights and holographic advertisements as it had the first time she laid eyes on it. It almost felt… normal.
Night had fully fallen, and the dome showed only the tranquil stars above them… except for one area of the sky. Hallie noticed a flickering of white light—several flickers, scattered over a wide area, actually—outside the dome.
Bryant had powered binoculars on his belt, and
Hallie borrowed them to take a closer look.
There before her eyes, inexplicably, the Avarice burned in shattered ruins.
Hallie couldn’t believe it. Justin had pulled it off. She had no idea how, but he’d managed to take out the Avarice, just as he’d set out to do. It was nothing short of a miracle.
As she listened to the sounds of the city, what few there were, she noticed there weren’t any pulse rifle shots or explosions or screams like she’d heard earlier. Where were all the soldiers?
Were they… gone?
No. Couldn’t be. They had to have just fallen back or hunkered down for the night.
More importantly, if the Avarice had been destroyed… what did that mean had happened to Justin? Hallie feared the worst, but her heart and her rational mind suggested an alternative: If Justin had been able to blow up the Avarice, he’d probably been able to get out alive before it blew.
“Guys… I got something here.” Captain Marlowe held his fingers up to his earpiece and grinned. “It’s Justin.”
Hallie couldn’t have smiled wider if she’d tried.
“He’s asking where we should meet up.”
“I know a place,” Hallie blurted.
Everyone looked at her—except for Lora, who was downright glaring at her again.
Hallie ignored her. “There’s a restaurant. A breakfast place downtown called LaBorn’s. He’ll know it.”
Captain Marlowe relayed the message. “He says that’s perfect. Should be there in just a few minutes.”
Hallie couldn’t stop smiling the whole way there.
And the best part was how mad it made Lora.
The sight of LaBorn’s, dark inside and stark against the blue glow of the rest of Nidus City, both excited and worried Justin. Even though the place resurrected fond memories, its broken windows and overturned tables and chairs alarmed him.
What a drastic change from how it looked the other morning…
As he stepped over the threshold and his boots crunched on broken glass, he wondered if something had gone wrong with Hallie and the others. Were they delayed? Or captured, somehow, along the way?
