by M. D. Cooper
Tremon didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. They were on a stretch of road with no intersections for some distance. Most of the buildings were apartments, and the few street-level shops in evidence were closed.
Other than Alice and Lorne, the only other people on the street were a mother and her two young boys. She was struggling to corral them and get to whatever destination warranted a journey in the current climate, and didn’t appear suspicious at all.
Then he saw two hooded figures slouch around a corner ahead and cross the street, and then turn down the sidewalk, headed toward Alice and Lorne.
Tremon kept his head down, but still snuck a few sidelong glances. He could tell that the pair walking down the other side of the street was aware of the impending altercation as well. Both had slowed, looking for a good place to make a stand, but there was none.
The street offered no cover, and the shops were all shuttered. There weren’t even any groundcars nearby to take cover behind.
Suddenly, one of the hooded figures pulled a pistol from inside her long cloak and called out for Alice and Lorne to halt.
What happened next occurred almost too fast for Tremon to follow. A flurry of rounds flashed back and forth, as the two would-be captives fired on the cloaked figures.
One of the cloaked figures fell, its hood slipping off to reveal the face of a Huro Girl. But then shots came from the opposite end of the street, one hitting Lorne in the head, and the other striking Alice in her shoulder.
Tremon had barely taken two steps when Del called out from behind them. “You two! Stop!”
Before Tremon could even react, Yakob’s foot slid to the side and tripped Tremon. He went down, landing hard on his side, with his knee aching all the more.
“Stay down,” the man barked as he spun, a pistol in either hand.
He fired a short burst at the Huro Girl who was now crouched next to Alice, clipping her in the side with the gun in his right hand, while firing the one in his left at the enemies approaching from behind.
Tremon shifted where he lay on the ground to look behind, and saw the figure of a large man with two women on either side. One of Yakob’s shots hit the woman on the left, and she fell in a heap.
Yakob became a blur of motion, suddenly halfway across the street, as a series of rounds tore through the air where he’d been a second earlier.
Though he did not have much of a stomach for violence, Tremon was always amazed when he got the opportunity to witness Yakob ply what had once been his primary trade.
This time was no different.
While continuing to fire on the man and remaining Huro Girl, Yakob also put two more shots into the girl next to Alice, near Lorne’s body. He noted that Alice had pulled herself toward the shuttered storefront behind her. Blood was pouring from her shoulder wound, and once propped up against the building, she placed a hand over the wound, grimacing while pressing on it.
While that was going on, Yakob continued to fire on the remaining two attackers. The man shifted behind the final Huro Girl, using her for cover as he fell back and fled around the corner. Not realizing she was functioning as a human shield the woman took two in the chest, falling to the ground as Yakob raced after, firing a few shots around the corner before turning back toward Tremon.
Yakob began walking down the street at a brisk pace, but Tremon didn’t move. So much of his life over the past five years had been about cutting and running, leaving behind dead weight and focusing only on his own survival.
Here this woman was, working with a band of mercenaries—hired guns!—who were doing more for the people of Genevia than he.
Without speaking to Yakob, he grabbed his cane and limped across the street, holding his hand out to Alice.
“Can you walk? Come with us.”
Alice glared up at him suspiciously. “Who the hell are you, and why would I go along willingly?”
Tremon was taken aback by her brusque manner, but he supposed it made sense, given that she’d just witnessed Yakob kill four people and seriously wound another.
He crouched down next to her. “Look, I know you’re with the Marauders. I know they’re moving into Genevia, liberating worlds. We’ll keep you safe till they arrive.”
A strange expression came over the woman’s face, as though she doubted his words…or maybe the Marauders’ eventual arrival. Then her eyes cleared, and she nodded. “OK.”
She tried to lift her injured arm, but there was no strength in it, and the limb fell back down.
Suddenly Yakob was there, muttering, “Fucking bleeding heart.”
He knelt down and flung Alice’s injured arm over his shoulders, eliciting a pained gasp from her—and then lifted her like she was a child, much to her continued alarm.
“Sorry, Alice, but we need to move fast.”
Tremon resisted the urge to laugh while they took the next corner, and Yakob led them through a warren of alleys and side streets. Before long, they reached Cartegena Avenue—which was the fastest way to Jordan Street—but Yakob took them through a pedestrian underpass and into another series of close side streets.
Tremon’s knee was throbbing; he almost pushed for taking Cartegena Avenue, but then chastised himself for not considering the risk of carrying an injured woman down a broad thoroughfare that was sorely lacking in cover. If the cops didn’t accost them, they’d likely meet up with a gang of some sort.
After another ten minutes, they finally arrived at Jordan Street. The road ran roughly east-west through the southern end of Chusa, and to their left, they could see the twelve-kilometer height of Upper Mdina tower as it soared over the city. Beyond it, a sliver of Tarxien tower was also visible.
Just over a hundred meters to the right was the intersection with Cartegena Avenue, which was their ultimate destination. The sight of it caused Tremon to sigh with relief, as his knee was close to giving out.
Tremon nodded, knowing that Jordan street—being in the ‘nice’ part of Chusa—had a stronger police presence. Elsewhere in the district, carrying a bleeding woman down the road was a guarantee that you’d be given a wide berth, but here, it may not play out as well.
Luckily, no police appeared, and none of the other pedestrians did more than give them worried looks as they passed.
Tremon saw that the bleeding from Alice’s shoulder had slowed, but she was deathly pale and appeared to be having trouble keeping her eyes open.
For some time, she’d tried to hold her head up, but eventually she gave up, resting it against Yakob, rocking slowly with his loping stride.
The protector circled around the vehicle, his eyes sweeping the surrounding buildings, and then got in as well.
Yakob gave Alice a long, measuring look, and then glanced up at Tremon. “You’re a damn fool.”
He didn’t feel like it. He felt as though this was the first time in a long time he’d done the right thing. “Maybe I am a fool, but today we saved someone. It’s been a long time since that happened.”
“Sure,” Yakob grunted as the autocab lifted into the air. “Let’s just hope it’s not the last thing we ever do.”
RUINATION
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: MSS Asora
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Less than a minute after the Marauder fleet shifted out of the dark layer at Iberia’s standard FTL transition point, dropships and shuttles launched from the Fury Lance, as M Company’s first platoon moved to the Asora, over a hundred mechs, pilots, and medics crowding onto the destroyer.
A half-klick ship like the Asora could normally hold a thousand troops without issue, but mechs were a different story, especially with K1Rs in the mix.
The Van and Bitty could barely move around in the bays, and with the mechs’ larger dropships crowding things further, most of the mechs were spread out in various equipment bays, galleys, and corridors.
On the bridge, Rika watched as Vargo Klen turned the ship and fired the engines on a braking maneuver that also shifted them onto a near-direct trajectory for Malta.
One thing they’d all readily agreed on during planning the operation was that it was wisest to slow the Asora to 0.1c before attempting their insystem dark-layer route.
Depending on the multiplier the dark layer would provide this close to a star, it could take less than eight minutes to traverse the 50AU to Malta. They’d exit less than one AU from the planet—if the route got them in far enough.
There was a nervous air on the bridge that Rika tried to keep from affecting her thorough examination of the scan data flowing in.
This far from Malta, the information reaching them was almost seven hours old. Confirming the latest update from Borden, they received updates that the Maltese Falcon was under the control of hostile forces, though from what the public feeds said, it seemed more like the station had decided to change sides—though no one was quite certain what side they’d changed to.
It wasn’t visible from this distance, but the local traffic relays confirmed that the Nietzschean destroyer Borden’s team had taken was holding in geo over the city of Cerulean, and the feeds were rife with rumors about some sort of fighting on The Moon.
Rika double-checked the system information feeds, curious what the name of the moon was, only to find that it had never been named. Everyone just called it ‘The Moon’.
“People are weird,” she muttered while pulling up the view of the rest of the fleet.
It felt strange to be braking so they could ultimately arrive faster, while the rest of the fleet was accelerating to catch up.
“What was that?” Chase asked from her side.
“Oh, just the moon’s name.”
“Real creative, isn’t it,” he replied with a snort. “Though…after a while, you start to wonder. Why is it that we have to name everything? Could we maybe just give some stuff numbers or something?”
Rika opened her mouth to reply, but Chase held up his hand.
“Nevermind. That was stupid, I’m just on edge. We’ve done a lot of crazy things since we started this adventure, but this one takes the cake. I mean…you realize we’re putting our lives in the hands of experimental Nietzschean tech, right?’
“Sure,” Rika replied with a grin. “Not to mention Vargo Klen’s”
The ship’s captain—currently sitting in the pilot’s seat—glanced over his shoulder at the pair. “You realize I’m right here, right?”
“Uh huh!” Chase said in a mildly mocking tone. “Now fly good and don’t get us killed and all that, ‘kay?”
“You guys are so funny,” Vargo muttered as he turned back to face his displays. “Burn is for another thirty, then we transition.”
“Backwards?” Rika asked as she looked over Vargo’s shoulder at his plotted burns and maneuvers.
“Yeah,” the man nodded. “The Asora’s strongest grav drives are on the stern, so if we need to push and nudge ourselves off any dark matter blobs, this is the best way to do it.”
“Have I mentioned recently how this is totally nuts?” Chase asked.
Vargo shook his head without turning. “You’re starting to undermine my confidence, Captain. Don’t forget, pirates have used this route with no special scan suite.”
“Oh, I know. I looked at the data,” Chase replied, as he gestured at one of the side displays, which showed the current insystem dark matter map. “They didn’t do it when things in the DL were configured like this, though. I mean…according to the maps, there’s a big hunk of the stuff right in the middle of your projected flight path.”
“It’ll be fine,” Vargo muttered. “Now can you please shut up?”
Ashley glanced up from her station, a carefully schooled expression of utter innocence on her face. “Hey, Captain, before we face this possibly life-ending scenario…?”
“Yeah?” Vargo growled.
“What system were you a governor of?”
“So help me, Ashley….”
* * * * *
The transition into the dark layer went smoothly, the stars winking out and the utter nothing of the subdimensional space—almost as cleverly named as ‘The Moon’—surrounded them.
Directly in front of Vargo, a new navigational holo appeared, showing the existing maps of the inner system’s dark matter orbits—which were never that well maintained, since no sane person traversed the dark layer within the outer planet’s orbits—with the Asora’s scan data superimposed overtop.
Both the ship’s scan and the map agreed that there was nothing to worry about for the next several AU. Most star systems didn’t have dense dark matter around them beyond 30AU—a line they would cross in about three minutes.
The fact that the entire insystem journey would take them only nine minutes was harrowing, to say the least. Reaction times would approach zero, and it would take every ounce of skill Vargo had to manage the approach.
“Passing forty AU,” Ashley announced aloud, though they could all see it on the screen. “I’ve picked up a big clump close to twenty-nine AU.”
“I see it,” Vargo replied, his voice sounding far calmer than Rika would have expected. “Nudging us as much as I can to give it a wide berth.”
Ninety seconds later, Ashley announced that they’d passed 30AU.
The scan system was starting to pick up small flecks of dark matter all around them, none too close to the ship, but the density was increasing.
They passed within a few hundred thousand kilometers of the lump of dark matter Ashley had flagged—at least that’s what the scan report said. Rika had no idea if measurements like ‘kilometers’ really applied in the dark layer, or if it was just an approximation that the navigation systems showed to the humans.
The AI’s mental tone held a note of uncertainty, and Rika felt a sliver of worry form at the sound of it.
The AI laughed, her tone sounding much lighter.
Rika was about to respond that such a thing was easier said than done, when suddenly, Ashley cried out.
“Impact imminent! That piece of dark matter just shifted course!”
“The fuck!?” Vargo swore, firing maneuvering thrusters to rotate the ship.
“It’s only a hundred thousand klicks away and closing fast.” Ashley’s voice wavered as she gave the update.
Rika clamped her mouth shut, as Vargo got the engines facing the approaching object and blasted negative gravitons at it. Its approach slowed, and then it seemed to remain equidistant from the Asora longer than Rika would have thought possible, before the space between the two objects suddenly began to increase faster than the thrust the ship was giving off.
“OK,” Vargo muttered as he corrected the ship’s course. “Either physics just burped, or that thing was moving under its own power.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know about the dark layer,” Chase muttered. “Especially this close to stars.”
“Orbital mechanics are orbital mechanics.” Vargo shook his head defiantly. “All the dark matter maps treat matter as matter, and they’re mostly right. If things were that wonky in here, none of our jump point math would ever work.”
Rika wondered if the blob had actually been one of the things, the Exdali. A feeling came from Niki, and Rika could read between the lines. The AI was worried.
“Three minutes to go,” Ashley said. “Looks clear from here on out.”
“So long as physics doesn’t change the rules again,” Vargo muttered as he rotated the ship to have the engines facing their direction of travel once more.
The next ten AU passed by without incident, but then the ship’s scan suite began to show the open corridor through the dark layer narrowing more than it should.
“Maybe we should dump out now,” Chase said as the gap continued to shrink.
“We’ll be too far from Malta to get there before that Nietzschean cruiser. If we don’t beat it to the planet, this whole thing is for nothing,” Vargo said while shifting the ship a little to port, pushing off a blob of matter to starboard. “Transition just takes a second. We can wait till it gets tighter.”
