by Ginger Booth
Apparently Sass read the warring rebellion on her face. “Kassidy, I will not leave you or Jules behind. Absolutely will not.”
She snatched a couple breaths back before continuing. “I don’t know what we’ll find at the ship. Look at me, Kassidy. I’m fine.”
Kassidy pressed the full-face mask back onto the captain, wincing as the ghastly low-pressure caustic Sagamore air assaulted her eyeballs again. The whites of Sass’s eyes glowed red. But Kassidy could see them because the captain’s eyes remained wide open, unlike her own. Sass’s skin peeled. That reminded the younger woman that she’d seen what Sass could withstand before. She’ll make it. She won’t leave us. “Another minute.”
Sass pressed the mask back on her, and mercilessly counted down on five fingers. Oh, hell. Kassidy blew out furiously, every last shred of air in her lungs, then gulped it back, as Sass yanked the hose jack from the wall.
Sass put an arm around Jules’ waist, and took off at a bound. Kassidy adjusted her grav down and took two long steps, then bounded into the air to leapfrog past the other two. Then Sass and Jules passed her, and she passed them again. Sass held her arm up to call a halt, and they converged.
She gulped air and scrunched her eyes shut, tears squeezing out. She only caught two deep breaths before Sass snatched the mask back for her own breaths. Back on for two. Off for four, because Jules needed a turn. On again and Sass had her damned fingers in the air. “Next leg to the edge of the dome.” The captain stole one more breath and returned the mask to Jules.
The debris on the floor was much worse here under the jagged tears in the glass and girders above. The dark was their friend in that it hid them, but each landing was worse than the one before. Kassidy swore silently as she picked her way through rubble, unable to find enough clear steps to leap over the wreckage. She was out of time, out of air. She fell behind. She sliced her hand on some glass, but it was so cold she barely felt it. She was losing all manual dexterity. Don’t look at that now. Dammit, where is Sass? She’d lost sight of them and she couldn’t breathe.
Sass landed beside her, yanked her up by the bleeding hand and bounded into the air, holding her around the waist. A couple more bounds, and finally Jules pressed the air mask to her face.
Kassidy was the one sobbing now.
“I drive from here,” Sass instructed. “Both of you, just try to jump when I do. That’s all.”
Kassidy knew she couldn’t make it. She couldn’t imagine how Jules was holding up. And your other option, Yang? Give up and die?
“Got that camera running, Kassidy?” Sass asked between breaths. “Your fans are going to eat this up.”
It was. Her forehead third-eye camera was recording. She couldn’t spare breath for commentary, but that was OK. With any luck she wouldn’t remember her actual internal monologue through this nightmare. The voice-over could be as heroic as she liked. She nodded in renewed resolve.
Alice and Josh, Beauregard and Eliza, this one’s for you. I won’t let you down.
Sass and Jules, I won’t let you down, either.
The next leg was a misery, only about 75 meters gained as they picked their way across the broken wall of the dome, hard-put to find any footing. No one bothered talking at the next rest break, on the verge of the alien regolith. The alkali outgassing of raw Sagamore grew worse. The cold seeped in to make her bones ache. She prayed they wouldn’t be exposed long enough for frostbite.
Kassidy kept her eyes scrunched shut as much as possible. Her brief peeks through her lashes showed her less and less through the bleary gummy tears. The itching turned to a nonstop burning sensation. She imagined she felt her pulse throb at her skin as though her over-pressure insides wanted to split out like a melon.
She wasn’t cold anymore. She felt quite warm and sleepy. When had the cold gone away?
Don’t think. Do.
Suddenly another strong pair of arms pulled her from Sass. Held against a man’s hip, she bounded three times, then she was pushed against a metal wall. Another moment of jostling. and a breath mask was on her face again. A different one, only the lower half of her face.
“Breathe, Kassidy!” a man’s voice urged.
Kassidy knew no more. She gave in to the overwhelming temptation to sleep in this warm bed.
41
Although both moon colonies could contact the planet Denali directly, the time lags were substantial. And apparently they had little to say.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Clay urged the air pouring into the lock. “Sass, are you with me?” The blonde looked half dead, slumped against the wall, but she was still standing, still hugging the unconscious Jules to her breast.
He couldn’t breathe himself just yet, having pulled off his pressure helmet. That was a mistake. The cold was stunning.
At last the red wait light cycled to green and the door burst open. Abel snatched his wife to run her to the auto-doc first. Ben pulled Kassidy out. Clay picked up Sass and carried her right behind them.
“Back,” Sass murmured. “Pick up Lavelle.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Clay assured her. He lay her on the bench under the scrubber trees and chafed her hands. Frostbitten and chemical-poisoned skin sloughed off. He held her first hand up to his lips and blew warmth onto it.
“Lavelle is leverage,” Sass insisted, trying to sit up.
He pushed her down at the shoulders. “Give yourself a few minutes.”
“Status,” she demanded. “Ship. Crew. Pirates.”
He brought her up to date. She growled when he digressed into how their situation came to be, so he stuck to bare facts on the current state of play. “Oh, and Carruthers will be here any minute. The pirates are sending her across with her container. They’re in a tearing hurry to break orbit. But they won’t leave without the goods Sagamore owes them. Lots of screaming between them and the ground forces. Anyway, pirates incoming to swap boxes. We’re still pretending Eli is in charge here, plus a few stray slaves. We should hide.”
“Screw that,” Sass said succinctly.
Yeah, she was coming back to herself, Clay concluded wryly. The next time she reached to pull herself up to sitting, he let her. “How do you feel?”
“Like I died and got revived against my will.” She searched his face. A slow smile crimped a corner of her mouth. “You too today, I hear. Commiserations.”
“Death hurts,” he agreed. Living forever was bad enough. In practice, that meant dying and resurrecting over and over – not Clay’s favorite pastime. “Ditch Lavelle.”
She shook her head. “Pressure suit. Don’t argue.”
“I’ll go alone.”
“You won’t find him. He’ll die out there. Fetch my suit and I get one more minute to recover. He can’t wait, Clay. Too cold.”
Clay sighed and did as he was bid.
She didn’t wait for him. By the time he collected her suit, she ducked into the med bay. He grabbed guns, two apiece, and armored vests from the weapons locker. Then he followed behind her, dodging Abel on the trot toward the bridge. He spared the first mate a grimace of sympathy. No doubt he’d rather stay with his young wife.
But the captain wasn’t letting him off the hook. Ben could drive this boat in a pinch. But Abel needed to make the decisions while Clay and Sass took off on this suicide run.
“– And Eli, you’re our medic,” Sass continued ordering people about. Copeland was helping Jules out of the auto-doc to give Kassidy a turn. “Expect one to three more patients, seriously damaged, within 5 minutes.”
She grabbed the pressure suit from Clay’s arms and donned it with a speed born of too much practice.
He racked her helmet onto the back of her suit the moment her shoulders shrugged in, then hastily strapped on his own armor.
“Generator,” Sass reminded him, backhanding his vest lightly. She attached her own to her armor before pulling it around herself.
He sighed, skinned out, and affixed the grav generator to the outside as ordered, then res
ealed and refastened.
Copeland murmured, “Their eyes, cap.” Kassidy and Jules’ eyes were milky and bleeding.
“They look like hell,” Sass agreed. “But it’s nothing the auto-doc can’t fix. And you’re not the nurse. Eli is. Get into your pressure suit, Cope. Abel needs his engineer on damage control, not med bay.”
Before anyone could argue, Sass clicked her helmet on with finality, and picked up the weapons from where Clay had dropped them. Copeland handed her a face mask and the battered air canister, hopefully recharged. The face mask and pistol she tucked into her armor webbing. A bungee cord accessory secured the extra air tank. She nodded to Clay.
He collected his pair of weapons and touched his helmet to hers. “Channel 16.”
“Roger 16,” Sass agreed, and led off to the airlock. “Abel 16.” Abel confirmed he was monitoring as the lock cycled. “Clay, I’m on Sagamore 1-over-7 g.” The city was at 0.9 g, from massive generators. The moon outside the city was at 1/7th g, noticeably less than Mahina.
“Roger 1-over-7,” Clay confirmed, matching his setting as pressure evacuated the airlock.
She hit the door open button the second the light blinked green. She launched out, possibly without checking the view first.
Or maybe she did look first and was simply insane, Clay reflected. A quartet of pressure-suited figures loped toward them, likely at the same grav setting. One managed a full-sized cargo container, using a grav lifter remote control joystick. Judging from their suits, Clay was seeing pirates plus one. The cargo wrangler was a female in a Sagamore Dome suit. That would be Dr. Carruthers.
Clay launched to follow only moments behind Sass. As he cleared the bulk of the skyship blocking his view, he saw ground forces beginning to boil out of an airlock to the still-intact dome next door. He reported both bits of happy news to Abel, but didn’t let it stop him from catching up to Sass.
No one was shooting yet. That was a good thing.
“Abel,” Sass hailed, “anyone getting snippy yet about us leaving the ship?”
Ben replied. “Abel is busy adding to the confusion, cap. Whole lot of swearing going on.”
“About us?”
“You were mentioned,” Ben allowed. “Not a top concern.”
“Let’s hear it for Sagamore family bickering,” she acknowledged.
Sass slowed at the jagged entry to the broken dome. Right about then the searing arc lights turned back on, to bathe them in white light. “Grav to 1-over-3,” she commented. “Careful sharp edges.”
“Roger that 1-over-3.” Clay spotted a towel on the floor, a corner dripping blood, but better than nothing. He holstered his pistol and hastily wrapped his left hand with the towel. He made faster progress with one hand safe to touch sharp edges.
The familiar tunnel vision set in. Absolutely nothing claimed his attention except the immediately relevant. Sass’s position. Scope for clear space for his next step. Launch. Repeat. A couple blue laser shots passed by. They missed by a wide enough margin that Sass didn’t duck for cover, so neither did he. Though he did add some zig and zag for less predictability.
For no reason that impinged on his tunnel of consciousness, the laser shots ceased, and the runners sped up. In under 4 minutes, Sass squatted to ground at a wall, about a half klick from the Thrive. By the time Clay caught up to her, she’d already switched Lavelle from a wall air feed to her canister.
“I’ll cover you,” he offered. “You carry and go first.”
“Roger that.” Sass hoisted the pirate over her shoulder.
Clay bent to re-seat the pirate’s air mask after the jostling. Neither of them paused to check whether the man was alive. Hypothermic, surely. No time for that.
Clay straightened and turned back to the skyship. Their tableau had shifted. The Thrive was in the air, having detached its quartet of containers bound for the moon. The ship now hovered over the single return container brought from the pirate vessel. Judging from newly blackened scars on the unfamiliar indigo-tinted regolith, the Thrive had already fired on the Sagamore forces from the other dome. One pirate ran back to Gossamer, two lay motionless on the ground.
A gun fired from the Thrive. Correction, three pirates down.
“Abel, where do you want us?” Sass inquired.
“Trapdoor to the cargo hold,” Ben replied. Apparently Abel was still busy arguing with all these moving pieces. “We are latching on luggage. Carruthers arrived with the container. She’s on board.”
“Roger that,” Sass acknowledged. “Headed back now. Covering fire.”
“Will do.”
“Go.” Sass sprang into motion, apparently at 1/7th g again. Clay paused to adjust his grav and selected 1/5th, then loped behind her. His rifle at this distance wouldn’t make the slightest impression on the Gossamer, so Clay evicted the pirates from his awareness. His current problems included the Sagamore Dome forces to his left, Sass ahead of him, and the debris on the dome floor.
An actinic white bolt, a near miss on Sass, seared his retinas.
Correction, some bozo up on the girders wanted to play. Clay grounded, steadied his weapon on a broken wall, and hunted for the clown. There, a glimpse of red glow on cooling metal. No sooner seen than shot. A pressure-suited figure dropped to the broken floor below.
To accentuate his point, Clay fired four more laser blasts around the hostile welder’s position, without aiming at individuals. More figures above scattered away. Good enough.
Clay returned his attention to following Sass, but stayed low. He didn’t need to run a one-minute klick here. He needed to protect Sass. And she slowed way down, burdened by a man who outmassed her while she picked through the rubble at dome’s edge.
A couple figures lay down among the Dome forces to their left, for steadier aim from a minimum silhouette. But they were perfectly visible from Ben’s vantage point in the air. He mowed them down with the Thrive’s guns.
Clay took the opportunity to catch up to Sass. Without asking, he pulled Lavelle off her shoulder and carried the unconscious pirate in his arms. “Get out.”
Sass didn’t argue. She just dumped the oxygen on Lavelle’s stomach for safekeeping. Unencumbered, she quickly threaded through the worst of the wreckage for the third time in under half an hour. Clay noted her path carefully. When she was through, with her rifle out, he used the same route.
“Back to you.” He shifted pirate and air bottle back onto her, and checked the man’s face mask. “Go.”
A quick glance confirmed the Dome forces were hanging back for the moment. But four more headed toward them from Gossamer. The one in the lead held arms up in the air, and stumbled. Check. That female pressure suit was from Mahina Orbital. Cortez, as a hostage shield for the other three.
“Advise Cortez in the lead, plus three raiders from Gossamer,” he reported.
“Roger,” Ben replied. “Tracking Cortez plus goons.”
Sass started loping again, back to 1/7th g. Clay turned his down to 1/3 g to limit his bounce height and length. He ran behind her, rifle trained on the pirates approaching from his right.
“Clay?” Ben’s voice. “Is crossfire a good idea?”
“Me shoot between Cortez and her tail? Try to separate them?”
“Yeah. I don’t have a shot now. They’re hiding behind her.”
“Will do.” Clay paused to aim a single warning shot. All three pirates halted and turned their rifles on him. Cortez kept running, opening up the range.
The first pirate to return fire shot wide. The second laser caught Clay mostly on his armor, but the nimbus seared agony into his right shoulder. The third hit his left knee, which buckled immediately.
He got off one more shot, exploding a pirate helmet just as Ben opened fire, a fraction of a second too late for Clay. The three pirates were blasted flat by the power of Thrive’s rock-carving gun.
Clay stumbled forward onto his good knee, his rifle spilling to the ground as he caught his fall. His breath caught brokenly as he fought
to process the pain. Ben spoke. Clay couldn’t listen just that moment.
“Waiting on you, Clay,” Sass said. “Cortez on pickup.”
That reached through his haze of pain. Clay raised his helmet to look just as Cortez skidded to a stop before him, raising a cloud of bluish moon dust. She sized up his condition in a heartbeat, then shoved her shoulder under his good left arm to heave him up onto his good foot.
She touched her helmet to his. “What channel, dammit!”
“Channel 16. I can hop.”
“Good, ’cuz I can’t carry you.”
Their first joint lope was a painful stumble, as she was at Sagamore gravity, while Clay was still at 1/3 g. Clay sheepishly adjusted his gravity to match her. After that, running 3-legged, it took them under a minute to reach Sass standing behind the container out of view of the Gossamer.
“Should have gone ahead,” Clay grumbled.
“Reset gravity to minus 1-over-7,” Sass ordered, ignoring him.
“I can’t,” Cortez interrupted.
Sass ignored her too, as Clay promptly prepared to comply. “Jump straight up, soften fall. In one. Two. Three.”
Squeezing Cortez tightly against his side, Clay sprang up with his one good leg, and simultaneously clicked to the new anti-gravity setting. The Thrive’s belly was only a few meters above them, so he immediately jack-knifed the pair of them so not to take the upward fall on their helmets. They landed fairly gently on their backs, only knocking the wind out of him for a moment.
He turned his head to see Sass disappearing into the trapdoor hole.
“Hurry in the airlock,” Sass ordered.
Sighing, Clay managed to roll onto his side. Cortez clambered into the hole first, waist-deep, and reached back for his good knee. With a practiced eye, Clay could see she was now hanging out at a personal 1 g, in the opposite direction from his 1/7th. The algebra made his tired head hurt as he paused to figure out how to enter the trapdoor hole without suddenly accelerating to the regolith.
