Doomed Cargo

by Ian Cannon

Xantrissa said, “I am impressed, little birdy. I can appreciate your tenacity. I am a fairly tenacious one myself. But you’re not here because you’re tenacious are you?”

  Tawny said, “Visor,” and the face shield lifted away. “No,” she sneered. “I’m here to stop you. And, Bitch, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” She reached back and drew the thrasher sword from its sheath with a long, drawn out hiss.

  “Awe,” Xantrissa said, mocking her. “Here to preserve a thing, eh? Sweet.” She took a slinky pace forward. “Then I guess you’ll have to learn the hard way.”

  Tawny huffed insult. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

  “Look at the universe out there, sweetie. Look at our very own system.” She presented her dying vessel with a flare of her hand. “It’s even right here, all around. Don’t you see it?”

  Tawny stared at her.

  “Stars die. Matter rips apart. Life ends. Time and pressure kills all things.”

  Tawny tilted her head, gave her a ridiculous look.

  Xantrissa chuckled. “Those who want to preserve a thing are always overpowered by those who want to destroy a thing. And when I get my hands on that little witch,” She chuckled under her breath. “You’ll see.”

  Tawny shook her head, disgusted. “No—you won’t.”

  “Well, like I said, you’ll have to learn … the hard way.” She reeled back on her whip and shot a crack, fast as lightning.

  Tawny’s intellect-connect saw it coming, closed the visor over her face.The whip struck her battle suit and exploded. She slammed back, landing down on the catwalk. It shimmied under her, metal crying out. The visor overlay blinked in and out of registry.

  Xantrissa reeled back, whipped again.

  BOOM!

  Tawny screamed, bearing the explosion. The sword flew from her hand, slid toward the ledge. She slapped a heavy hand for it, but it sailed out over the edge and began its plummet toward the city below.

  “Suit failure. Overload eminent.”

  She had to get up. The suit was dying, sputtering in and out of life. Its drive mechanisms hemorrhaged. She wouldn’t stand a chance against the Bitch without the armor, had to kill her now!

  She got to her feet, pulled herself along the catwalk railing feeling the suit’s weight freeze her, then release her.

  BOOM—another shot.

  “Ahhh!” Tawny clenched herself against the blast. A whiff of smoke struck her inside the helmet, systems overloading. She pulled herself forward … one … more …step.

  Another shot—BOOM!

  One last surge of power; please Wi’ahr, one final surge!

  BOOM!

  Tawny dropped to her knees with a clang. The Bitch whipped at her with abandon, screaming laughter, dancing an evil jig.

  The overlay blossomed into life. Tiny motors whined into breath. That was it. The suit’s final gasp, like a death spasm.

  She sprang up with the motion assist operating at full, and shot forward activating her limb boosters. Surprised, Xantrissa spun around to dodge.

  Too late.

  Tawny caught her in the back with a knee, snatching her narrow shoulders with those big armor-hands, and wheeled her backward. The snap of her spine sang out with a beautiful, satisfying sound, and she folded unnaturally in half. Tawny came down on top of her with all her weight, took her by the head and spun it one-eighty degrees with a shotgun crack. Xantrissa’s eyes looked up at her blinking in shock, mouth agape. Tawny wasn’t done. She wrenched her head over even more—two-seventy degrees—with another snap, crackle and pop. Then, for good measure, she completed the rotation at three-sixty forcing her head to spin all the way around on her shoulders. Xantrissa went lax underneath her, and her head slumped loosely at the end of a spiral neck with Tawny straddling her.

  Tawny’s visor rolled up and she snarled, “That’s how you kill a bitch!”

  She fell away clanging against that unstable catwalk as the battle suit died around her. She was encased inside a ton and a half of armor. She manipulated the interior hand toggle and the battery-powered release mechanism initiated a row of clips along the battle suit’s seams with a series of pops. The whole thing folded open.

  She laid there breathing for several moments grinning with triumph. There was a metallic bang and the entire sky frame shimmied. This place was about to collapse, wholesale. She rolled out of her battle suit and got painfully to her feet, looking down at the Titan-Y1 Dura armor laying on the catwalk, like an old friend had just died. But she had to leave, right now.

  She turned to the girder prepared to pick and slide her way back to solid ground …

  And she heard an all-too-familiar giggle.

  Her blood chilled and she spun around, terrified.

  The Bitch moved. Her arms cocked out planting her hands on the steel floor and bracing her weight. An internal quiver traveled up the Bitch’s spine straightening it with a series of clicks and pops. Tawny stepped back. The Bitch’s head turned itself one-eighty the opposite direction, then two-seventy and back straight, all the way to three-sixty. She groaned, shook her head, rubbed the back of her neck. As if waking up, she got to her feet and turned slowly to face Tawny, bearing that characteristic grin. She said, “Good as new, little birdy.”

  Tawny blinked in shock. She shook her head feeling victory slough to the floor. A horrible realization reached out and grabbed her. She’d shot the Bitch with a concussion gun earlier. Stabbed the Bitch with a Portaxian blade just moments ago. Snapped her body in half, splintered her neck. But she wasn’t dead. Not even injured. A regenerator.

  She was a bio-bot. Not like her clumsy gladiator, though. That thing was slow and stupid. This Xantrissa thing was far more elegant, far more lethal.

  Tawny had heard of these creatures. They were as shadowed in rumor and myth as the Obsalom Order itself. They were grown in labs, created with organic alloys fused together with cloning properties, then programmed to fulfill a single mission set, impenetrable, unstoppable. No soul. She could cut the Bitch’s head right off her shoulders and she’d grow a new body. Only a wholesale explosion would stop her. Tawny would have to stuff a bomb down her throat, make her eat a grenade. And that wasn’t going to happen. There was no killing this enemy.

  She was doomed.

  Xantrissa inhaled and laughed a tremendous shriek of blood-searing joy. There was only one thing for Tawny to do. Run.

  She leaped over the railing and began a plummet of her own. Her fall tugged her toward the angle of that girder as it drew in a curving rend toward the city floor below. She reached for it desperately feeling her velocity grow. Her hands ran along its steel surface and she clamped hard. She could feel skin begin to flay, but her feet swung forward and she grabbed it, riding it painfully all the way down in a bear hug.

  She thundered to the ground, and slammed to her back with a grunt. She rolled over, shook her head catching her breath. There was no time for pain. She glanced up knowing that Bitch wasn’t done with her. She’d be flying down any minute. She got up and had to limp in a half-sprint toward the train dock a block away, had to get out of the city.

  Explosions roared out in spots all across the city. To the right something incinerated into a growing blast of heat and wind. To the left something else went up in a ball of flame. The whole place rattled and shook. It was complete havoc down here at ground level. Way up above, everything balanced on a whim with that entire sky frame shimmying and shaking, breaking apart in places and crumbling down.

  She stopped frozen, staring at the ground. There was her sword. Her lifeline. It was all she had.

  REX curved around keeping that control stage in the viewport. It was all he could do. More than half his systems were down, most of them minor, a few of them major. Maneuverability was limited to banking starboard. Thrusters were damaged. Internal systems were drained. All they really had was artigrav and atmospheric control.

  Ben shook his head. There was nowhere to park at the control stage. Space was too limited down there, and
trekking back to the cityscape was out of the question. The battle was thinning, but at this point a spitball might bring them down. Plus, there were still barrages sprinkling the distance. And explosions. The whole world was erupting. It was just a matter of time before Malice 1’s engine factories went supernova.

  Gods, he hoped Tawny was making her way back to the forward control stage.

  “I have to get down there, REX,” he said.

  “We could try to land, but at this point, Cap, promises would be just stupid.”

  He looked up, a thought. “I could jump with a bio-suit.”

  “Yeah,” REX agreed. “But how would you get back? I’m basically drifting.”

  Ben rubbed his face, forcing thought. How would he get safely from point A to point B, then back? And how could he tow Tawny with him if her suit had been compromised? He slammed his fist into the control deck, and froze with a thought stuck in his brain. “I got it!”

  He shot up from his pilot’s seat and darted back through the ship, to the lift and down to the cargo bay. He shoved open the lift gate and stepped out grinning like a mad man. Yes, it would work. Of course it would. It was failsafe.

  He faced the corner in the cargo bay and his heart sank. It dropped all the way to the floor. The corner of the cargo bay was empty. It was just a spot of shadow. The Menuit-B security bike wasn’t there. It was gone. His wife was on her own.

  He looked up and cried, “REX, where’s the flubbin’ space bike?”

  The maglev train hadn’t fared much better than Aphrodisia. It wobbled and vibrated as it flew down the track. The lights flickered off and on like a euphoric disco club. Shadows shifted against light. Shapes were hidden. She expected to hear that eternal heckling coming from the dark any moment. Tawny stood at the train’s forward car hugging the pommel of her sword close to her chest, breath held, watching that cityscape fall further and further away. Explosions grew distant. Eruptions took turns flaring around the city. The place was falling apart.

  After an eternity, the train pulled into the loading bay on repulsor brakes and she flew out, carrying her blade behind her. It was enormously heavy without the motion assist of her battle suit. But she was prepared to wield it with everything she had left.

  She stumbled into the command stage and moved toward the extreme bow of the ship. Lights blinked suffusing the place between moments of light and dark. Tremors from the battle were affecting the control bridge as systems began overloading shipwide. Sparks fountained up from control consoles cutting the dark.

  She found a place to wait and hide. For what, she wasn’t sure, but as something blew sparks in a shower way over toward the rear entry to the place, she no longer had to guess. A long, tall silhouette came strutting cool and menacing into the control stage.

  Tawny ducked down behind the long, nav console.

  Silence fell. Everything waited. That voice rose up slicing the air like a blade. “Why do you fly, little birdy?”

  Tawny bit her lower lip, held it tight under her teeth.

  “I have yet to lay a hand on you. You aren’t beaten. I have not defeated you. So why do you fly?”

  Tawny turned her head. That voice was lurking around in the dark toward the left. The Bitch was circling around the command stage, stalking.

  “Is it because you know you can’t win?” She laughed, low and long. It chilled Tawny’s blood. Xantrissa continued her taunt. “Without so much as a slap on the wrist, you’ve already seen the inevitable, haven’t you?”

  That voice was coming closer, hunting her.

  “You face it now as you have never faced it before. And you face it as only a coward would, skulking in the shadows.” More long, low laughter.

  Tawny scooted silently in the other direction, drawing herself along the control console. Shadows were everywhere. Places to hide were many. She turned to flee, and went wooden with terror. She found herself face to grinning face with Xantrissa.

  “Yes—that’s right, little birdy,” she said standing to her full height over Tawny, and boomed, “I. Am. Your. Death!”

  Tawny spun away and jumped to her feet holding her thrasher weapon at her. Xantrissa huffed shoving the blade away with a finger. Tawny sneered through clenched teeth, spun all the way around and launched a tremendous hack. It passed through the Bitch’s forearm and slammed into the steel of the control console. The slender, bone-white hand loosed from its arm and went whirlybird fashion into the air.

  Xantrissa clutched her injury and tucked it close to her body. She put her head back and blasted a scream so loud it tortured Tawny’s nerves. It howled long and shrill …

  Until it turned to laughter.

  Tawny’s crazed expression melted. It was just as she suspected.

  Xantrissa grinned like a devil. She held her stump up. The hand had been separated clean. The muscle glistened deep red. And then something like fingers sprouted up from the wound. They grew into a hand, a wrist, a forearm. In seconds, the arm was whole again, the fingers gesticulating pink and healthy, giving rise to Xantrissa’s laughter.

  Tawny swung again. Xantrissa blocked the blow with her other arm. It lopped off, bounced to the steel floor.

  The Bitch stepped back, grinning. Another arm formed from the old, and she waggled her new finger at her in a no no no gesture.

  Tawny reeled back and stabbed the Bitch through the gullet, gave her a full on thrust that ran her all the way through. Xantrissa screamed grotesque laughter and gripped the hilt. She slipped herself off of the blade and danced a crazed jig, still smiling in that mad, mindless way. The wound closed, sealed up tight, no profuse bleeding, no scar, no mark.

  “Now do you see it?” Xantrissa taunted. “There’s nothing you can do. I am the superior warrior. I am un-killable. I am the goddess of death, the harbinger of darkness! Find me across the stars, for I am everywhere!”

  Tawny turned and ran. There was a swish—crack! And Xantrissa’s whip noosed her around the neck. Tawny’s feet went out from under her and she slammed down.

  Xantrissa strutted toward her in her hyper-sultry gait. “They call me Kalutha. They call me Vekti’kott. They call me Occisor.” Slower, coming to a conclusion, she said, “They call me … Satanum.”

  The evil one, hunter of N’halo.

  Her face drew deadly serious and she said in a gruesome singsong, childishly way, “It’s. Time. To. Die. Now.” She cackled, kneeled down over Tawny encroaching with her face, lolled out a long, warm tongue and drew it across her cheek from chin to ear. Tawny gave her a recalcitrant sneer unable to break free from Xantrissa’s grip. Smiling wickedly, Xantrissa said, “Nighty night, dear love.” The hands around Tawny’s throat began to squeeze.

  Commander Havilok oversaw his command deck. They faired no better than the enemy. The deck was strewn with fallen debris from near hits that ripped across decking, buckling bulkheads. A body lay sprawled across the floor of his command bridge. He looked on grimly at the immense holoport as it flickered with power surges. Nothing showed but the shadow of Malice 1 looming over them. Everything shook.

  An operator turned and called in a thin, beaten voice, “Starboard levels have folded, sir!”

  Another, “Command decks are breaching, all starboard sectors.”

  Havilok cast a look to the floor. The command decks were nestled in the center of the ship specifically to avoid breaching. It was a sign their back was breaking.

  A voice fluttered up from his inner-ship comm coming through garbled bits of busted signals. “Top deck, engineering. We’ve reached critical, Commander. The final ion cell has folded. We must jettison!”

  Havilok called back coming to a sudden decision. “Do not jettison. Set it to overload. Now … abandon ship, all positions.” He was going to use it as a big bomb.

  The voice that returned was reticent. It whispered, “Aye aye.”

  Havilok called down, “Wing report!”

  Captain Terrelis looked up, looking remarkably somber. He shook his head. “Arkin Wing has fold
ed. All but the Metarkis and Hektor Dawn are destroyed, and both are heavily damaged. Combat squadrons depleted.”

  Havilok nodded returning the glum expression. “Command orders. Retreat from battle space zero one. All wings. All units.”

  Terrelis sighed and turned to his wing comm. Something struck them hard at the aft sending a tremor across the ship. More debris dropped into the command deck.

  “Nav,” Havilok called. “Plot a ramming course, full thruster.”

  The operator did so, looked up. “Laid in, sir.”

  “Command crew, final order. Evacuate ship. Get out.”

  They hesitated, as if offering a final silent moment to the dead. Havilok yelled, “Get out!”

  They scrambled away, headed for their jettison pods, except Terrelis. He stood below looking up. Havilok looked down at him, both sharing a deep sense of life, death and duty. Havilok nodded to him, and he left the command deck.

  A voice from behind, “Havilok, don’t be a fool!”

  Havilok didn’t have to turn. He knew. “I go where my command goes, Torian. But you—I thought you would have left long ago.”

  “Commander,” Torian snarled.

  He said through stoic, final words, “It’s not foolish. It’s duty. I pray to Wi’ahr you one day understand that, Senator. Go.”

  Torian gave him a tumultuous look and said, “You will go down among the heroes of the Confederation.”

  Havilok gave him a single nod. “Remember what happened here.”

  Torian turned into the corridor and was gone.

  Havilok made a sour face. Heroes of the Confederation. They were the words of a politician. He turned to face the holoport. He could feel the main thrusters begin to build toward a terminal thrust. The bow nosed into an ascending angle bringing the sub hull of Malice 1 into its path. Impact was inevitable. The count down wound down on the holoport. He looked up and sneered, “May they always remember the name Prolium.”

  Torian scrambled down a deteriorating corridor dodging personnel as they scampered by. Explosions pounded through the ship and he could feel it begin to list. Havilok was about to ram the enemy.