Hep stepped through first, followed by Horus. They rushed to the door just feet ahead of them and pressed their backs to the wall. The room was small, little more than a custodian’s closet. Upon seeing the service panels, Hep determined they were inside an electrical monitoring station, one of dozens scattered throughout every floor of Central.
Mao and Graeme entered the room and immediately dropped to one knee. They studied the schematics on Graeme’s tablet. “That one,” Graeme said, pointing to a service panel halfway up the wall. Mao removed the panel covering and located a blue switch. He let his finger hover over it, meeting Hep’s eye. They exchanged a nod.
With a flip of the switch, all the lights went dark.
Someone’s elbow was stuck up under Alenna Byrne’s ribs. It was narrow and came to a point, leading her to believe the elbow in question belonged to Akari. They’d been crammed in the smuggler’s hatch for nearly two hours now, and Byrne’s patience had worn thin about an hour and half ago. They were breathing each other’s air now, sucking in what the other just exhaled. He legs were cramping. Pain radiated up from her neck, craned to an unnatural angle, up to her head.
“Now,” Akari said, her voice barely a whisper.
“You sure?” Byrne answered. “We’re supposed to wait twenty minutes after docking.”
“It’s been twenty minutes.”
“How do you know?
“I counted.”
It sounded ludicrous, but Byrne did not doubt Akari’s truthfulness. “Good enough for me.” She forced her arms, long since asleep, to move. She pulled the lever to her right then pushed on the panel over her head. Fresh air and light poured in. Byrne’s limbs burned as the blood poured back into them.
They climbed out of the hatch, a hole hidden beneath the floor of the Bucket used to hide illicit goods from authorities. Byrne didn’t begrudge Horus for having them, especially in wartime, especially knowing he made his living in the Black during wartime. The frontier became an increasingly lawless region, with those once responsible for keeping order quickly becoming the ones to take advantage of the chaos. The Fair Wind was stopped and extorted on countless occasions by the Byers Clan while traversing the Black. Even Navy forces not-so-subtly collected bribes as they passed through UNS checkpoints.
But she imagined Horus would still have such hideaways even during peacetime. Though, she did doubt peacetime would ever come.
Byrne rounded and jumped across the open intersection of their corridor and another while Akari kept watch. She landed noiselessly feet away. All those years of ballet really paid off. Stooping down, she tapped twice on a section of floor that looked no different than the rest. A few seconds later, three taps sounded back.
She stepped to the side when she heard the lever pull and release the hatch’s seal. Dr. Hauser and Phillips emerged from the hole, their faces pale and covered in a fine film of dust and sweat.
“How we doing?” Hauser said as Byrne helped her up.
“Alive,” Byrne answered, “and no one is trying to kill us, so I’ll take that as a positive.”
“The power is down on the medical level,” Akari said, looking up from her tablet. She was patched into Central’s internal comm network. “They just issued an alert.”
“That’s our signal,” Byrne said.
They all rushed to the bridge. It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff with a parachute strapped to your back. Byrne sat at the helm and stared at the controls but dared not touch them. Akari stood ready at the weapons systems. Philips, for his incredible lack of technical knowledge, took up residence at the nav computer. The bulk of that task, at least in the short-term, would fall to Byrne.
Hauser paced. “How will we know when to fire up the engines?”
“When Hep and Mao knock on the hull,” Byrne said. “We light up any earlier and Tirseer will have her people on us before we can fly out of here.”
Hauser continued her pacing. “Right. And what’s the likelihood that we make it out of here in one piece even after that?”
Byrne tried to answer, but her voice died in the sudden roar of the Bucket’s engines. She looked around like a child lost in a crowd. Her eyes fell on Akari, who had moved to the engine controls. “What the hell are you doing?”
With the ship now powered up, Akari mirrored her tablet on the main monitor. “Another alert went out.”
Byrne didn’t know what she was seeing at first. Her brain couldn’t comprehend the sea of red coming at them. But as understanding dawned on her, she wished Akari would get the ship moving faster.
“What’s happening?” Philips said, comprehension passing right over him.
“We’re under attack,” Byrne said.
“Because she turned the ship on and alerted the whole damn station to our presence!” Hauser bellowed.
“No, not we.” Byrne twirled her hand in a circle, gesturing to all on the bridge. “We.” She moved her arm in on wide arc. “Central. An enemy fleet is about a klick out. They’ll make contact in less than a minute.”
Hauser’s face went white. “Crap. What about the others?”
Hep developed an awareness of the walls even though he couldn’t see them. Horus did not. He slammed into the wall every time they reached a corner.
“Will you quiet down?” Mao whispered.
“Sorry if smashing my face alerts the guards,” Horus replied. “I might prefer it anyway. I’m tired of all this sneaking around in the dark. Bouncing off walls and tripping over my own feet.”
“Those are my feet,” Graeme said. “Another turn up ahead. Mind your face.”
“Was that a joke?” Horus said, incredulous. “All of you have jokes now? This must be the end times.”
The group slowed, only the dim glow of Graeme’s tablet illuminating the sudden wall in front of them. They turned to the left, following signs to the trauma ward. Hep didn’t allow himself to dwell on their destination and why Delphyne was there.
The corridor opened before them as they entered the ward.
“Why haven’t we encountered any resistance?” Horus asked. “No guards. No techs. Nothing. Expect me to believe they’re all afraid of the dark?”
The lights turned on, searing Hep’s eyes in a sudden flash of pain.
“Nothing so benign, I’m afraid,” came a voice from somewhere in the white sea of light. “We’ve just been waiting for you to arrive.”
A dozen armed soldiers emerged through the haze of black spots dancing across Hep’s vision. Each had a sidearm trained on Hep and the others. At the center of the armed welcome party stood a thin man in a white lab coat. His hands were tucked in his pocket, his shoulders relaxed like he was meeting with a patient.
“I’ve barely been able to contain myself,” the lab coat said.
“A trap?” Horus barked. “A damn trap?”
The lab coat raised his hand to silence Horus. “Before we continue, I would be remiss if I neglected to ask you to put your weapons down. I would hate to have my men gun you down before we can have a conversation.”
“You serious?” Horus said.
“Quite.” He waved to the soldiers, who all stepped forward, the barrels of their guns getting that much closer.
“All right,” Mao said, lowering his gun and setting it on the floor. “Okay.”
The others followed suit. Graeme seemed relieved to. Horus growled as he came up emptyhanded.
“Splendid,” the lab coat said. “Welcome to my hospital. I’m Dr. Tobin Elias.”
Hep’s eyes went wide, a gesture that did not go unnoticed by the doctor.
“That name is familiar to you?” Elias said. “Surprising. I don’t publish my work in any journals that the general public would read. Most of it is quite confidential.” Understanding flashed on Elias’s face to match Hep’s. “Hauser.” He said the name with a mix of fondness and disdain, like a cousin you were close with as a child but grew to dislike. “I’m quite familiar with your crew roster, Captain Montaine. An eclectic bunc
h, to be sure. I must say her name was the one that caught me most by surprise. A genius in her field. There was a time I would have welcomed her on my team. Until she was disgraced. I doubt she would have had the stomach for it anyway. Always struck me as a bit squeamish.”
That wasn’t a word Hep would have ever applied to Dr. Hauser. Though maybe he didn’t know her all that well if she was the sort of person to associate with this man. He exuded a cold emptiness, an academic distance that he embraced and used to observe life like it was a separate thing of which he was not part. A devil crawled up from hell to watch.
“Regardless,” Elias said with a dismissive wave. “Let’s not dwell on the past. We’ve much to discuss about the future. An incredibly exciting future.” He laced his fingers under his chin and smiled like a cheetah. “Tell me, where are Sigurd and Admiral Ayala?”
The question made no sense. So much so that it caught Hep off guard enough that he broke his silence when he should not have. “Ayala? What are you talking about? She’s dead.”
Elias’s smile widened. “Is that right? How interesting.”
The soldier to Elias’s right tensed and cocked his head as if listening to something the rest of them couldn’t hear. “Problem, sir.”
“Deal with it,” Elias snapped, his smile turning sour. “I’m not done with my conversation.”
“This isn’t something I can handle, sir.” The soldier grabbed Elias’s elbow and pulled him back. “We need to go. Now.”
“Get your hands off—” Elias’s objections were swallowed by a sudden, deafening rumble. Some unseen force shook the station so hard it knocked nearly everyone off their feet. All except Horus, who promptly lunged toward the nearest soldier, gripped his head in his meaty hands, and twisted until his neck snapped.
Mao scrambled for the rifle he’d dropped moments ago. He grabbed it just before another soldier could and blasted a hole in the soldier’s head. Hep sprang to his feet and drew his dagger as he dove at the soldier nearest him. He plunged the blade into the soldier’s neck. Horus picked up the nearest blaster and shot three more soldiers through the chest. Mao killed another four before they could even stand. Hep fell on top of another, plunging the blade between his shoulder blades.
The last soldier drew his sidearm as he wrapped his arm around Dr. Elias’s neck. He pressed the barrel of his blaster to the doctor’s temple. “Stay back or I pop his head.”
Horus grunted, blood dripping from his fists. “Did we come for him?”
“I think we could use him,” Mao said. “But, no, he is not our intended target.”
The soldier laughed, an exercise in masking his fear. “Don’t mess with me. I know why you’re here. Him and the woman. Delphyne. Let me walk away with the doc, and I’ll let you take her.”
Hep pulled his knife free from the soldier’s back. “Deal.”
Objection shot from Mao’s mouth. “Hold on. I didn’t agree to that.”
“I’ll take that deal,” Horus said. “Looks like you’re outvoted.” His words still lingered in the air as Graeme appeared as if from nowhere. He stood in the soldier’s blind spot and aimed a blaster at the man’s head. Horus shrugged. “I guess it’s a tie, then.”
“Graeme… Oliver, easy.” Mao raised his hands like he was trying to sooth a wild animal.
Graeme’s hand shook, a small tremor that matched the look of sheer panic on his face. Typically straight-faced, the drastic departure was unsettling to see, like watching your dad strike out at baseball. “I have him, sir.”
“Do me a favor and shoot this man,” Elias said to Graeme.
“I… What? But he’s…”
“Using me as leverage to save his own life. Something I do not appreciate.”
“But you’re working with them, the Navy. Tirseer.” Graeme’s voice shook to match his hand.
“A little lamb,” Elias said with smile. “My loyalty is to science.”
The soldier tightened his grip around Elias’s neck. “Your duty is to Tirseer. Now, back off and let us go. Take the woman.”
“Go,” Horus said.
“I suspect this man may be valuable,” Mao said, trying to walk the tightrope between calming Graeme and encouraging him to keep Elias at the end of his blaster.
“Not more valuable than Delphyne,” Hep said.
“You could have both,” Elias said, intimating at what Graeme must do to make that happen.
Graeme’s hand shook. Another rumble shook the station. Like a heartbeat inside this giant beast. Graeme jumped at the sound of it and lowered his blaster just a fraction. But it was a fraction too much.
The soldier swung around, keeping Elias between him and the others, and knocked Graeme’s weapon aside. The soldier put a blaster bolt through Graeme’s chest. As the comms officer dropped to his knees, the soldier dragged Elias back and disappeared behind a sliding door that quickly locked.
Mao rushed to Graeme’s side. He cradled the man’s head in his hand, so small. Mao never realized how small Graeme was, the body of a teenager, the finnicky mind of an old man. As in life, words did not come easy for Olive Graeme in death. He didn’t even try to speak, but Mao could see the wheels still turning in his head, trying to sort the noise, to make sense of something, of anything, and finding something worth saying in the midst of it all. He found nothing.
So Oliver Graeme died in silence.
Mao stared at his comms officer, the face that looked identical but so different than that of the man who had served him faithfully for years. Like Graeme, he was unable to make sense of it, to find anything worth saying.
Horus stepped over the bodies of the dead soldiers, undeterred. “Let’s find her and get out of here. I don’t even want to know what’s happening outside.”
In defiance of his wishes, one of the comms on the dead soldiers squawked to life. “All hands to battle stations. Repeat, all hands to battle stations. Pilots, to your ships. This is not a drill. We are under attack by an enemy fleet.”
“Hell,” Horus grumbled. “How did Byers get past the Black Border so fast?”
“We’ll figure that out later,” Hep said, his eyes lingering on Graeme’s body. “Right now, we need to get Delphyne and get back to the ship. All that activity could be the perfect smokescreen for us to fly out of here.”
“We have very different definitions of perfect, kid.” Horus followed Hep down the corridor.
The fire in Mao’s chest turned cold. It had burned only for a brief moment, lit by the hope that they may finally learn something of use instead of just reacting to each new development. He tried not to let the sudden coldness inside spread and swallow him. He picked Graeme’s blaster up off the floor. He looked from it to the dead man on the floor and tried to reconcile the two. He tried to see this man who could not fire a blaster in the middle of a warzone as a beacon.
He tried.
Hep stood over a computer terminal in the center of the medical wing, a round alcove surrounded by metal doors behind which, presumably, were dozens of patients. They were either silent or the doors were soundproof as Hep heard no noise coming from the other sides. The area felt more like a prison than a hospital. “There,” he said, pointing to a door with a 14 on it. “That’s her.”
Mao laid Graeme’s head on the cold floor and imagined this was a suitable place for an honorable man to rest. The lock disengaged. Mao threw the door open. The person inside looked at him with a mix of confusion and fear, like she expected to be poke and prodded and tortured, but this man standing before her was not her usual torturer. Or maybe she was expecting nothing at all, and this sudden arrival shattered those expectations. Either way, Anisa Delphyne did not look as she should have.
She looked weak, which was startling but did not surprise Mao or Hep. They had braced themselves in the expectation of finding her in such a state, beaten and bruised. It was the hopelessness in her eyes that surprised them. She looked broken.
“No,” Delphyne said, her voice a cracked whisper. “You a
ren’t supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be out there, bringing all of this down.” She gestured to the walls around her. Her agitation betrayed her, sucking what little energy she had like a parasite. She fell forward. Hep moved quickly to catch her. She felt too light. “Idiots.”
“Save it for when we get out of here,” Hep said.
Horus held up his hand to stop them before they exited the medical wing. Horus tipped his ear toward the door, listening to something on the other side. He cracked the door and peered outside.
“Backup here already?” Hep asked.
Horus closed the door. Confusion scrunched his features. “Not Navy. It’s the Elmore Syndicate.”
8
That final gasp of breath from a dying man. There were few sounds more pleasing. Among them were the song of metal being pulled from its sheathe. The hum as it returned.
The Fair Wind was among the first to enter the hangar bay, following only two of the syndicate’s troop transports. Though not first in arriving, they, Wilco, and the others were ready to be the first to disgorge and begin the campaign of annihilation. Ayala held them back.
“Let the others go,” she said.
“Fine by me,” Shankar said. He sat in the nearest chair and kicked his feet up on a terminal. “Only thing worse than dying in a syndicate cell is dying storming Central bloody Station.”
Wilco bristled at the instruction, but he did not disobey it. He watched through the viewport as the syndicate soldiers poured out of their ships and crashed into the ill-prepared but still formidable Central forces. An infinite minute passed as he watched both syndicate and Navy fall. The apparent folly in their waiting burned his cheeks beneath his mask. He felt Trapper Mayne’s hot stare on the back of his neck.
“They are getting cut down,” Trapper said. “If we suffer more losses here at the breach point, we won’t have enough manpower to hold the hangar bay, let alone spread through the station.”
Wilco bounced on his heels.
Trapper studied the main monitor. “The other transports are struggling to find a path through.” He looked from Wilco to Ayala, waiting, expecting one of them to give an order. When neither did, Trapper opened a comm channel to the syndicate fleet. “Destroyers, focus your attack on the gun batteries in the lower quadrant. Draw the fire away from the hangar bay. Starfighters, those troop transports need an escort. Clear a lane for them and keep the Navy off their back.”
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 62
