From below, concussive bursts of javelin tracers streaked past Matt as he adjusted his course of ascent towards the incoming ship.
But he never got far.
Cromwell latched onto his foot and yanked him down, hurling him into the crater wall.
Matt absorbed the brutal impact, his vision distorting from the rubble and soil dumped on top of him, along with the lack of oxygen that was now threatening to render him unconscious. Matt aimed his cannons downward and fired blindly in a last Hail Mary attempt to lose Cromwell.
It was a futile move. Cromwell was way too fast. He clamored around Matt’s line of fire and began bashing at his cab again, “I will not stop until you will die here, Matt. Cold and alone - just like everyone you’ve ever dragged into this mindless crusade of yours. Maybe then you’ll finally understand your failure. Maybe then you’ll understand there is no point resisting anymore.” Before he catapulted Matt into the crater wall again, he could see him inside the cab, lips, frozen blue as he struggled to breathe. With each passing second, the eternal coldness of the vacuum was draining the life out of him. At this point, Matt could only wait for Cromwell’s furious attack to end. By then he would already be long dead. Smiling, Cromwell began battering Matt again with his giant pincers, each bludgeoning blow weakening the canopy’s protective shield.
But when he saw Matt smiling at him with his middle finger raised, he roared with rage and hoisted Matt up like a limp rag doll. He drew back his pincered fist, like the steel spring of a trap, and unleashed a blow that sent Matt flying across the gaping basin of the crater again, tumbling endlessly. The impact was enough to render the hydraulic system of Matt’s exoframe completely useless. With its internal life support systems all failing, the suit was now effectively a floating coffin.
With her heart planted firmly in her throat, Ally white-knuckled the steering horn as she counter-thrusted, firing the ship’s forward stabilizers to slow her approach. While she could see them battling on a stair-like terrace of the crater’s inner wall, the last thing she needed to deal with was slamming into them with the velocity of a meteorite. Frustratingly, she could not fire on Cromwell either - not while he still had a hold of Matt. They had become a single writhing shadow on the side of the crater. But as she drew closer, it was not long until she saw exactly what she was hoping for.
Having just been struck, Matt was now pitching away from Cromwell at great speed.
That was all the distance she needed. Her eyes narrowed and she grinned. “Got you now, you prick,” she whispered, her thumbs pressing the small indents on the steering horn.
When Cromwell saw the Interceptor level out in front of him, thick columns of lunar dust vortexing from its powerful thrusters, he could only utter a single word:
“No.”
The underbelly of the Wraith ship began to weep plasma, its massive cannons strobing the crater with blinding light. Cromwell never stood a chance as tons of regolith exploded and avalanched down onto him. As he fell into it, a house-sized rock slammed into his chest, pulverizing him down into the darkest depths of the crater.
Descending to Matt’s position and matching his trajectory, Ally kept pounding Cromwell even after he had vanished from sight. Aside from the lunar material being violently ejected from each strike of her cannons, she could see some of the rocks starting to glow as they melted under the plasma bolts immense heat. Satisfied Cromwell was either vaporized or buried under millions of tons of regolith, she released her thumbs on the firing indents of her steering horn, smiling wearily as the entire side of the crater collapsed into itself. She was now watching the solar system’s biggest strip-mining blast. Eyes agog, she kept watching as tons of material collapsed into the crater, forming new mounds and peaks. Whether her aim had found Cromwell or not, there was simply no way any living being could have survived that collapse.
Cromwell was gone.
When she had seen enough, her eyes flicked back to the tracking read-out on her pilot console. Matt was now drifting to the surface, the powerful beam of his exoframe’s light fixed and unmoving. From Ally’s position slightly above, he almost appeared like an old underwater diver in one of those heavy copper suits, plummeting down to the dark depths of the ocean floor.
She had seconds to act.
He had less.
Entombed inside his cab, Matt was gasping hard now, spitting up phlegm while trying to suck down the last remnants of oxygen. He was blacking in-and-out, eyes rolling up into his skull, on the brink of succumbing to the unforgiving environment of the Moon. Aside from the fact that he was slowly asphyxiating, it was so mind-numbingly cold, and in the foggy recesses of his mind, he wondered which of his limbs had already been frostbitten. His eyes battered, focusing for the nano-second required to catch something huge swoop over him in silence. Even in his rapidly deteriorating state, he knew it was the cargo bay’s loading ramp. Matching his descent, Ally had swung the ship’s enormous ass around to face him. It was so close; he could feel the inside of his exoframe shuddering from its massive thrusters. Salvation was his for the taking. All he had to do was simply reach out and grab it, but he was paralyzed by the cold. His augmented limbs were as frozen as his real ones. All he could do was float away into the blackness and die.
“…Dad…” said a faint and crackly voice through his comms channel. He could barely hear it over the screaming, kettle-like hiss of his cracked canopy.
“…Dad… fire your thrusters manually…”
Matt closed his eyes and began to convulse.
“Do it now! Can you hear me? Dad!!!”
Perhaps it was some random collective of neurons firing one last time – some dormant, primal mechanism that only activated when his death was imminent - something buried deep within his mind that acted autonomously on his behalf. He would never know. Whatever it was, it somehow allowed him to push beyond the encroaching darkness that was consuming him and press the thruster mechanism affixed his console. All thrusters fired, propelling him directly into the gaping mouth of the cargo bay.
The second Ally saw the flashing icon indicating he was safely on board; she swiped a holographic glyph to retract the loading ramp. She then placed the ship in a holding pattern, jumped out of the piloting bracket, and bolted through the foredeck hall towards the ship’s rear airlock, clasping her side.
A blast of pressurized air hissed savagely at her when she entered the sprawling cargo bay to see Matt half ejected out of his damaged exoframe, gasping for air and spasming.
She raced over to him, gently lifting him out and placing him on the floor. He was ice-cold to the touch, his eyelashes crusted with small icicles, his lips turned grey-blue.
“Dad! Can you hear me?” Growling through the pain, Ally ripped off her jacket and wrapped it around him and started rubbing his arms and shoulders. “Dad. Hey!” She slapped him hard across the cheek to keep him from slipping into unconsciousness. “Hey! Dad, look at me!”
Unable to speak, Matt’s eyes weakly fluttered open and found Ally looking down at him with grave concern. They remained fixed on her until, remarkably, a tiny smile formed in the corner of his frozen lips.
Ally dropped her head and exhaled with relief. “Let’s get you to the front of the ship. It’s a lot warmer up there.” She looped his limp right arm around her neck and heaved him upright. “Come on, work with me here.” Matt’s legs were flaccid and unmoving, so she had no choice but to bite through the pain and drag him to the foredeck of the ship.
Matt’s eyes opened heavily to Ally standing on the flight deck, one hand resting on the pilot console, staring into the eternal unknown. Her form was silhouetted against a dazzlingly intense starfield. It took another second or two for Matt to realize he was curled up on the floor, wrapped tightly in her combat jacket. How many hours have I been out? he thought. How many days? In space, it was easy to feel as if time had ceased. He took a slow and deep breath through his nose, filling his starved lungs with some much-needed air while simultaneously thanking
god these alien invaders also breathed oxygen. The pressure inside the ship felt nominal, and he could already feel warmth returning to his bones, but his brief exposure to the near-vacuum had taken a significant toll on him. He was certainly feeling his age right now.
Hearing the rustling behind her, Ally turned to Matt and motioned to the small hipflask that was sitting next to him before turning back to her majestic view. “You need to hydrate. Drink.”
Matt felt like he was thawing from a long cryo-sleep as he sluggishly reached for the flask and began chugging water down his parched throat.
“Go easy. That’s all the water we have left.”
Matt wiped his mouth and screwed the flask’s cap back on. He was still thirsty enough to drink an entire lake but figured they wouldn’t last long out here without any water. “I thought you lost your supply bag. Where’d you get this?”
“One of the monks gave it to me before I destroyed the base.”
“How’d he get it?”
“He told me they had a way of processing water ice from the Moon’s southern pole. They had enough water up there to supply an entire country.”
Like a sleepwalker, Matt rose and hobbled towards Ally, taking in the brooding corridors that branched off from the flight deck. He had seen plenty of Wraith bombers before, but being inside one, it was clear these Cutlass Interceptors were the grandest and most regal of their fleet. The entire foredeck, including the pilot console, looked as if it had been smoothly molded from some giant 3D printer, with no visible rivets, screws, or bolts visible anywhere. Despite being made from a variety of strong metals and alloys, the dark interior surfaces of the ship appeared waxy and unpolished.
His bleary eyes scanned the bizarre electronic equipment that studded the curved dashboard of the pilot console. Just like the Death Pony, there were no piloting or passenger chairs, but rather, a gimbaled platform that hung from a thick suspension harness. However, the steering horn on this craft was slightly different. It was larger, and the column was attached to a series of thick coaxial lines that extended down from the ceiling. Matt thought they looked like angry black snakes. Flight read-outs and navigational data floated holographically in front of each line – some gently swirling like monitor screensavers waiting to be woken from their slumber, each one leaving a soft electronic trail in their wake.
Matt turned to Ally. She stood there in silence with her back to him, as if in deep thought. “That’s twice you’ve saved my ass now.”
“That’s what daughters are for, right?” she said without turning to him.
“Thank you.”
“I’m sure you would have done the same.”
“That’s not even worth mentioning, Ally.” Matt’s expression darkened when something punctured his mind like the tip of a sharp knife. “Cromwell.”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“Hell, I would imagine.”
Matt glared incredulously. He’d been here before. Twice. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“How positive?”
“I buried him under that crater you were in. It collapsed on top of him.”
Oddly, Matt’s reaction was not one of relief, but of disappointment. Not towards Ally, but himself. Eyes vacantly staring into literal space, he leaned against the piloting console.
Ally knew what his silence meant. “You wanted to be the one to kill him, didn’t you?”
Matt sighed with exhaustion. He was having difficulty believing Cromwell was really gone. “Not necessarily… I just assumed it would have been me.”
Now it was Ally’s turn to be silent. Matt looked up and out at the terrifying expanse of blackness zooming towards them. “How long have we been traveling?”
“About twelve hours.”
“Any idea where we are?”
“Somewhere between Earth and Mars. I had no idea which way we were meant to go, so I just pointed the ship towards Mars and put the hammer down.”
“I don’t think it matters. Once we jump, it’ll take us to Epsilon regardless of where we are in space.”
“How do you initiate the jump?”
Matt glanced down at the time band on his arm. It had become such a part of him now, he’d forgotten it was there. “It’ll happen once we’re ready.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” When Ally finally turned to him, Matt saw that her face was paler than normal, and her eyes were red-raw from crying. Then he noticed her blood-soaked shirt. “Ally— oh, shit, you’re bleeding.”
When he went to move closer to her, she raised a hand while holding her side with her other. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Dad.”
“Jesus, Ally. For once in your life, can you please not shrug me off.”
“I’m not.”
“Then lift up your damn shirt.”
Ally shook her head with more force this time. “Dad. Please...” When she went to take a step, her legs suddenly buckled, causing her to stagger backward.
Matt caught her and gently lowered her to the floor. “We’re not going anywhere until I take a look at this.”
This time she did not protest. She allowed Matt to lay her down flat on her back. Besides, she was too weak to resist him any longer. “I’ve got shrapnel in there. There’s nothing you can do.”
Feeling the wet warmth of her blood-soaked shirt on his fingers, Matt slowly and gently rolled up the bottom to see the crude bandage she had applied over the wound. “What is this?”
“Part of a monk’s robe.”
“I’m not even gonna ask how you got that.”
Ally smiled through her pain, grimacing as Matt began to lift the bandage.
What he saw was not good.
Tiny shards of metal had peppered her flesh, and the wound was a deep, long sliver of torn tissue and muscle. The blood was also a lot darker, suggesting the wound was critical. Matt did not want to believe it was fatal, but given their current location, he knew the odds were not great. He could see by her complexion she had lost a lot of blood. Despite that, he wanted to see her smile again. He was not giving up on her anytime soon. Not in the slightest. There was still hope. Feigning relief, he gently lowered the bandage and then her shirt. “Want the good news or bad news first?”
“What could possibly be good news?”
“I’m pretty certain we can’t get a campfire going inside this ship, and I have no knife, so you can rest assured I won’t be gouging anything out of you.”
Ally winced as she stifled a weak chuckle. “And the bad news?”
“Same as above. If I can’t remove that shrapnel—”
“It’ll become infected,” she said, cutting him off. “You don’t need to tell me, I already know.”
Staunching his panic, Matt stood and looked around. “There’s gotta be something on this ship. Something I can use – a tool or something.”
“Dad, believe me, I’ve looked. Even if there was, chances are it wouldn’t be sterile. I just gotta ride this out.”
Matt knelt beside her, his eyes hardening with resolve. “Listen to me. We’ve got two jumps left. I want to make this clear: this is not the time to be a hero, Ally. It’s not the time to be a martyr either. The Wraith are going to wise up to us the moment we arrive. We’ve got one chance to get this right. That’s it. So, the second we deliver that payload, we make the jump to 2086. No deviations under any circumstances. Is that understood?”
Ally gave a somewhat glib nod, then looked away.
“How many missiles did you manage to load while I was gone?”
“Twenty-six.”
“That’s perfect. We can do this, Ally. You still believe that, right?”
She never answered him which told Matt she did not believe that. He could also tell something, apart from her wound, was troubling her deeply. “Ally, once I get you back to Wainwright, her team will be able to patch you up. In the meantime, don’t you dare think about giving up on me. Again, I
’m issuing you an order.”
She turned to him and gingerly sat up, her eyes reflecting a pensive sadness. She refused Matt’s help with a dismissive wave as she gently rested her back against a circular railing that faced the starboard corner of the bridge and took a shallow breath. She was losing strength. “Do you remember Grandma’s funny laugh?”
Matt joined her, resting his back against the railing. “Yeah, she was a crack up. Dad said whenever she laughed, she sounded like a donkey in heat.”
Ally afforded herself a smile. “I don’t remember a lot before the Scourge, but I do remember that laugh.”
“How could anyone forget?” Matt added, now transported back to his Kentucky farmhouse.
“Every day after school I’d ride my bike up that old gravel pathway behind the house. This one afternoon, I pedaled a little too fast on the way down and came off. Ended up grazing my knee quite badly. When I came in crying, Grandma went and got this small handbasket she used to keep under the kitchen sink. She called it her basket of tricks.
Matt smiled and nodded his head. “Wow, I remember that basket. When I was a kid, she told me she kept all kinds of magical stuff in there.”
“She did. She had me sit on her lap and started dabbing my graze with these tiny cobweb balls. She told me cobwebs were once used by Roman soldiers to clean their wounds after battle. The silk had lots of vitamin K in it. After she told me it was one of the first antiseptics ever used to keep nasty bacteria away, I truly believed she kept magic inside that basket...” Matt watched her suddenly pause, struggling to form words between her sobs. “When they both got sick… I was still so young… I thought if... maybe if I used some of Grandma’s cobweb balls, I could heal them…” She trailed off, her head slumping as she began to cry.
Matt reached over and took a hold of her gently. “They’re in a better place now, Al. You gotta believe that.”
She continued to sob hard. All the years of tragedy and heartbreak, the everyday horrors of her world, her loss, her failures, everything, it all bubbled to the surface once again. The only difference was this time, she was no longer blaming her father for any of it.
The Revered (The Earth Epsilon Wars, Book 3) Page 23
