She twisted the ring handle and pushed, sidestepping as she advanced to avoid firing across friendlies. The warriors’ broad faces came up and around, blank with shock. She took her shot from behind the rearmost seats, hitting the leftmost warrior in the forehead. Hecate hit the other one just below the left eye. Their datapad dropped to the floor. They folded against the forward bulkhead, never drawing the weapons they’d begun fumbling for.
Fish in a barrel!
Suran lurched from her chair, headed for the cockpit door—or for a warrior’s weapon. Hecate shot her down, moving forward up her aisle. It was fair enough to shoot the councillor, Ana thought; there was no room for taking chances. She had her own weapon trained on the cockpit door when it whisked open. Mingatat brandished a small laser. Ana fired at same time he did, the double tap striking him center-mass. He crumpled beside the warriors. His brief spurt of laser fire had started a small fire in the seat beside Hecate. Grinning, she sent Ana a that-was-close look, slapped at the fire, then went for the starboard hatch control.
The Tluaan hostages had their hands over their ears against the noise of the gunfire. Wepps blinked up at her, his pupils dilated, skin pale. Ana skipped past all of them and put another round through the heads of the warriors and enemy councillors. She holstered the weapon.
“Enemy down,” Hecate reported into her suit mic as her ramp unfolded. “Hostages coming out.”
“Get a medic in here,” Ana added.
Wepps told her, “Leave me till last. I’m all right.”
He didn’t look all right. Blood had stiffened the short hair on the back of his head. But she accepted what he’d said. She took Pi by the elbow, helping her up, shoving her gently toward Hecate, then did the same for Vren and Naat. They said nothing as they lumbered away and down the ramp. Hecate headed back into the cargo compartment, no doubt to check on Vazak.
Wepps blinked hard to focus on her, gripping Ana’s arm tight as she helped him stand. He made it to the spot between the councillor’s bodies before he had to rest. “Blow to the head,” he explained.
“You’re doing fine, Sergeant.”
“Thanks to you,” he rasped. “Damn good work.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He gave her a wan smile. “What have a told you about calling me that?”
“Right. My bad.”
He was about to say something else, when his eyes finally focused on something. The cockpit hatch. His jaw dropped in surprise. Ana’s head snapped around. Someone stood there. Another goddamn Tluaan pilot, judging by the uniform. Fowler and Pan had thought they knew how many enemies there were. They’d assumed—
The newcomer had something in his hand, a small cylinder with a depressor on top. His thumb jammed it down as he shouted something like “F’narch ghen thraa!” A light blinked on the device. Ana’s palm brushed her holstered 12-mil before she remembered it was empty. She had another. But what was the point? Shooting the hacker would only make him drop the grenade where he stood. Ana made the only play available, throwing herself sideways and snatching at Wepps as she went, hoping the explosion merely injured them, knowing such hope was stupid.
Her fingers slipped across Wepps’s uniform shirt without finding purchase.
Because Wepps was also moving. Lunging at the hatchway, into the hatchway. He wrapped his arms around the pilot in a bear hug, momentum carrying them through the hatch and onto the cockpit floor.
Ana had landed on hip and shoulder. She rolled in the gore by the warriors’ bodies, curling away from the blast, protecting her head. When it came, the explosion bucked the floor, made her bite her tongue, seemed to suck her hearing right out of her head.
But it left her alive.
She unfurled herself. Smoke curled from the open cockpit hatch. A fan-shaped spray of metal and plastic now mixed with the chum of body fluids and body pieces already spread across the passenger compartment.
“My God,” she said. Or thought she said. The only sound in her ears was a muted hiss.
My God. My God mygodmygodmygodmygod …
Had that just happened? It had just happened. But it wasn’t meant to end this way. The mission was done. Under control. Things weren’t meant to go turd-shaped after they were under control.
The room turned around her. Hecate’s face appeared. Blurry. There—and gone again. The shuttle moved. The explosion-stained cockpit hatchway slid away from her and to the left, Suran’s body bumped her and the carpeted floor scraped her suit as she slid across it. Then she was out on the ramp. Moving. She was moving, not the shuttle. Moving because Chipper had grabbed hold of a suit pouch to lug her out. Umbrano appeared, passed her running, headed up the ramp. As Chipper dragged her around the side of an Assured skiff, Stines and Bradstock also appeared, going for the shuttle.
Nothing to see there, she wanted to tell them. Nothing but bits of your sergeant and the bastard who killed him.
Chipper set her against the stumpy landing skid of the skiff and knelt, looking her over with alarm sharpening his dark, dark eyes.
“Wepps,” she said. Or tried to. She felt the word come out her mouth, but it sounded like the muffled bleat from a distant horn.
Chipper glanced the way they’d come, then put a bare finger to her lips, silencing her. She tasted iron and salt on his skin. Her lips were slick with his sweat or her blood. His gaze ran over her. His hands, she realized, were on her suit again, activating the external telltales. He squinted at them, cheeks puffed and lips pursing with relief. He saw no damage.
I made it. I made it.
Wepps hadn’t. He’d thrown himself against that grenade and the bogey holding it, thrown himself into the cockpit—thrown his life away—to give her a chance.
Chipper wrapped a hand around one side of her head, expression softening.
“Wepps saved me,” she told him, hoping the words had formed properly.
Chipper’s face fell. He knew.
Then he was gone. A corpsman had taken his place, inspecting her all over again. She let him, squeezing her eyelids shut, wondering how long till her hearing came back, wondering how long till she felt something for the sacrifice that had just been made for her.
Wondering at the fact that a Confed Peacekeeper would trade his life for hers.
7
As Chipper darted forward, the ball came in hard and high from his left, perfectly timed and pitched for him to raise a hand and have it land there as he charged on. Drawing it down to his chest, he brushed by Chandrasekhara who’d moved in for the block. “Lānata hai,” she cursed in Hindi, snatching pointlessly at his T-shirt. Chipper was already launching the ball toward the hoop. He planted his feet on the half-court and watched the ball arc above the ring then fall gracefully toward it. “Winning point!” Ana announced from somewhere behind him as the ball sailed on. Chipper’s grin melted away as it came down on the rim, ran around it once, and flew out to the side. It bounced away toward the running treadmills over in the Rec Hall’s corner. “Goddamn it!” Ana spat.
Someone slapped Chipper over the back of the head. At first he thought it was her. But she was standing with hands on knees where she’d tossed him the ball from over on the side.
Chandra had struck him, a Peacer “happy-slap,” since his miss meant she and Westermann had won the game. “Bahuta baṛhiyā,” she laughed and rubbed his head where she’d smacked it. Because Oceana had a large Indian population, he knew enough Hindi to know he was being congratulated sarcastically.
He jerked his head away from her hand and said, “You grabbed my shirt. It’s a foul.”
“Only thing foul is your shooting, hombre,” said Ana, dropping into a crouch on the sideline.
“Wow. And whose side are you on?”
“Wish I was on theirs as it turns out.”
Westermann sauntered over from the back of the court, a limp still apparent in her stride. The limp was understandable given she’d been lasered in the thigh by a pirate a month earlier. Her rate of healing was “pret
ty damn good,” as she put it, the accelerated-muscle-tissue-regrowth treatments working well. Getting up close, she made a kissy face, crooning soothing sounds in her throat. “Poor little boy. Can’t beat Chandra, who only started playing basketball two months ago. Or a woman with a gimpy leg.”
Chipper shoved her gently away.
“Coffee time?” Chandra asked her.
“Booze time.” Westermann dropped her voice. “Hangar bar’s open again until 0100.”
“Oh, squat!” Chandra added, rearing back in realization. “If we’d thought to bet on this game, these two punks would be buying us those drinks.”
“Very good point.” Westermann grinned at her opposing team. “Jogi, Chip, whaddya say? One more game? Winners take twenty francs off the losers?”
“I’m up for that,” Chipper said. They’d only lost two games out of three. Wasn’t like he and Ana couldn’t win.
Ana shook her head emphatically, rising to her feet and staring toward the far corner of the Rec Hall. “If I wanted to throw money away, I’d join the poker game.”
Chuckling, the other women moseyed toward the exit.
Chipper joined Ana at the sideline. “Wasn’t the greatest shot to finish on, but we gave it a try. That’s what counts, ey?”
“Winning’s what counts, guy.”
“Well. Okay. Yeah. I guess.” He rubbed the back of his freshly crewcut head where Chandra had slapped it. “Thanks for joining in anyway. My only other choice of partner was …” His gaze drifted over to Stines running hard on one of the treadmills.
“Whatever.” She jerked her head to the diagonally opposite corner of the big chamber. “I was serious about losing money over there.”
A small crowd had gathered around comms officer Sintopas’s latest poker game. When the basketball 2-on-2s had started, there’d been five people at his table. Three remained: Sintopas, the Devilfly interceptor pilot Berderhan, and one of the ship’s stewards. Sintopas’s face wore an expression of bloody murder. Judging by the whooping and arm-waving that Berderhan was doing, it wasn’t hard to figure out who was on a winning streak.
Ana said, “Love to join that action but that pilot’s got a pilot’s luck.”
Not enjoying this sour side of Ana’s personality, Chipper was eager to change the subject and brighten her mood. Since the raid on the Domain Surface facility, she’d been more relaxed with him. Warmer. What he couldn’t tell was whether it was mere friendship developing, or an opening for something better. He said, “You hear there’s message privileges soon? XO said we’ll be able to send a ten-second “I’m okay” message out. No details of course.”
Ana hmphed. “Fowler didn’t tell us.”
“You can send one to your folks.” He glanced around and dropped his voice. “Your friends, I mean.” No one was meant to know she was in clandestine contact with her political refugee parents now in Confederation space.
“I can’t log that, guy. Fowler catches me messaging someone on Foucault, he’ll put it together. But … if you had a spare code like last time …” She snorted and batted at the air, swatting the thought from existence. “Forget it. I’m not putting you in that spot again.”
“Happy to help,” he said. Though it was dangerous for him to give a foreign agent access to his comms codes, he meant it.
“I’m not sending ’em anything. You check your received messages and I’ll bet you a hundred franks, the assholes haven’t responded to the one we sent them.”
“That’s because there hasn’t been time for a return signal out here. We’re two-hundred-sixty lightyears from the closest—”
She interrupted, pretending to spit. “Don’t matter. They don’t give a rat’s blanket about my welfare.”
“Ana. I know your friends haven’t been part of your life for a long time—”
“For exactly half my life.”
“—but maybe if you kill them with kindness, they’ll want to be.”
“Or they’ll take advantage of me. More advantage of me. Do you know how much money I slipped them last year? How much it cost me to get that money to them? How risky it was? My money. My risk. Never anything coming back the other way, guy. Ever. Not a thank you. Not a we’re thinking of you. Assholes.” While he scratched around his brain for an adequate reply, she added, “You’re trying to help me, Chip, I know. But if us Xerxians get our own messaging privileges, I’ll pass on it. Like I always do. Only person I need is right here.”
As her hand moved, he found himself hoping she would point at him. Instead, the hand swung up and tapped her sternum. He felt his own heart sinking.
“Me, myself, I,” she said. “And now, me myself and I are gonna go watch Sintopas lose the rest of his money. Then I’ll take a nap. See you on hangar deck later?” No invitation to come watch the game with her. That hurt.
He said, “See you soon.”
She nodded and left. That was it.
He stopped himself from watching her walk. Staring was a good way to start rumors. Instead, he went looking for the basketball so he could secure it away. He was stooping for it when Stines spoke to him from his running machine.
“You and the Silver win your game?”
Silver. Chipper felt his temperature rise. Short for ‘Long John Silvers,’ that derogatory name for Xerxians had seemed funny when he was a boy. Now it was idiotic and bigoted.
“When you gonna get it through your head they’re not pirates? They’re Tacticals. They’re like us.” He bounced the ball a couple of times, wanting to bounce it off Stines’s thick head.
“Not like us, skittlebrain.” Stines slowed the speed on his machine in order to talk better.
“Yes, like us. The ones on this ship are colleagues. And you know what you’re gonna do, Stines? You’re gonna make it up to her.”
“Her?” Stines managed a backwards look at the rowing machine where a subdued-looking Hecate was also working out. “Don’t you mean they?”
“They, then.”
“I’m not making nothing up to them or anyone.” He raised his voice, making sure Hecate heard. “Nothing to make up.”
Hecate swore and let go of the rowing handles so they clanged and clattered against the framework.
“Back atcha,” Stines told her, facing front again.
“You’re sticking with your story?” Chipper asked him.
“Not a story, sonny john, truth. I passed the Inquiry. It didn’t happen the way they said it did, and you’re a fool to let ’em muck with your mind that way.”
Hecate’s language was caustic as she climbed off the machine and stooped for her towel. To Chipper, she said, “He’ll get his, Big Body, don’t worry.”
“Whoah! Hear that? She threatened me. You’re my witness, Chip.”
Chipper bounced the ball a couple more times. “Didn’t hear a thing. Except a loudmouth creating trouble instead of fixing it.”
Stines shrugged and turned up his speed, conversation over.
Chipper took the ball to its bin and locked it down. Although loss of shipgrav was rare, regulations were regulations. And the way the Domain Surface virus recently messed with it had confirmed why the regulation was there. As if his thoughts had summoned the virus gremlins, the Hall lights flickered in a rippled sequence, and a gust of chilled air puffed from the vent above him.
Gremlins, all right, he thought and headed across the room. It was time to hit the showers. The Tluaan supply ship was due in an hour and he was rostered to stand guard on hangar deck.
In the far corner, Berderhan hooted again before taking a bow to a smattering of applause from the crowd. Sintopas scooped up cards with an expression like thunder and very little cash in front of him.
And Ana was nowhere to be seen.
Chris Gregory gave Corporal Tukimatu a nod as the big Peacer headed for the exit. Even that single second’s politeness offered some respite from the exercise Grace was forcing on him.
His minder gave him an I’m waiting look. He took a deep breath and del
ivered another front kick to the kick pads she held.
“Nice,” she said. “Left leg’s getting stronger. Try the right again.”
Gregory dug deep for a delaying tactic. There was one he’d learned from the greatest negotiator he’d ever met—his daughter Belle. All he needed was to dredge up a question. Any question would do. “Why am I practicing kicking?”
“Because you’re a terrible boxer. Come on, right leg.”
“But I’m generally not attired for kicking people in daily life. Normally, I’m wearing dress shoes.”
“You’re also normally not wearing boxing gloves. Trust me: kicking people with tight-toed shoes won’t hurt as much as bare knuckle boxing.”
“But I’ll never—”
“A right kick now, Mr. Ambassador.”
Gregory raised a hand. “Just let me …” He lowered himself into a squat to catch his breath better.
Movement drew his attention—and Grace’s—to Piers as the pilot ambled by. The Rec Hall had been busy since before Gregory and his team had arrived. Despite the occasional flickering of lights and issues with aircon, the crew seemed to be getting on top of the ship’s problems. In the wake of a tough two weeks, people were eager to capitalize on their downtime.
I’d prefer to capitalize with a martini, some calm music, and a good book.
Piers had a towel over his shoulder and looked the same as he had when he entered. Gregory’s hair was plastered to his scalp by sweat; Piers’s remained dry and perfectly styled. No sweat spots marred his shirt. He offered them both a wink.
“Finished your three bicep curls have you?” Grace roasted him.
“Made it to four today,” Piers replied without breaking stride. “Pretty pooped. See you tough people later.”
Grace watched him go with a shake of her head. But there was a sparkle to her eyes that Gregory had rarely seen in the years he’d known her. “Please don’t tell me there’s shenanigans afoot aboard my official vessel.”
Assured (Envoys Book 2) Page 8
