by Elle E. Ire
“By undercover ops? Is that who Carl belongs to? I didn’t even know we had such a division. What do they do?” Besides kill people who are a threat to members of the Fighting Storm. That one I already know.
“I don’t know the specifics.”
I give her a sideways look.
“Really,” she says, holding up both hands in surrender, then returning one to the control stick. “That wasn’t part of the gag command Carl hit me with regarding their Infinity Bay mission.”
She means David. I don’t comment.
“I’m free to talk about it now. Guess once the objective was accomplished, the compulsion… expired? Regardless, they don’t sound like something I want to belong to. Give me a clear-cut objective and a clean face-to-face fight and I’m good. I get the impression those guys do a lot of skulking around and shoot when their targets can’t see it coming. I have enough problems with my conscience as it is.”
That is a massive understatement. Vick examines everything she does from a dozen angles and beats herself up over anything she perceives to be morally or ethically questionable, often to extremes. It’s one of the things I love about her, how conscientious she is, but her guilt is often unfounded and can be a lot for both of us to handle.
Our yacht breaks free of the atmosphere, the view outside the forward display screen switching from the deep navy of Infinity Bay’s night to the pure black of space broken only by stars. No sooner does it shift than we’re rocked by an impact to our stern. I give a little squeak and pull my restraints tighter while Vick changes the screen to a rear view.
The display fills with the image of a Sunfire battle transport, at least three times our vessel’s size, its hull bristling with weapons. I can’t name the make or model or rattle off its specifications the way Vick can, but from her grim expression, we’re in trouble.
A flash flares out from one of their weapons, and we’re hit again, harder and at closer range as the transport closes the gap between us. Red lights flash on our control console, alarms begin to whoop, and I’m having flashbacks to Vick’s assessment of our little yacht when we first left Girard Moon Base: decent shielding “for a civilian craft” and no weapons.
Flipping the viewscreen to forward again, Vick attempts evasive maneuvers, jerking us first left, then right, then up at a sharp angle, but the Sunfire ship matches us move for move, as evidenced by yet another hit on our stern. Something hisses from the engine compartment, and there’s a loud tearing of metal like the opening of the universe’s largest aluminum can.
“Why didn’t they just take us on their ship?” I ask. Surely one of their vessels would have more defensive and offensive options.
“I’m not sure. But I’m guessing they all arrived in fighters. Those are two-seater jobs. There wouldn’t be extra space, and besides, they take two experienced pilots to operate one safely. They didn’t plan for us. Their mission wasn’t supposed to directly involve us. The Sunfires showing up was unexpected.”
“Then where’s that backup ship Carl talked about?” I brace myself against the armrest to keep my hip from banging into it. Again. I’ve got bruises on bruises. “I thought he said a Storm fighter was going to give us some cover.”
Before Vick can answer me, there’s a new sound, like hail pelting a tin roof or marbles rolling around on a metal deck. I look up at the screen to see thousands of tiny bits of debris striking our forward shields, each piece flaring like a starburst before it disintegrates and vanishes. We’re flying through an entire cloud of the stuff, some chunks much larger and almost identifiable but not quite… until a space-suited body, minus the helmet, floats by.
I turn my head away, but not before I see the blue-tinged, swollen facial features, frost almost entirely obscuring the sightless eyes.
Vick’s hands clench on the steering lever. “I think we just found it.”
Chapter 43: Vick—Checkmate
I AM done.
“Turn on the communications transmission scanner,” I say, pointing over Kelly’s head and to her right. Without looking, she reaches up where I’m pointing. I get it. She doesn’t want to spot another floating body. It’s not sitting well with me either, considering those Storm soldiers manning the fighter died because of me.
“This one?” she says, wrapping her slim fingers around a switch.
“Yeah.”
She flips it. The speakers crackle with static, the channels open but having nothing to lock onto. I tap into VC1’s stored memory and rattle off the string of alphanumerics Carl gave me for hacking the Sunfires’ communications.
“—pursuit of targets’ vessel. It has sustained significant damage. Should we proceed?” The female Sunfire’s voice is precise and efficient with no indication of excitement or emotion.
“Estimation of time to disable and board the vessel?” a male voice inquires, presumably from the team on the surface or perhaps a command ship farther out and en route, which is just what we don’t need.
“Estimate minimum of thirty minutes. Target vessel possesses significant shielding capabilities, no weapons. Target pilot demonstrates high levels of skill in evasion tactics.”
“Target pilot is a computer,” the Sunfires’ commanding officer states.
I sigh, executing a perfect barrel roll to the right to evade another salvo of weapons’ fire. Kelly makes a small gagging sound. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“Proceed with disabling and boarding process?”
A pause. “Negative. Two Storm attack cruisers en route, ETA fifteen minutes.”
“Yes!” Kelly pumps her fist in the air.
I’m a little less optimistic. The Sunfires have shown their desperation in coming after me repeatedly, risking their reputation with other mercenary groups by not showing solidarity when they aren’t contracted to work against us. They’ve earned fines, done jail time back on Girard Moon Base for their actions. If they can’t disable and board our ship and take us, then I have a sinking feeling they’ll—
“Destroy the civilian vessel, then report back to base.” The commanding officer’s voice cuts the connection.
This sucks.
“Vick… what are we going to do?” Kelly says, her fingers wrapped in a white-knuckled grip around both armrests.
I use VC1 to pull up local astronomical charts, searching for anything that might help or hide us. The results are limited to one choice.
“Something so insane they’ll never see it coming and never be able to duplicate it,” I tell her and point the yacht in the direction of Elektra4.
It’s a mad chase to the electrified purple-and-green forest world. Without cover from the now destroyed Storm fighter, our civilian vessel can’t hope to outrun their military-grade transport, but I link with VC1, and together we dodge most of the direct force of their laser blasts. That’s not to say we sustain no further damage. Every partial hit costs us. Halfway there we’re down to three-quarter shields, one engine is faltering, the interior lights are flickering on and off, the alarms are deafening, and I’m worried about hull integrity. At least the life support and artificial gravity are fully functional for now.
We’re about five minutes from making atmosphere when my reaction times slow, the evasive maneuvers I’m attempting becoming more and more last-second, my ability to manipulate the controls turning sluggish.
I stifle a yawn.
Oh. Fuck.
I need an adrenaline burst, now, I subvocalize to VC1.
She hasn’t communicated with words since the middle of my overload. We joined in tandem automatically to fly this thing, but I’m not sure how recovered she is. If I’m anything to go by, then the answer is “not very.”
No response from the AI, but she flashes an image of a fuel gauge on my internal display, arrow pointing below the E for empty. Okay, time for plan B.
“Kel,” I say, voice tight with trying to focus. “You need to grab the medkit from the sleeping quarters.”
“What!” She’s barely able to keep her seat w
ith my crazy flying. Now I’m asking her to stand and walk aft, retrieve the kit, and return without being turned to jelly by me slamming her into a bulkhead.
“I promise I won’t flip us until you get back. I need the kit—” My eyelids close, suddenly too heavy to keep open. I shake my head hard until my thoughts clear, but it won’t last long. “Right fucking now, Kel. I mean it.”
She stares at me for a half second. Then her eyes widen when she realizes exactly why I’m asking. Without another word, she snaps her restraints free and bolts for the cockpit hatch, careening into it headfirst while I dodge another blast.
“Sorry!” I shout to her, but she’s through the hatch and gone.
I consider shutting down the alarms and flashing warning lights, but they may be the only things keeping me awake right now, so I leave them blaring. My body has used up all its adrenaline reserves.
Kelly returns a few seconds later, carrying the medkit in one hand, rubbing her shoulder with the other. I dodge again, then take the kit from her, flip open the latches, and fumble through it, but my dexterity is shot along with everything else. I thrust the square white box back at her. “Adrenaline. Now. Use the scanner to figure out the recommended dose and triple it. If there are any other stimulants in there, hit me with those too.”
I hear her snap something free of the kit. A moment later a pale blue light passes over my upper body as she scans my vitals and chemical makeup. “Vick, you’ve already got a lot of drugs in your system. I don’t know what that will do to—”
“I know exactly what it will do to both of us if you don’t do what I say right now!” I yell. Or I try to. The last words are cut off by a massive, jaw-cracking yawn. My eyes slide shut. Oblivion beckons. If I go completely under, I’m out for twelve hours, not that we’ll survive anywhere near that long. I know this, but even the threat of imminent destruction is not enough to fight off the powerful sedative in the blue-tipped syringe.
“Vick!”
My eyes snap open. The proximity alarm goes off. I slam the back of my hand against the steering lever, jerking us to the left. The blast of energy passes by us, grazing the remaining shields with a hiss-pop.
Kelly’s got a syringe out of the kit. The auto-med calibrator wirelessly retrieves my data from the medscanner and fills it with a yellowish-green liquid. Kelly squints at the amount, then manually overrides the device and triples it. Warning lights flash on the casing and information scrolls across a tiny screen facing Kelly.
“You could go into cardiac arrest,” she says in a voice just loud enough to be heard. She can’t roll up a sleeve on my tactical gear, so she holds the needle next to my neck, preparing to plunge it home. “I could be killing you right now.”
I take a deep breath. “I’m pretty tough. VC1 will do what she can. You’re giving us the only chance we have of surviving right now.”
Her shaking hands steady. She injects the medication into my system.
All hell breaks loose in my body.
The adrenaline mixed with some other stimulant shoots up my heart rate and literally slams me back in the pilot’s chair. I suck in a loud, sharp, painful breath, air raking through my throat and over my vocal cords, producing a high-pitched wheeze. Violent tremors wrack my limbs, and I have to grip the steering lever with both hands just to maintain my hold on it at all. I fight the urge to throw up, pass out, scream, or all three while still trying to bank, turn, roll, and whatever else I need the ship to do to avoid destruction.
In the middle of all this, we hit the outer atmosphere of Elektra4.
Thunder booms, loud enough to carry through the hull. Lightning flashes, filling the forward screens with purple-white light that leaves me half-blinded as it fades. Gale-force winds buffet our doomed craft from side to side, and our one good engine cuts out, leaving us with a partial and nothing more. I attempt to coast the updrafts, gliding, then sharply dropping, then jerking upward like some combination of white-water rafting and roller coasters.
The laser blast hits cease, telling me that the Sunfires are smarter than we are. They didn’t follow us. My original intention had been to dip into the atmosphere, lose the Sunfires, and reenter space on Elektra4’s far side, but there’s no way I can pull out of the planet’s gravity well on half an engine.
More streaks of lightning arc past the yacht’s nose, jagged and twisting in a horrible but somehow beautiful display of natural deadly force. Even in my tortured, hyperalert state, my chest aching and my limbs twitching, I’m still mesmerized by the sight of it.
We’re losing altitude fast. I slam my fist on the scanner while Kelly refastens her restraints. Everything on the yacht is fritzing out one system at a time, but the scanner locks onto one of the scientific research stations, its guidance beacon transmitting coordinates to the ship’s navigational array. I instruct the autopilot to do its best to get us down as close to the research facility as possible. I activate the automatic distress signal.
Then I flop back into my seat and hang on.
Seconds before we’re going to hit the ground, Kelly reaches out her hand for mine. I lift mine from the armrest just as a bolt of lightning cuts through our shields and the forward hull as if they were nonexistent. The electricity slams into me, the implants and other metal/mechanical parts drawing it like magnets. Every muscle spasms. My body goes rigid. It’s so bright I can see my skeletal frame beneath the skin of my hands, lighting me up from within like a fucking X-ray before my vision whites out and the world goes black.
Kelly screams. I hear and feel the cracking and snapping as the shuttle breaks through the treetops and branches, plummeting toward the ground, but it slows our descent. The final impact is almost anticlimactic, a sudden muffled whoomp, then silence as every system on the yacht dies.
I’m not unconscious. That would have been welcome. Searing pain races along every nerve like the fuse leading to the explosive, up my legs, my arms, through my torso, culminating in my head with screaming internal brilliance. I have one quick view of my function monitors, every one of them in the red, before they all go dark and fade away.
Burnout.
Chapter 44: Kelly—Hardest Decision
VICK IS alone.
A haze of red shows through my closed eyelids. We’re no longer moving. I can tell that much. At some point I must have passed out, maybe when we hit the ground, though I have no memory of the impact. The last thing I remember is reaching for Vick just as—
Lightning. She was struck by lightning.
I force my eyes open. Emergency glow-strips bathe the cockpit in a bloodred hue. Metal panels dangle by bent corners on the sides and ceiling, exposed circuitry sparking and fizzing. Turning my head elicits pops and cracks from the bones in my neck. I spot Vick, slumped over in the pilot’s chair, unmoving. The odd lighting casts strange shadows over her body, and I can’t tell whether she’s breathing or not.
Her pain hits my empathic senses, making me writhe in my seat, but I laugh despite the torment. Pain is good. It means Vick is still alive.
I push my bruised body up and out of the copilot’s chair, then crumple to the deck. My legs won’t support me. And my chest hurts with every breath, suggesting badly bruised or broken ribs. Crawling on hands and knees, I grab the duffel lying behind the pilot’s seat, the one Carl packed with Vick’s gear. It must have fallen out of one of the now open storage compartments.
The zipper breaks when I yank too hard, and I end up ripping it open, then pawing through it, tossing all her belongings to scatter across the deckplates. My heart wants me to go to her now, but I’ll be useless in my current state. Instead, I keep digging until I find the syringe she keeps for me, the emotion dampener I need whenever she pushes my Talent too far, and this is definitely too far.
I jab the needle through my slacks and into my right thigh, breathing a sigh of relief as the medication spreads a cooling calm throughout my nervous system. The pain fades like sound muffled beneath a heavy blanket, still there but manageable. When I at
tempt to stand again, I gain my feet.
One shaky step brings me to Vick’s side. Grasping her by the shoulders, I lift her slumped form and lean her back in the chair… and gasp.
Red, angry burns, some of them blistered, cover her face and hands, disappearing beneath her combat gear. I fear they’re everywhere, but I can only see where her skin is exposed. This close, I can hear the rapid, rasping breaths she takes. She’s shaking, not the same as her earlier tremors, but as if with cold, her teeth chattering. When I touch my fingers to hers, she feels like ice.
“Vick?” I whisper, hesitant and scared. “Hey, can you hear me?”
Her eyelids flutter, then open, and I suck in a sharp breath. Everything, the whites, pupils—her eyes are completely black, like whatever they were manufactured from has been charred. She can’t possibly be able to see with them. She closes her eyes. “You need to go,” she says between breaths. Every word sounds like an effort.
If she’s asking me to leave, there’s only one explanation. “You’re dying,” I say, wishing the words didn’t make it so real.
“Yeah. Soon. Go.”
No…. Not after everything we’ve been through. That’s… that’s not fair. Even as I think it, I know how naïve it is, and I don’t care. “What about VC1? Can’t she do anything? Or the Storm ships that are coming. They’ll help you.”
Vick shifts, turning her head toward me, though her eyes are still closed. She groans. “VC1’s gone. Destroyed. Lightning. A few functions are operating, but they’re failing. The Storm can’t land without… a specially shielded ship. It’ll be days… weeks. My organs are shutting down. This won’t be immediate, not like the courtroom at Girard Moon Base, but it won’t be long. Go.”
The courtroom, when I shut her off with a string of numbers and accidentally killed her. It was fast. So fast the empathic bond didn’t have time to start pulling me into death with her before I managed to “restart” her with another code. But this would be different.
