by Lyn Gala
“But... why?” He blew out a breath and before Tyce could answer, John continued. “You want to make Ribelo economically worthless. But without more terraforming, your own people will go hungry. You’ll suffer more than Earth.”
Tyce had the same concerns. He was the author of the strategy, and he still questioned the sanity of the plan. He knew it would work, but he didn’t think the human cost was worth paying.
Ama answered. “We’ve survived worse. We will survive this. And when our world is too expensive to hold, we will have our freedom.”
“They’ll bring in new equipment,” John said, but he sounded unsure. He should. Tyce knew how many resources had gone into the war—how many lives, how many ships, how much raw material. Politicians wouldn’t invest more into a world that had already cost so much. And if they did, Ribelians had proved more than capable of sabotage and terrorism. Too capable.
John rubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck. This is your plan, isn’t it? That’s why Command committed so many ships to tracking you. They want to make you pay.”
That didn’t make sense because Command couldn’t know their strategy, but right now, Tyce had other worries. “John, what do you know about the Imshee?”
John kept his silence for a few more seconds before sighing. “They’re powerful, powerful enough that they blew up a Rownt ship. They killed the Grandmothers, the kids, everyone. The Rownt who trade with them are cautious. I don’t know much else.”
“That’s not helpful.”
John shrugged. “It’s all I know about their weapons. The Rownt respect their ability with genetics; they altered Lieutenant Munson so he’s around seven feet tall, and they almost killed two humans because the oxygen levels were turned down too low when they met to discuss trade. That’s the grand total of Command intelligence on the Imshee.”
“That seems rather...” Ama struggled for a word before adding, “Inadequate.”
Yoss snorted.
Tyce couldn’t think of one thing to add. Command didn’t know shit about these guys. “Other than a weird reaction to primitive hunting methods, is there any reason why they would target us? Are they trying to reclaim parts of the ship? Have they shown interest in the mechanical rooms? Are they holding certain areas?”
John shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Do your soldiers still control the same areas or not?” Tyce waited for an answer that made sense. An ominous grimace twisted John’s features.
“If my soldiers were talking to me, I would know.” John admitted. “A little less than half the crew and the majority of the infantry mutinied. They took the few supplies we had and left. The soldiers I have left...”
Shit. So the ship had three distinct human camps, and the aliens could pick them off. This was bad. This was so very, very bad.
Chapter Seventeen
JOHN LED THEM BACK toward the place where his soldiers had nearly gotten their asses handed to them. All those Command soldiers losing to one alien inspired the sort of fear that Tyce preferred to repress. A sergeant brought his weapon up as they came around the curve of the corridor. “Plat, lower your weapon,” John ordered.
“Sir!” He didn’t lower the weapon, but he did give John an almost desperate look.
“I know.” John stopped near the sergeant. “But I’m ordering you to lower the weapon.” The sergeant slowly complied. He might not have liked John’s orders, but he wasn’t going to flout them. “Come on,” John said. Yoss grunted and leaned against the wall. His body language screamed his unwillingness to walk into a room full of armed Command soldiers. Tyce glanced at Ama to see how she planned to handle him, but she followed John into the room behind the sergeant.
Tyce refused to allow her to face Command alone, so he followed, leaving Yoss to guard their retreat. The second he entered the elongated room, he smelled blood.
The doctor who had examined Tyce had been crouching on the floor between two injured soldiers, but now he stood. He clutched an instrument and braced his feet as if he was about to fly into battle to defend his patients. It made Tyce’s heart ache that a good person like the doctor saw them as threats to helpless men and women.
And there were far too many injured. “Were there more aliens?” Tyce asked. Patients’ faces and hands were burned. Several had dried blood around their noses or mouths. One woman had a gory bandage covering an eye. And in the far corner, three perfectly still bodies lay in shadows.
“No.” John’s voice was flat. Cold. Tyce wondered if the others could hear the fear. Movement caught his eye, and he turned to see a familiar man bring up his weapon. He was the guard who had taken Tyce from the room of stink and slime to the cell.
“I know you would rather shoot us, but we have an alien enemy we need to focus on.” Tyce said.
John turned around. “Specialist Wiles, stand down.”
Wiles lowered his weapon, but he kept a firm grip on it. Tyce placed himself between Wiles and Ama.
Sergeant Plat spoke from his spot next to the door. “We would rather arrest you and take you to Earth to stand trial.”
“We still have Imshee to worry about,” John said, cutting off the entire conversation. He stepped between Plat and Tyce. “We’re the smallest of the three human groups on this ship. We need an alliance or we’re going to be the first wiped out by the Imshee.”
“But them?” Wiles looked at Tyce like he was a bug badly in need of being stepped on. “Sir,” he added as an afterthought.
“Would you rather play nice with Acosta and his group?” John demanded. That was a name Tyce knew. So the asshole who had tried shoving Tyce into the ship’s wiring had led a coup.
“I would rather all these idiots were still in my brig,” Wiles said in a flat tone.
“Then we work with the Ribelians and worry about the rest once the ship is secure.” John turned to the doctor. “We’re not safe here. Can we move the injured?”
A hint of a grimace twisted the doctor’s face as he studied the makeshift infirmary. “Safely, no. But if we move slowly, we can minimize the danger. We’ll need three people per stretcher.”
Tyce could count as well as the next person. Three soldiers were dead, five were down, and of those, two appeared critical. That meant that they needed fifteen to carry stretchers even if they left the dead behind, but there were fewer than twenty people in the room, and that included him and Ama. And Yoss who was still in the hall.
John turned to them. “We left another group to hold the mechanical room. The Imshee seem focused on taking that room, so we put a priority on holding it.”
“Then why were you out here?” Ama asked.
John bristled. “We were trying to pin the enemy down,” he said. “We can’t win by locking ourselves in a room when the enemy has more resources.”
“John,” Tyce said softly.
John threw up his hands in disgust before studying the room. Tyce imagined the click when John noticed the crew. Immediately all the frustration—all emotion of any kind—vanished behind a brittle façade.
“We need to get back to the mechanical room and regroup,” John said.
Ama frowned. Left to her own devices, she would’ve probably pulled out her lecture on emotions being healthy expressions of human experience. Some rare bit of common sense must have convinced her that Command soldiers wouldn’t appreciate her brand of assistance. She walked to the doorway where Sergeant Plat still stood guard. “Yoss, Tyce, take point so we can get back to this mechanical room,” she ordered.
“Plat, go with them,” John ordered.
Plat’s jaw muscle bulged, but he didn’t protest the order.
“I’ll take rear,” Ama offered.
“Hell, no,” Tyce blurted. She pressed her lips together and got a stubborn expression, but Tyce was used to ignoring her pissiness. “You can help with the stretchers.”
“I am perfectly capable of handling a weapon.” That was an understatement because she wa
s the best gunner on the Dragon and could challenge Yoss’s scores with handheld weapons, but she was not expendable, and anyone on point or rear guard would be in the greatest danger. However, Tyce didn’t want to paint a target on her back by naming her as the captain of the Dragon.
“You’re not as young as you were,” Tyce said instead. Ama would make him pay for that remark later, but Tyce had to defend her by any means possible, and John had a protective streak, or at least he used to. Hell, Tyce used to be the same. If someone got a few gray hairs, he had considered it a duty to protect them. Then he’d met Harmond. Apparently a man could be a gray-haired grandfather and still be a sadistic, murdering rapist.
John nodded. “Harris, Rickles, you take rear guard. Ma’am, you can take center guard or help with stretchers.”
She glared at Tyce but didn’t argue as two Command soldiers passed Plat. Not willing to trust Yoss’s patience, Tyce hurried after them. If he was standing between Yoss and any soldiers, there was a reduced chance of Yoss opening fire.
Once the positions had been worked out, John got his people moving. Unlike the idiots who had guarded Tyce earlier, most of these soldiers seemed at least minimally competent, although several were too young to serve on a ship. Even before Tyce had changed sides, Earth had been lowering the age requirements for new recruits, but there was one young woman who seemed as if she should’ve been sitting in a cafeteria complaining about her Spanish teacher, not fighting aliens.
Yoss studied the Command people with unvarnished hate. The doctor came out with the most serious patients on litters, and Yoss demanded, “Can we go?”
Plat glanced back at John, avoiding any eye contact with the Dragon crew. When John gave the nod, Plat headed down the corridor, his weapon at the ready. Yoss kept back ten or fifteen feet, and Tyce fell back ten feet behind Yoss, leaving him free to retreat if needed and providing a buffer between Yoss and the bulk of the Command crew.
Tyce expected an attack at any time, but they moved through corridors and stairs in eerie silence. The only sound was the dull thud of boots on the cushioned floor and the occasional groan from an injured soldier. The sense of fear faded as they reached levels that looked familiar. In most ships, the various parts looked the same, although officer territory had more space and was generally a little cleaner.
However, this ship broke those rules. The lower decks were not only narrower, but the facilities were different. The beds were a fraction of the size of the one bed he’d seen on this level. Below, water and protein sources were easily distinguished by arched bony structures and easily accessed piping. But on these upper levels, there were no alcoves and the walls were much more textured with designs that appeared almost tattooed on the skin of the ship.
No doubt an anthropologist could’ve drawn some insightful conclusions, but why would aliens below decks require water sources and the ones above not? Plat held up a hand, gesturing for them to hold position. He then hurried out of sight behind the curve of the ship.
“Does he think we’ll follow his orders?” Yoss asked as he moved to follow.
Tyce caught his arm. “For now we work with them, not against them,” Tyce said, although he wasn’t any happier than Yoss. Maybe that signal had been because the sergeant had seen danger, and maybe he was off conspiring with Acosta to steal the last of John’s soldiers.
John came up from behind. “Trouble?” he asked.
“Your man,” Yoss’s aggravation toward the sergeant was offensively clear, “told us to wait here.”
John nodded. “We’re close to the mechanical room. He probably wanted to warn them that we’re coming in with allies and injured.”
Yoss turned to face John. “We’re not allies.”
John stared at Yoss for a second. “Unless we all want to end up dead, we are for now.”
“Yoss, enough,” Ama said as she joined them. “Why are we stopped?”
Tyce laid out the options. “Either Plat is making sure our new allies don’t accidentally shoot us or he’s conspiring with someone to make sure they do shoot. Take your pick.”
She gave him a small smile. “Your lack of faith in the universe is a sign that your spiritual teacher has failed.”
“Yeah, no doubt you’d say something wise about how getting shot or not getting shot are the same in the grand scheme of the universe,” Tyce said. Yoss snorted. If there was one topic they could agree on, it was their mutual annoyance at some of Amali ’s philosophical tendencies.
“I probably would,” she said mildly. “Sub-commander Burden, a number of your people suffer. Perhaps you should have a word with them.”
John glanced back. Only the doctor and three Command soldiers, including one unconscious on a litter, were visible before the corridor curved away. After looking at them for a few minutes, John sighed. “Perhaps I shouldn’t.”
Ama leaned closer. “People need to know their leaders hear them and see their suffering.” Tyce was fairly sure that was the summary of the whole war of the colonies.
“Most of these people don’t consider me a leader.” John kept his voice low. “I’m the person who got left behind to babysit them while the real officers were in the forward ships.”
“You are who the universe chose to lead them.”
John stared at her for several seconds before he turned and asked Tyce, “Is she always this annoying?”
Yoss answered with a succinct “Yep.”
“Trust me, I’m barely tolerated, and after I put Acosta in the brig, most of the crew abandoned their posts.” John glanced over toward Tyce. “I was fairly sure they were going to kill both of us and shove our bodies out an airlock. Assuming they could find one.”
Plat returned before Tyce figured out what he was supposed to say. “The way is clear,” he said.
“I’ll take point,” John said. Then he strode past Yoss without glancing in his direction. Yoss practically twitched as a Command officer walked right past him. At least Tyce had the protection of only being a lieutenant. He’d been too damn young to accomplish much, but the pips on John’s collar were proof of his value and a red flag waving in Yoss’s bullish face.
Ama tried to follow, but Plat quickly cut her off so he was on his sub-commander’s six. Ama leaned closer to Tyce. “Perhaps he is not as without allies as he thinks.”
“Everyone likes him,” Tyce said. It was his superpower. Of course, in the past, John had never put his superpower up against a mutiny or an alien invasion. But no matter the circumstances, Tyce felt a little better being on the same side as John. They were still going to die, but they had a better chance of taking a few enemies out with them. Sometimes those sparks of faith were enough to keep him going.
Chapter Eighteen
AMA WALKED AROUND THE room , her gaze taking it all in. “This is not what I expected from a mechanical room,” she said. The walls were the same pseudo-leather, but several pipes ran from the floor to the ceiling, and humped control desks dominated the center of the room . And of course, off to the right was the alcove where Acosta and his buddies had tried to use Tyce for spare parts.
The Command engineer, Baker, stood near the center control panel. Even though the man had gray hair and wrinkles, Tyce wanted to punch him in the nose. This was the moron who had sent Acosta after Tyce. Left to his own devices, Acosta probably still would have hatched a murder plot, but he wouldn’t have shoved Tyce head first into the ship if this engineer hadn’t told him it was necessary.
John shoulder-bumped Tyce and spoke softly. “Stop glaring at my engineer.”
“You mean the one who tried to kill me when I was tied up?” Tyce asked. “And of course I was only tied up because I traded myself for two children who your guys wanted to experiment on.” Tyce spoke loud enough that everyone could hear. Some of the Command soldiers appeared angry; others, shocked. Most seemed tired as they leaned against various surfaces. Ama watched silently.
“We need to table this discussion until the Imshee are gone.” John said
firmly.
“You can’t kill me,” Baker said in a high voice before he retreated behind a console. Then he realized that put him close to Ama, and he inched back. “I’m the only engineer.”
“We have many engineers,” Ama said. “They’ve tapped into water and protein lines and set up life support. We could live comfortably on this ship for many years, based on the work of our engineers.” She smiled.
Baker lost most of the color out of his face. A sadistic thrill ran through Tyce. The asshole deserved all the shit Ama could dish out.
“Enough,” John said. “Baker, have you found any defensive controls?”
For a second, he froze like a prey animal, then spluttered back to life. “I can’t! Everything routes through the broken circuits. Everything!”
Tyce didn’t know what Baker meant until he gestured at the alcove. Up to this point, Yoss had leaned against the wall with his weapon resting against his shoulder, muzzle toward the ceiling. But now he brought it down, slapping the barrel into his left hand so fast that the sound startled people. “You try it and I’ll shoot you,” he warned.
A dozen Command weapons came up as soldiers targeted Yoss.
“Enough!” John yelled. He stepped right in front of Yoss. “Baker, find a tactical system or keep your head under those consoles.”
“You can’t replace me.” His voice had an edge of desperation to it. Tyce wondered why he hadn’t taken off when Acosta had staged his coup.
John moved closer to him. “Even if I asked the Dragon crew to send engineering help, I wouldn’t replace you,” he said more gently. “You and Chief Wu were our only engineers, but a ship this size would have dozens of them. Investigating a ship of this size would take hundreds of them.” He patted Baker’s arm. “Find any tactical system you can cobble together.”
“Chief Wu?” Ama asked.
“The other schmuck who landed in the alcove.” Tyce jerked his head toward the alcove. “He didn’t survive.”
