by Rachel Ford
“No matter,” Lenksha was continuing, “Once the planets start falling, this revolution will crumble. You have earned the distinction of being the first to fall, the beginning of the end.”
“Got it,” the ensign at comms said as Lenksha’s hologram vanished.
“Good.” The Phoenix – Lenksha’s own command – was lifting off, heading toward them. The Supernova’s shields had taken a beating. Patches of the hull sat unprotected, where shield generators had been knocked out. The grounded ships below them rained a steady stream of fire into her. In a few moments, Lenksha would join the fray, bringing the full munitions of his ship to bear on Elgin’s.
“Kerel,” he said, “ready the deep space engines.”
“Sir, we can’t go to deep space in atmosphere.”
He nodded. “I know. You ever played kelda, ensign?”
“Yes sir.” It was a kind of ball game enjoyed by children, in which players alternated building a structure of wooden blocks and attempting to knock the structure down with the roll of a small, hard ball – a kelda.
“Were you any good at it?”
Her brow creased. “Not particularly.”
“I was. I’m going to take control of the helm.”
Her forehead knit tighter, but she said only, “Yessir.”
Elgin punched in a few commands, and helm control transferred to his own station. He drew a long, steadying breath. It had been awhile since he’d sat at controls like these, back when he was at the beginning of his career. The irony that he’d end exactly where he started was not lost on him. Life was funny like that, wasn’t it?
He put in his coordinates. Then he toggled a button, to broadcast ship wide. “Crew, this is the Captain. We’re not going to survive this fight. But we’re not going to let them survive it, either.
“It’s been an honor. When we meet again, wherever that is…well, drinks are on me.”
Then, he put his palm print to the reader, initiating the deep space engines. The Supernova shuddered, the metals of her hull screaming in protest as the ship tried to reach faster than light speeds inside the atmosphere. He saw Lenksha’s ship moving for them, belching out a stream of missiles.
Then, everything turned to a blur before him. Space and time seemed almost to stand still. But everything else moved at breakneck speed. The Phoenix was, one second, far away. The next, it was all around them, a ball of fire and shattered metal, of explosions and fragmentary pieces. The Supernova rocked and shuddered; and still, she moved on.
The forward motion and sensory overload was too much. Elgin blinked, raising a hand to shield his eyes. The next thing he saw was a glimpse of pale sand and gleaming metal, a band of red trees and a passing stretch of water. The images were disparate, flooding his brain all at once, assailing his senses. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t reason. He couldn’t wonder if this would all work, if his suicide run would succeed. But somewhere, in the periphery of his brain, he was aware of one thing: Lenksha was dead.
Then, the Supernova reached its final coordinates, plowing into the array of loyalist ships at as close to faster-than-light speeds as it could reach in atmosphere.
Elgin was battered against his restraints, this way and that. For a few moments, as silica and metal and fire washed past his view, he remained conscious. Then, the captain of the Supernova’s world went dark.
It was a simple wedding, without any of the pomp and ceremony of traditional Tribari joinings. The governor wore a simple dress of light color, and a few wrought silver ornaments in her hair. It was a far cry from the traditional costumery of a bride, the ornate dress and complex wedding crown.
Still, understated though it was, Tal had to admit that she did look radiant, and every bit as in love as Tig.
His friend had managed to get his hands on a suit somewhere. The truth was, he looked a little comical to the lawman, shifting awkwardly as he tried to get comfortable in the unfamiliar getup. “I feel like an ass in this,” Tig confided as they waited for Nees.
“If it’s any consolation,” Tal nodded, “you look like one too.” The comment earned him an elbow jab, so he added, “Nees is going to think she’s marrying some kind of monkey, when she sees you in that.”
Tig elbowed him again, but before he could needle his friend further, the governor and her maid of honor entered the chamber.
Nees had foregone the braids of a state official. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, and she flushed like a teenager when Tig said she was breathtaking. Tal watched the entire spectacle with a kind of amusement.
The marriage was conducted by an exceedingly sober man of advanced years, one Kelv Indis. Indis was a secular officiant, on Trapper’s payroll. Still, the protector felt he’d missed his calling as a priest. His gravity would have been well-suited to fire and brimstone speeches.
What it was not well-suited for was the blushes and foolishness of lovers. Tal wondered if he was not, perhaps, seeing some glimpse into his own future, of his own cynical self as the years passed. The idea was a little too much like a fairy story to countenance. Still, he repressed the urge to roll his eyes when the two lovers exchanged rings, and lovestruck gazes.
It wasn’t just Kelv, though. He still wasn’t convinced Tig was making the right call, rushing into things. But there was no denying that Nees was as much a fool in love as his friend. She flushed with an almost girlish shyness at his compliments, and fixed him with gazes that were every bit as loving as Tig’s for her.
If nothing else, they were equally yoked: they might be fools, but they would at least be fools together. He was glad of that. He’d met Tig in prison. He had no idea what sort of man he’d been before that. But he remembered the broken man he’d met on Zeta. He remembered the all-business Nees he’d first met, too. They’d been survivors, grim and determined.
These people, the Tig and Nees who stood before him, looked dozens of months younger than the ones he’d met. And they were happy, as happy as he’d ever seen anyone.
Maybe it was his own life, and all the disappointments he’d racked up in his time. But Tal viewed their happiness with a kind of apprehension. He couldn’t explain it, not even to himself. He just hoped he was wrong. He hoped the joy they shared now, the promise of so many things, would last.
He hoped; and feared that it would not.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Captain. Captain, can you hear me?”
Elgin groaned. A voice, far, far away, filtered into his consciousness. It sounded familiar, but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure of anything.
He wasn’t even sure if he was dead. He had to be dead, though. He remembered dying. Or thinking he would die.
He couldn’t remember which. His head swam, and he leaned into the blackness that ebbed at the periphery of his thoughts.
“Captain.” This time, the voice sounded louder, nearer. And it was accompanied by a rough shake. “Captain, you need to wake up. Dammit, sir, now!”
He recognized that voice. “Kerel?”
“Yessir. I’m here.”
“Kerel,” he repeated again, trying to open his eyes. It couldn’t be her. She was dead too. They were all dead. They’d died…How? He couldn’t remember, and the wash of light that flooded his brain temporarily distracted him. He groaned anew, lifting an arm to shield his eyes.
“Sir, please: you need to get up. We need to get out of here. The ship’s going up.”
The urgency in her tones, more than the words, stirred him into action. “My leg,” he said. The entire right side of his body ached, but his leg in particular throbbed with a white-hot agony.
“I’ll help you, Captain.”
Slowly, gingerly, he lowered his arm to look at her. It was Kerel, alright, her features drawn and her eyes a fearful, winter blue. She was staring down at him from a backdrop of thick black and gray smoke. Seeing it, he realized he could smell it, too. In fact, he was choking on it. “Hell, what’s going on?”
“The ship’s on fire. We need t
o go, now.”
“Alright,” he said, pushing up on his elbows. Immediately, a stab of pain shot through him, like a white-hot poker to his leg. He collapsed backward, cursing.
With the agony came a clarification of his thoughts. The fogginess of his head vanished, and all the confusion with it. He remembered exactly what had happened. He remembered powering the engines to faster-than-light settings, and piloting straight for the enemy encampment. “How the hell did we survive that?”
“The engines didn’t reach full capacity,” Kerel answered. “Now take my hand. I’m going to help you get up.”
“I can’t move, Kerel.”
“Dammit, Captain, I’m not asking. Give me your hands.”
He blinked at the fierceness of her tone. He started to protest that his leg was broken, and he couldn’t move on it. Still, he complied, taking her outstretched hands.
“With all due respect, sir, I need you to shut up and focus. On the count of three.”
“Keep talking to me like that, you’re going to get yourself court-martialed, ensign.” Not that he meant it, of course. Hell, not that they’d survive long enough for him to court-martial anyone; but he was in too much pain to be aggravated.
“Still better than burning to death. Three.”
“I’m telling you, this leg is-”
“Two.”
“Broken. I’m not going to-”
“One.”
“Be able…oh my gods.” She yanked him up, onto his feet, and for a moment he was blinded by sheer agony. His leg was broken, in more than one spot as far as he could tell. He stood on his left leg, and she threw his right arm over her shoulders.
“Lean into me, Captain.”
Lean? he wondered as his thoughts started to clear. He’d be lucky if he didn’t collapse outright. Still, he lowered himself onto her, transferring his weight to her until he felt her start to bow a little.
“I got you,” she reassured him.
“You sure?”
“Yes. Although you could probably stand to go on a diet, sir.”
He shifted more weight onto her, and grimaced at the sight of her grin. Still, he tried to play along. She was scared as hell – the color of her eyes alone told him that. “You really want that court-martial, I take it?”
She wrapped one hand over his wrist, anchoring it to her shoulder, and the other under his other arm. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
She planted her feet firmly and hoisted his weight. Then, she stepped forward. Gritting his teeth in sheer agony, he moved with her. “Godsdammit, Kerel. Just leave me.” In the moment, he’d rather have burned to death than dealt with the pain every movement was bringing him.
“Like hell, sir,” she grunted.
She was merciless, driving him forward at a pace he could barely sustain. With every step, he felt he couldn’t make another. Still, she forced him on, until they’d covered the wreckage of the bridge, passed the twisted stations and downed ceiling panels, the shattered bulkheads and broken glass.
His station, he saw, was gone. She’d pulled him from a pile of wreckage, unfastening him from what was left of his seat.
His eyes stung with the smoke, but when they reached the passage beyond the bridge, Elgin found he could hardly breathe. The smoke out here was thicker, blacker, and more biting. Kerel wheezed and coughed as they went. He was choking, his eyes burning so much he could barely see. “We’ll never make it,” he managed. “Save yourself, ensign.”
She didn’t bother to argue, but she didn’t comply either. She kept going, dragging him through the smoke, over the piles of twisted metal, past the charred bodies lining their way.
The temperature rose in direct proportion to the smoke. Elgin was trembling with pain and dripping with perspiration. He wouldn’t be able to go on much further. He felt it in his bones – his broken, battered bones.
She seemed to sense his growing weakness, because she shifted his weight further onto her shoulders. “Just up here, sir. There’s a hull breach. We can get out there.”
He could see nothing in the smoke-filled passage – nothing but smoke. And even that was growing increasingly more difficult to see, as his eyes burned so much that he could barely keep them open.
He did notice a change in lighting, though. It was subtle, but not so subtle as to be missed. The hall wasn’t quite as dim as a moment before.
“Right there, Captain,” Kerel grunted, pointing ahead of them.
He couldn’t see what she was pointing at, but he pushed on at least, one agonizing step after the other.
Then, all at once, the ship seemed to open up before him. Billows of smoke streamed past him, belching black fumes into the day. But, even through his swollen eyes, he could see the sandy beach and cloudy sky beyond.
Kerel propped him up against the bulkhead. “This is going to be tough, sir. But I need you to trust me. We’re going to have to jump. I’ll help you.”
He surveyed her skeptically, through eyes that hurt to use. She was a slight woman, shorter and thinner than him. She was strong – she’d proved that already, hadn’t she? But gravity alone would mean he’d hit first. And the idea of dropping the two meters from the breech to the sand below, onto his shattered leg? “I…can’t.”
“How else are we going to get out of here?”
He didn’t have a good answer to that. “I can’t do it, Kerel. Not on my leg.”
“We’re going to burn to death if you don’t.”
“Go without me,” he urged. “You can save yourself.”
She glared at him. “Dammit, Captain, I didn’t drag you through this smoke to leave you here.” She readjusted her grip on his wrist, reset her hold under his other arm. “So get ready. We’re going.”
He pulled back. “If I land on my leg…”
“Try to lean into me. It’s going to hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but you’ll live.”
“Kerel, I don’t want to-”
“I’m not asking, Captain. On the count of three.”
“Dammit, Ensign, I’m still the Captain.”
“So court-martial me, sir.” She stepped forward, until they stood over the edge of the sheered metal. “Three. Two.”
The next thing he knew, he felt her body propel off the ship, dragging him with her. They hurtled through the open air, and then landed in a heap on the sand below.
Every imagining Elgin had entertained of the pain that awaited fell short of that moment. White hot metal coursing through his veins could not have hurt more. For a moment, he could not speak. And when he found his voice, it was only to loose an unintelligible stream of curses.
He wasn’t swearing at Kerel, but he doubted that would have stopped her anyway. Grabbing his hands, she hoisted him to his feet. “Come on.”
Wheezing and shaking with pain, he complied. “Damn you, Ensign.”
“You can thank me later, Captain. We need to meet up with the rest of the crew.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“You jumped before you finished the count,” Elgin was complaining.
“Yes sir. I could feel you tensing, and I didn’t have time to argue.”
He frowned. It was true. He had been tensing, preparing to brace himself as she jumped, so she’d go but he’d remain. He’d guessed how much the landing would hurt. Even now, it still hurt. And he still wasn’t sure it had been worth it. Sure, they wouldn’t burn to death. But, right now, they were pinned down behind a fragment of one of the loyalist ships, with energy blasts firing all around. The beach was littered in survivors, some of them his own crew, but mostly Lenksha’s men.
And the loyalists had just seen their entire fleet obliterated. They’d seen their commander killed. They’d lost thousands of men and women, and all their ships. They weren’t exactly in a peacemaking mood.
But even if, by some miracle, they survived the next few minutes, they wouldn’t outlast the next few months. The radiation levels on Echo Nine were toxic.
It wouldn’t kill them overnight, but radiation sickness would kick in. Slowly but surely over the next six or eight weeks, they’d die.
It would start with nausea and chills, like a common cold. There’d be bleeding under the skin, hair loss, diarrhea and a host of other indignities. And eventually, tremors and loss of mental acuity would set in. Finally, insensible and degraded, they’d die.
No, in the moment, Captain Elgin wasn’t particularly grateful to Ensign Kerel for delivering him from a certain, quick death to this equally certain, but more prolonged one.
But he was alive, for the time being anyway, and he was the captain. And no matter how misguided the attempt, this junior officer had risked her own life to save his. “You’re smarter than you look, Kerel.”
She flashed him a grin. “Does that mean I won’t be getting that court-martial after all?”
“We’ll see. Right now, I’m torn between a court-martial and a medal.”
A flash of weapons fire passed over their heads, closer this time than the more recent shots. Kerel jumped, then laughed nervously. “Well…guess I better do something heroic, to help you decide.”
“Like hell,” he said. “You’ve hit your stupid quotient for the day.” She seemed about to protest, but he pre-empted her. “Can you see who is shooting at us, and from where? I can’t see a damned thing.” It was true enough. They’d covered a hundred meters or so of beach before having to duck behind a sand dune created by part of the wreckage. His line of sight was blocked by metal and the purest white sand he’d ever seen.
She inched up, then shot back down a second before a series of blasts sizzled into the metal behind her. “There’s four of them. About one o’clock, behind a fighter fuselage.”
Elgin nodded, reaching for his sidearm. He had to shift to his side to unfasten it, and this in turn sent spasms of pain through him.
