by Amie Kaufman
The train hums to a stop.
Its doors open soundlessly.
The journal falls from Donnelly’s pocket. Smooth brown leather cover. Hand-pressed pages inside, fluttering open. Scrawled words and scribbled pictures and unspoken thoughts, hitting the deck and bouncing to a stop a meter or so along the platform.
Donnelly reaches the grav-train car, stops just inside the doorway.
Holds out her hand to Malikov.
“Come on!”
Kali emerges from Stairwell B, rifle in hand.
Malikov’s eyes are locked on the fallen journal. It’d be stupid to stop for it, and he knows it. It’s just a thing. An object. Nothing more. But then he spies the page it’s fallen open on.
The inscription written there, clear as starlight:
Your loving father,
Charles Donnelly
And he realizes it’s just like she said:
It’s all she has left of him.
“Nik, come on!”
The kid skids to a stop.
Kali drops to one knee.
Malikov scoops the journal up from the floor, stuffs it into his suit’s breast pocket.
Kali raises her rifle.
“Nik!”
Kali fires.
The first shot catches the kid in his hip. Second in his gut. The third in his chest, punching a hole through the journal in his pocket, right through the meat beyond.
Blood sprays. Donnelly screams. Malikov stumbles back from the impact, somehow on his feet long enough to grab the girl’s hand. She pulls him through the door as Kali opens fire again, a storm of bullets riddling the train’s flanks, smashing windows to splinters. Donnelly appears in a window, firing blind, forcing Kali back into cover. But as soon as the Silverback clicks dry, Kali’s out, sprinting along the platform toward the now-departing train.
Donnelly reloads, fires again, shaking grip covered in Malikov’s blood, shots flying wide—for all her daddy’s training, the old man obviously never saw a need to put a pistol in his baby girl’s hand. And as the doors slide closed and the train’s long silver bulk slips from the station, Kali puts three shots through a window in the rearmost car and dives elbows-first through the glass, tumbling up into a neat crouch inside it without skipping a beat.
Yeah. This woman is that kind of good.
Donnelly turns to Malikov. The kid’s on his back, lips painted with blood. Bright red leaking from his hip and gut, bubbling pink froth seeping from the wound in his chest. Donnelly kneels beside him, unclasps his suit’s seals, drags off the helmet. She spies the journal he got shot for in his breast pocket, a neat hole punched through its pages and the little baggie of dust still pressed inside. White powder mixed with bright red. Donnelly tugs the book loose, hurls it into a corner. She grabs Malikov’s hands, pressing them to the worst of the three wounds, panic in her eyes.
“Put pressure on it.”
Malikov coughs red. Agony bubbling on his lips.
Her eyes are filling with tears.
“Nik, hold on, you ****ing hear me?”
“…Told you,” he gasps.
“…What?”
Donnelly glances up at the sound of the auto-doors hissing, realizes Kali’s coming. She crawls to the rear door of her car and waits for it to cycle open, looking down at the coupling between the cars and trying to figure out how to detach them. A dozen shots perforate the metal in front of her, shower her with broken glass as she scrambles back into cover.
“No, you don’t,” Kali calls. “No magic tricks this time.”
Stalking toward Donnelly, the woman drags off her helmet slings it away.
“Out of bullets, little girl?”
Kali tosses her rifle aside with near contempt. Draws her combat knife and a pistol from her belt, another from her boot, casting them all off before kicking open the door to Donnelly’s sanctuary and stepping inside.
“Well, isn’t this a treat,” Kali says.
Donnelly rises from her cover, stands between Kali and the dying Malikov. Hands in fists.
“I’ve been hoping we’d get a moment alone,” Kali says. “To talk.”
“You toss your guns away?” Donnelly looks the woman up and down, shakes her head. “Honestly? For the sake of a little melodrama? What are you, an idiot?”
“No.” Kali smiles. “I’m just better than you.”
She moves.
Jesus, she moves so quickly, the cameras have trouble tracking her. Those reflex augmentations must be clocked to the redline, chums. Her fists blur, striking at Donnelly’s head, once, twice, three times. The girl can barely block, staggering back and fending off the attacks with her forearms, muscle memory dragging her into a defensive stance as Kali closes.
The woman strikes, savage and quick. A gauntleted fist lands in Donnelly’s solar plexus, crumpling the instrumentation on her suit, and as she doubles over, Kali’s knee crashes into her helmet and shatters the safety visor. The girl flies back, spine hyperextended as she hits the deck, sliding through the growing puddle of Malikov’s blood and crashing to rest against the far wall.
Kali bounces up and down on her toes, tilting her head until her vertebrae pop.
“Get up, little girl,” she says. “We’ve only just started.”
Donnelly is already springing to her feet, her suit’s weight compensated for by the lower gravity in Heimdall’s hub. She snaps the release clasps at her neck, drags her shattered helmet off. Slinging it at Kali, she’s not surprised to see the woman smash it aside with a casual backhand.
“Get your suit off.”
“Um.” Donnelly blinks. “Are you coming on to me?”
“I want your best.” Kali grins. “I went to your habitat. Saw your trophies. Black belts. Krav maga. Jeet kune do. Muay Thai. Impressive.”
“You went into my room? That’s a little creepy-auntie, don’t you think?”
“Know your enemy as you know yourself,” Kali says, “and you will not be imperiled in one hundred battles.”
Donnelly stops still at that. Like someone just slugged her in the gut.
“Sun Tzu…,” she breathes.
And at last, all the jibes, the quick talk and the subterfuge melt away, and Donnelly finally understands who she’s facing. A woman born to this. Bred for it. A woman who, after a few questionable choices and ten or so more years of hard training, Donnelly could find herself staring at in the mirror.
The girl looks around her. Takes in where she’s standing.
“Okay,” she says. “All right.”
She uncouples the buckles on her envirosuit, sloughs it away from her shoulders. She’s still wearing those rumpled WUC coveralls underneath—ill fitting, but loose enough to allow full freedom of movement. She raises her fists.
“You killed my Petyr,” Kali says.
“You killed my father,” Donnelly replies.
“If you think that makes us anything close to even…”
Donnelly shakes her head. “Not by a long shot, *****.”
The girl steps forward, knees bent, hips swiveling, fist speeding like a flung knife toward Kali’s throat. Kali blocks, tangles up Donnelly’s forearm, strikes back, cold hate boiling in her eyes. And there, in the middle of that speeding train car, the pair begin to dance.
Fist elbow knee.
Block feint strike.
One two three. Four five six.
Breath and sweat and sharp, jarring cries.
Over and over again.
You have to slow down the footage to really appreciate it. Donnelly’s pretty damn good. Her form is near perfect, she’s young and fit and hard, and she’s trained near the Heimdall hub, so she’s used to fighting in low grav. She’s fired up on adrenaline, the knowledge that Malikov is bleeding out on the floor behind her giving her all the impetus she needs. Against some dojo sim or a sparring partner, she’d be mopping the floor.
But the fact is, Kali’s faster. Harder. Stronger. She’s got all the training Donnelly has and then some. She
’s got the anger for fuel. She’s got the cybernetic augmentations, the reflex enhancements, the tac armor. And worst of all?
She’s got time.
The train speeds on its journey, traversing the station’s hub. Donnelly and Kali clash—strikes and counters, dodges and hits, grunts and spit and spatters of blood. Donnelly finds a gap in Kali’s guard, splits her lip against her teeth. Kali’s knuckles kiss Donnelly’s cheek, rip her brow open. The girl locks up the woman’s arm, only to have Kali roll over her spine and reverse the hold, flipping the girl onto her back and narrowly missing her head with a heel stomp. All the while, Kali is grinning. All the way to the eyeteeth.
Both can hear Malikov’s labored, bubbling breath. See the ever-widening slick of blood beneath their feet. Smell the copper-thick stink of a gutshot, hanging in the air like fog.
On a long enough timeline, Kali wins this game.
She’s toying with Donnelly. Drawing it out. Savoring the kill.
Donnelly’s gasping. Bleeding. Bruised and bent. She knows how this story ends. Knows the period at the end of this sentence. But still she fights. Her hands don’t shake. Her breath doesn’t rattle. Back against the wall, she doesn’t blink.
She’s got stones, I’ll give her that.
Kali presses her back, superior footwork forcing her into a corner. And there, hemmed in on all sides, Donnelly makes her mistake.
She strikes. A cross kick aimed at Kali’s knees. A little too clumsy. A little too slow. The woman counters, sweeps Donnelly off her feet, sends her crashing to the bloody deck. Kali’s on her in a heartbeat, fist wrapped in the long blond braid, yanking the girl’s head back and slamming it into the floor: once, twice, three times. She traps Donnelly’s arm, bent knee locked around the girl’s throat, anchoring herself to a passenger pole. Classic figure-four choke hold, flawlessly executed. Even if Donnelly’s strong enough to prevent her neck being snapped clean, the blood flow to her brain is constricted by Kali’s bent knee.
In thirty seconds, it’ll be lights-out.
“He was a smart fellow,” Kali says, only slightly out of breath. “Sun Tzu. Know your enemy. Hundred battles. Words to live by. Words to die by.”
Kali tightens her grip. Donnelly’s face is bright red.
The girl’s free hand is outstretched.
Reaching toward the journal Malikov got shot retrieving.
The journal she tore loose not five minutes ago and hurled into this very corner.
The corner she’s deliberately allowed herself to be led into?
The one she’s wrapped up inside?
Choking to death in?
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe this girl is that kind of good?
Her fingertips find the broken baggie of dust pressed inside the pages. She clutches the plastic. Grips it tight. Rips it loose and throws a shimmering white handful.
Up.
Back.
Right into Kali’s face.
The woman flinches away, eyes closing too late, inhaling a lungful.
Kali shakes her head. Gasps. Shivers all the way to her toes. White powder clinging to the sweat on her skin. Seeping into her bloodstream. A hammerblow of Grade A tetraphenetrithylamine, almost ten grams of it, right into her central nervous system.
She sighs. Stares at the shattered glass and blood all around her. Blinks hard.
Laughs.
The grip on Donnelly’s throat slackens. The girl kicks loose, scrambling free and backing away into the second car as Kali’s back arches. The woman claws her own face, grinning like a lunatic. She flops about on the floor, shaking her head again as she drags herself up onto her hands and knees.
“I…,” she says. “No…”
Donnelly returns. Boots crunching broken glass. Kali’s discarded rifle in hand. Blond hair scrawled across her eyes as she speaks.
“You know, quoting Sun Tzu while you toss your guns is nice and dramatic, lady, but throwing down with the girl you orphaned? Probably safer to say ‘Screw the drama’ and just kill the *****.”
The rifle barks once.
Red and gray spatter the walls.
“You might get only one shot. So shoot. You know who said that?”
The rifle clatters to the bloody floor.
“Hanna ****ing Donnelly. That’s who.”
The train spins on its endless journey around the station’s heart, its insides soaked red.
Kali lies dead in a corner, eyes open in surprise. Hanna Donnelly is on her knees beside Nik Malikov, fumbling with the first-aid kit torn from Kali’s tac armor. She unspools a thick roll of gauze, presses it to the frothing bullet hole in the kid’s chest. Malikov is bled white as a ghost, struggling to breathe. Struggling to speak.
One hand finds hers. Fingers entwine.
“Hanna…,” he sighs, “I’m sorry…”
Donnelly is pale, her stoic façade crumbling.
So much blood.
“Nik, don’t talk…just hold on, okay?”
Malikov shakes his head. Coughs wet. He knows there’s nothing she can do. And even with her tears pattering on his upturned face, the best of him already emptied onto the floor, he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink.
Donnelly’s wadding bandages, trying to stanch the flow. Watching him slip away, one drop, one breath, one second at a time. Denying it with everything inside her. Clawing and kicking and punching all the way to the end.
His end.
“No, no, no…”
She drags her knuckles across her eyes, leaves her cheeks red.
“Please. Nik…please just stay with me. Please.”
The boy looks up at her. Whispering something, too faint to hear.
Donnelly leans close, holds her breath. “…What?”
“…Kiss me…”
“No,” she says. Shaking her head. Tears brimming in her eyes. “No, don’t you dare ask me that. I’m not kissing you goodbye.”
“Kiss…”
“No. Stay.”
She hangs her head, face crumpling. “Stay.”
“Welcher…,” he whispers.
“…What?”
Malikov licks his lips. Somehow dragging one more breath into his punctured chest.
“Bet you…I’d…get shot, ’member? Owe me…a kiss.”
A wet, bloody grin.
“Maybe a…feel, too.”
One last breath. Spent to make her smile.
She does. Laughing. Sobbing. Pressing her hands to his cheeks and leaning in, close and closer and closest, crushing her lips to his as the last of his breath escapes as a sigh, soft on her skin. She kisses him, desperately, longingly, as his hand falls away from hers and everything he was fades on that last whisper, eyelids fluttering closed as if he were drifting off to sleep.
“Please…,” she breathes.
She holds him tight. Knuckles white. Lips red.
“Please stay…”
Her Highness’s final command.
But he’s not there to hear it.
PALMPAD IM: D2D NETWORK
Participants: Hanna Donnelly, Civilian (unregistered)
Date: 08/16/75
Timestamp: 16:44
Hanna D: ella are you there
Hanna D: ella please
Hanna D: it’s urgent
Hanna D: Please say something.
Hanna D: if you can read this but can’t get a message through, give me a signal. flash the lights or something.
Hanna D: oh God
Hanna D: please
Hanna D: ella
PALMPAD IM: D2D NETWORK
Participants: Hypatia (unregistered)
Hanna Donnelly, Civilian (unregistered)
Date: 08/16/75
Timestamp: 17:22
Hypatia: Heimdall, this is Hypatia, do you read?
Hypatia: Jump Station Heimdall, this is WUC science vessel Hypatia, responding to your hail. Do you read?
Hanna D: oh my God
Hypatia: No, my name’s Kady Grant. Hold on, I’ll put the
boss on.
Hanna D: ella if you’re ****ing with me I swear to God…
Hypatia: This is Captain Syra Boll of the WUC science vessel Hypatia. Please identify yourself.
Hanna D: Hanna.
Hanna D: Hanna Donnelly. WUC-C9815. I’m Station Commander Charles Donnelly’s daughter.
Hypatia: Miss Donnelly, is Ella Malikova with you?
Hanna D: No. Ella’s not answering comms anymore, and her cousin Nik is gone, so it’s just me and the Chief, and he’s been shot
Hypatia: Say again? Chief Grant has been shot?
Hanna D: He’s had first aid, he’s okay but not mobile.
Hanna D: listen
Hanna D: listen the BeiTech assault fleet is real close now. hours away, maybe less. we were trying to shut down the wormhole to stop them coming for you, but the BT agents on board stopped us
Hanna D: and the second that drone fleet jumps through, you’re dead, and they blow up Heimdall two seconds later
Hanna D: so we both have problems
Hypatia: Hanna, you said Nik Malikov was “gone”?
Hanna D: Yes. THey
Hanna D: they shot him
Hanna D: He’s dead.
Hypatia: You’re certain?
Hanna D: Look lady, I don’t mean to sound like a *****, but I’ve got his blood all over my hands from when he died in my arms
Hanna D: so yes, I’m pretty ****ing certain
Hypatia: It’s just we’re receiving a second transmission from Heimdall right at this very moment.
Hypatia: The speaker is identifying himself as Nik Malikov.
Hanna D: That’s not possible.
Hanna D: It’s a trick.
Hanna D: He died. I was there.
Hypatia: Well, here’s the thing, Hanna.
Hypatia: He’s saying exactly the same thing about you.
Our footage takes us back to old familiar ground: the bridge of the Hypatia. This is the place Captain Chau was killed, Byron Zhang and Consuela Nestor were bound and dragged away, and everything changed. It’s a very different cast of characters this time.
Syra Boll stands at the captain’s station, and she looks exhausted—it’s only been a couple of weeks since the destruction of the Alexander and the retrieval of Kady Grant, and since then she’s had to cram several hundred extra UTA survivors into an already overcrowded ship, deal with hundreds of petty problems from hydroponics breakdowns to fistfights, and hold together the 2,915 lives aboard the Hypatia with her bare hands.
