by Kal Spriggs
“Really?” Rastar’s boast seemed ridiculous to Mike. Sure, the alien might fire four guns at once, but how could he aim them all at one target, much less two?
“You should see me juggle,” Rastar said.
“What happened back here, after the explosions?” Mike asked. The area did not seem to have lost power, at least.
“Area shook a bit, then a pair of Chxor guards came in and started shooting people. I let them know I did not like that, and you showed up,” Rastar said. “One of them mentioned an escape.”
“Maybe these were the ones working with Fontaine,” Mike said. “Though I’m not sure why they came back here to kill prisoners…” Mike glanced down at the guard that Anubus had shredded. He saw the guard’s utility belt had mostly survived the fight. Mike unclipped it and yanked it out from under the corpse. Underneath the gore, it looked to have a couple of grenades with unknown markings, a flashlight, and a combat knife.
“Good idea,” Pixel said from behind him. The engineer poked at the corpse that Rastar’s blast had shredded. He pulled the belt off, and then tugged a small pistol out of a holster on the Chxor’s hip.
“You know how to use that?” Mike asked.
“Um,” Pixel looked it over. He held it loosely, and lifted it up close by his face to look at it. Mike glanced past him just as he saw Pierre and two other gangsters slip out of the room behind Rastar.
Mike reached for the pistol. He missed though as Pixel leveled it at their attackers. He fired it, and the sound made Mike’s ears ring, even as he heard the whine of the ricochet. A second later, Mike heard Rastar’s riot guns fire simultaneously. After Rastar’s skill, Mike almost expected to see Pierre smeared across the wall.
Instead, he saw Pierre frozen, hands raised. Two bloody smears marked where his accomplices had stood. Rastar had both riot guns pointed at Pierre’s face.
“What have we here, waskally wabbit?” Rastar said.
“What?” Pierre asked.
“I have no idea,” Mike said. “But he’s got two guns pointed at your face. How about you tell me why the hell you’re here, and where your boss is?”
Pierre seemed either unable or unwilling to pull his eyes away from the two muzzles in his face. “He’ll kill me.”
“Why do they always say that?” Mike asked. “We just killed your buddies, why do you think we won’t kill you. I mean, we aren’t the good guys, after all.”
“You…”
The airlock cycled open. It stood empty, but for the splatter of the Chxor guard Rastar had shot earlier. Mike reached back and held out his hand. He waited a long moment. Finally, Pixel passed him the pistol with a sigh. Mike leveled it at Pierre. “Rastar, you go ahead, see if the others need help. Crowe, see if you can fit in there with him.”
Crowe looked up from where he had begun to rifle through the pockets of the two dead goons. “But-”
“Do it, we’re dead if we don’t get a ship, so give them a hand,” Mike said. “I’ll have a talk with our friend here.”
“And I’ve got your back,” a deep voice said from behind him. Mike shot a quick glance back, and saw Simon. The former policeman had picked up the fourth riot gun, and held it at the low ready. Behind him, Mike saw a crowd of other prisoners. They seemed more nervous than anything else.
Mike looked back in time to see Pierre try to shift closer to the airlock. Mike centered the sights of his pistol with the man’s left eye. “Look here, Frenchy,” Mike said. “I don’t know which colony you Euro-trash came from, but you have seriously started to annoy me. So here’s the deal. Why are you here, why did these Chxor come here, and what’s Fontaine’s next move. You answer those three questions, and I’ll leave you the use of your dick.” Mike saw Rastar shade red a bit as the hatch sealed him away. Right, he doesn’t like bullies… Fuck it, let him take it out on the Chxor.
Pierre licked his lips nervously. “Alright.” He glanced at Mike, and then over at Ariadne, “Apparently one of the prisoners who got in with you has a big bounty back in human space. The Chxor Warden passed the message on to Fontaine. I heard the bounty might be worth almost as much as the loot we’ll take from the metal shipment.”
“So you were here for that, why the Chxor guards? They could have kept the airlock sealed, none of us would get out,” Mike said.
“I think they were loyal to the Chief of Security,” Pierre said. “They probably came here to kill Fontaine.”
“Good, now where’s your boss?”
“He planned to take the long way around, head through the guard barracks, engineering and life support, and the admin and supply section, take what he wanted and get to the hub.”
“Alright, thanks, Pierre,” Mike said. He had already thought through his options. He couldn’t risk the chance that Pierre had a radio or some other way to communicate with Fontaine and he didn’t know or trust the other prisoners enough to leave the man tied up. His finger started to tighten on the trigger.
Someone slapped his arm to the side as he fired. The bullet went into the cafeteria and clanged and whined around the room. Pierre let out a shout and bulled past him and into the crowd.
“Damn it, why’d you do that?” Mike said. He turned to find Simon. The former police officer had a hard look on his face.
“You don’t kill prisoners, that’s murder,” Simon said.
“He would do the same,” Mike ground out. “Worse, he’ll go and tell his boss we’re on the way, and that might well kill us all. We aren’t cops, Simon, we’re prisoners, in the middle of an escape attempt. You going to stop me from killing Chxor prisoners too, because it’s wrong?”
“I’ll stop you because there are certain rules you have to follow in life,” Simon said. “You break the rules, you pay the price. Call it the law, call it karma, I don’t care. It’s the same with that idiot who talked about scratch built explosives. If you’re going to cross those lines, you do it away from me.”
“Understood,” Mike said. “But you keep in mind that we are a team. Some of us got here not because the Chxor dislike humans, but probably because they did something heinous enough they’d end up someplace similar in human space.”
“You talking about yourself?” Simon asked.
Mike looked away, “I think there are some more obvious ones, like the Wrethe.”
Simon stepped back. “True enough. Alright, you’ve got your pasts. I can’t say I don’t care, but I’ll try to keep that from getting in the way. But let’s try to keep things as above the board as possible.”
“Right, that’s my number one priority in the middle of a prison break,” Mike rolled his eyes. He looked over at Ariadne, “You feel up to whatever lies beyond the door?.”
“Ready,” she nodded. She still looked pale from her previous brush with death. Even so, she stood tall, and she didn’t fidget or fret. Mike figured she would do alright. She looked over her shoulder at the crowd, and spoke in a loud voice. “We’re busting out of here, who wants to go with us?”
The crowd of prisoners shifted, many seemed shocked at what had happened so far. From the back, Mike heard Run’s voice, “Out of the way. Stupid humans. I need to get to front. I must escape in order to carry out my experiments. The universe needs me!”
Mike gave a snort as Run came forward. A moment later, a tall man stepped forward out of the crowd. “I’ll come. I’ve got some unfinished business, and I don’t want to die in this hellhole.” His accent sounded like those he heard on Saragossa. The stranger held out his hand, “Micheal Santangel.”
Mike shifted his pistol to his left hand, and shook, “Mike Smith. Good to meet you.” He saw some of the other prisoners step forward. “Honcho these others up. We’ll cycle the airlock from the other side. Keep them coming.”
“What if we want to stay?” A woman asked from the crowd. “The Chxor will just kill you all. There’s no way you’ll escape. We’re safer here.”
“Your funeral,” Mike grunted. He looked over at Santangel, “If they don’t want t
o come, leave them. We don’t have time to fuck around.” Right on cue, the hatch cycled open. “Alright, Ariadne, Pixel and Simon, lets squeeze in there.”
“Run too!” the little Chxor said.
“I’m not sure we have the room…” Mike started, but the Chxor scurried into the airlock. “Whatever.”
They squeezed in, and Mike hit the button to cycle the airlock from the inside.
The process seemed to take forever. Mike glanced up at the overhead. He mentally reviewed the events of the past few hours. He realized he had put himself in far greater risk than he liked. In fact, he realized he had risked himself, not just once, but several times, for people little more than strangers. What did he know about any of these people. I just met Santangel, but I already plan on bringing him along if I can, he thought. He never trusted anyone, he lived by that code, it brought safety, it brought security.
That came at a cost of loneliness, but he could tolerate survival in solitude. He figured the dead had plenty of company. Like most of the human race, he thought grimly.
He felt a sudden urge, to push straight to the ship, to ditch his companions and take off. The thought eased the tension in his chest. It made sense. What responsibility did he have to these others? None, he knew. He had not put them here, nor had he explicitly promised them he would wait for them. Sure, whoever could keep up, he could bring them, but he didn’t really need any of them. Well, he had to admit, no one besides Ariadne, and when it came down to it, he could probably force a Chxor to navigate or just go with whatever a navcomputer spewed out.
Time to go, he decided. Cut his losses, take the first opportunity and split. Just like he had aboard the Noriko. Sometimes, he knew, the only person you could save was yourself.
* * *
Alarms wailed, loud enough that Mike could hear them through his helmet. He stood next to the evacuation pod. It was rightfully the officers’ pod, but most of the bridge officers were dead.
Only Ensign Inshi remained, and she had told him to ready the pod for the wounded. She’d sent him ahead with the key to open it, cut off of the Captain’s suit.
Mike stood just inside the hatch. He watched as the corpsmen pulled the wounded down the corridor in microgravity. A part of him wished to go out and help.
The rest of him felt the hard metal of the release lever through his suit glove and wanted nothing more than to pull it. He recognized the various alarms. He had heard the klaxon that signaled fire aboard the ship. His suit sensors reported dangerously high hydrogen levels in the corridor. One of the fuel tanks must have leaked into the vessel’s compartments.
Parts of the ship lay in vacuum, those wouldn’t burn, but the crew would be trapped, probably exposed to radiation and debris that would kill them in only hours. The pod itself would only hold ten for a few days, but it would protect them from the hazards of space for that time, unlike their suits.
He stood firm, despite the fear he felt. Ensign Inshi had ordered him to this post, and he wouldn’t leave it, or the wounded, not while he could save them.
He tried not to think about what Sensor Specialist Miushi had said about the convoy’s departure. Surely they would return for them, and if not, the enemy would pick them up, this was a skirmish between factions of the Colonial Republic, not some pirates who didn’t take prisoners.
There were laws of war, Mike knew, laws that both sides must follow.
Down the corridor he saw the Ensign, and he remembered how she had taken charge after the hit on the bridge. As before, she moved with a calm certainty, and the enlisted spacers followed her commands with speed. Mike Golemon felt his chest ease as she ordered two spacers to dog the hatch behind her. Clearly they would leave soon. The Ensign had things under control.
They would all make it out of this. Soon the rest of the convoy would pick them up and they would—
The fireball that blew through the hatch incinerated the two spacers and the Ensign. The fire that spread down the corridor seemed to move in slow motion. It seemed to dance from figure to figure, wreathing each in flames. Men and women danced in pain, limbs flailed, and people shrieked on their suit radios.
Yet the slow apparent motion proved deceptive. The corpsmen only a few meters away tried to rush. One of them cut the lanyard that tied him to one of the wounded and pushed off the other man, only to be wreathed in flames a heartbeat later.
Three men remained, only a couple meters from the hatch, the entire corridor behind them engulfed in flames.
Spacer Second Class Mike Golemon did the only thing he could do, he saved as many people as he could. He pulled the release lever. The hatch slammed down. The pod blasted out of its cradle, but not before Mike heard the screams of rage and panic from the men he left behind.
It was triage, he told himself, save the ones you can.
* * *
The airlock opened, and Mike stepped out of his memories and into what looked like a green-tinted abattoir. At least fifteen Chxor lay dead, scattered around the processing area. Most looked chewed by weapons fire, but Mike saw at least a couple torn apart by claw and blade.
Mike heard a shout, and looked over at where the mesh cage enclosed a door. Rastar stood there, and he waved at them. “Eric’s down. Run, can you treat him?”
“Yes! I have assembled some tools. Hold him down, do not let him escape!”
The little Chxor scurried over, and Crowe and Ariadne followed. “What happened?” Simon asked. The other man stopped to pick up a pistol off a dead Chxor.
“Some kind of explosive on the door. Eric kicked it in and it blew up in his face,” Anubus said. “I suggested we wait for Pixel, but he felt it worth the risk.”
“I can pick locks,” Crowe said, off hand. “What’s in the room?”
Rastar’s skin shifted color from a blue shade towards pink, and then red. “You do not seem concerned that one of our friends is hurt.”
“You’re letting a Chxor ‘doctor’ work on him,” Crowe said. Mike saw him crouch and pick something off a guard. “So let’s check out the room real quick, and see what they thought valuable enough to put a bomb on the door.”
Mike went to the right, and glanced at the corridor that led to the hub. The others seemed to have forgotten Fontaine and his men, and that they must have gotten ahead of them. Certainly the gang had the time. And the lack of Chxor survivors suggested that their bribed allies had joined them.
Now was the time to go, he knew. The other ship must have docked, at this point. Fontaine might plan to take both, but Mike felt certain he could fight his way aboard one or the other ship. Maybe not as easy as with the others, but he could do it. And if he failed, it would be his own failure, not that of someone he trusted.
He would not be abandoned by the failure of someone he trusted, not again. Not like back aboard the Noriko. He remembered again the destruction of the ship. For a second he relived the last moments on the bridge, when the fire washed over the crew.
Worse, he remembered how things had only grown worse afterward. He remembered how the handful of survivors waited for rescue that never came. How they had scavenged air tanks from the dead, and then from the gravely wounded, and finally, drawn lots for who would continue to breathe. Mike Golemon had died there, and Mike had not mourned his death. In ways, a rejection of those values that led him to join the Republic Liberation Fleet had given him purpose. He would live for himself, trust no one, and reject the people who had abandoned him to die.
Mike paused at the hatchway. He glanced back, just as gunfire erupted from the Chxor administration airlock. He saw the others crouch in the booth. The rattle of the submachinegun sounded distinct over the roar of his companion’s riot guns as they tried to return fire.
Mike froze. He saw the Chxor step out of the airlock. He continued his suppressive fire even as two more Chxor stepped out and moved forward to flank the group pinned in the booth.
Mike glanced over at the airlock to the prisoner barracks. He saw that it had not yet cycled, they
would find no help from there, not in time.
I should go, Mike thought, I can’t fight three of them, not with a pistol, not without any cover. They had not yet seen him, but they would as soon as he opened fire. Under any other circumstances, he would never hesitate. He would chose to survive, to abandon the others, to get to the ship and escape.
Down the corridor behind him, he heard someone call out, “Alright, sounds like the Security Chief’s men broke out of the armory. Time to go.”
Mike turned towards the corridor, decision made. Triage… save myself, it’s the only thing I can do, he thought.
Then he heard someone shout out in pain behind him.
Mike spun back around, “Aw shit.” He felt his stomach twist in fear, yet his mind cleared of his emotional turmoil. He felt calm as he dropped into a shooting stance and brought his pistol up. The sights centered on the Chxor with the submachine gun.
Mike squeezed the trigger and then fired again. That Chxor went down.
The other two spun to face him. Mike felt his stomach tense as he brought his pistol around. They had reacted too quickly, though. Mike saw the riot guns level in his direction. “This is really going to hurt.”
A burst of fire exploded. The Chxor’s very flesh seemed to erupt in flames, almost as if their bodies ignited from the inside out. Mike winced and looked away as the Chxor screamed in agony.
Chxor smelled like burnt rubber when they burned.
Beyond the sudden conflagration, Mike saw Ariadne stood clear from the cover. Her blonde hair whipped, as if caught in a gust of wind, and she had one gloved hand pointed at the guards who still burned.
In the silence that followed, Mike heard Crowe say, “Alright, I really want to take this time to apologize for whatever I did wrong earlier. It won’t happen again, I promise.”
* * *
”They’re buttoning up the ships, we have to get up there,” Mike said a moment later. Anubus and Rastar both emerged from the shelter of the cage. Chxor blood soaked Anubus’s fur. Bits of tissue clung to his extended talons and he had a shred of cloth stuck in his teeth.
