by A. R. Knight
His target didn’t know Gregor’s capabilities. The invisible specter darted back and forth as if he fought against more traditional power armor, with its stopping, starting, and standard combat functions. Instead, Gregor lumbered, wheeled, punched, and kicked in a grinding, massive sequence, every move feeding into the next almost without Gregor’s assent. The armor nudging Gregor from one blow to another on its own.
This constant flow might’ve been the reason the suit sat in the experimental lab. To Gregor, dancing after the enemy, the experiment succeeded.
The invisible suit finally tried an attack, sliding in beneath a heavy Gregor punch and mistaking the lunging move as an opening. Instead, as Gregor felt, heard, some sort of blade glance off his suit’s chest plate—another light-bending weapon?—Gregor brought his right arm in from the lunge, grappling and smashing the invisible enemy against him.
A lethal hug. The invisible armor, though, didn’t snap and crack like normal power armor would. Instead, it bent around Gregor’s crush, melting inward like a biological body might. The invisible one squirmed, and a distorted cry made its way out, before Gregor felt the movement freeze. He loosened his arm, dropped the thing to the ground.
And stared.
Stealth suits, once damaged, ought to be visible. Ought to be useless. This one still bent the light, still remained almost impossible to trace, save for its dwindling energy signature. If DefenseCorp had figured out how to keep a suit invisible while taking hits, then that—
“A waste,” Vana said, and Gregor glanced her way.
Or to where Vana should have been. Instead, Renard had retreated to the room’s rear wall, with a grim smile on his face. Vana and the remaining suit had vanished, and with it, a new energy signature appeared on the visor.
“Incompetent pilots wasting our resources,” Vana said, her voice echoing with her as she moved around the room. “You should have told me you’d made it this far, Renard. It changes the stakes.”
“I didn’t even know you’d made it aboard our little vessel,” Renard replied as Gregor tried to keep eyes on both. “But don’t you see? This, and the girl, would change everything.”
“What do the Casparians think?”
The Casparians?
“There aren’t enough of them to care,” Renard said, the rattled out another bloody cough. “If you would, Vana, I’m afraid we’re already late.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Vana’s voice came from the room’s far corner, near where Gregor had punched out the first one. “Gregor, I’m sorry to have led you all this way. I’ve had a change of heart, and now I cannot let you leave.”
Betrayal. Gregor wished he’d never seen it, but loyalties tended to change fast with cash claiming the galaxy’s core cause.
Besides, Vana was an agent, and Gregor would never get too hung up about trashing one of those.
“No hard feelings,” Gregor replied, and barreled straight at Vana’s energy signature.
He swept his arms wide, trying to cut off Vana’s avenues. The invisible armor was thin enough that if Gregor caught a good hit, she’d be out of the game before the fight even started. Two steps brought Gregor across the room’s middle, and when he hit the third, his visor cracked.
A blade, like a diamond arrowhead, speared straight through the visor’s glass. Its point ended a few centimeters from Gregor’s face. Gregor stumbled to a stop, brought in a a hand and yanked out the blade, pulling the visor’s glass with it, leaving Gregor’s face exposed.
Leaving him without any way to track those energy signatures.
“See, Renard?” Vana said, her voice coming from behind Gregor. “Proper piloting. Know the weaknesses and exploit them.”
“Don’t talk to me,” Renard replied. “Kill the man and be done with it.”
Gregor wheeled around, sending his arms in a wide swing. If Vana had been charging into Gregor’s back, the punching would’ve caught her straight out. His fists only hit air, and when Gregor completed the reversal, the only thing he saw was Renard, standing there and looking ill.
Where’d she go?
Trying to find the bent light proved harder without the visor guiding Gregor’s eyes. He blinked, rotated around, clomping in a circle and seeing nothing.
“Stop playing, Vana.” Renard coughed.
The words changed the game. Gregor couldn’t see Vana, but he damn sure could see Renard. Gregor jerked around and started a leap towards the agent leader. As the armor met Gregor’s command and acted on it, a stinging burn came from Gregor’s back. The big suit faltered as the power packs keeping Gregor’s armor going blew out one by one, their conduits sliced apart.
Gregor didn’t leap, didn’t lunge for Renard.
He fell forward, hit the floor with a bang that echoed throughout the room and beyond. The armor’s weight crushed on Gregor, who’d lost his breath in the fall and scrambled to get it back, to get enough air into his lungs to speak the keyword that’d blow off the armor.
“Very nice,” Renard said, “and the coup de grace?”
“Again, apologies for being so rude,” Vana said, her voice right next to Gregor’s ear, something’s sharp point touching his throat. “Sometimes, surprises happen.”
Gregor couldn’t even find the breath for a comeback. Frustrating.
The lab’s door whisked open. The squad leader shouting towards Renard, claiming the man needed to stand down. That he was the target. The point pushing against Gregor’s throat vanished, and he heard new, terrible noises seconds later.
Vana, going to bloody work.
Twenty-Nine
Burnout
Eponi could count the missions she’d done with Sever where they had fire support on one hand. With no fingers.
By the time Eponi hit the docking bay floor, in the huge transport’s shadow, Rovo’s drop shuttle turrets blitzed the air around her. Agents, having started to scramble when the drop shuttle came into the bay, sprinted towards the transport’s boarding ramps or the bay door, abandoning any return fire as their allies disintegrated around them.
The drop ship’s turrets were designed to handle ship-to-ship combat, and their power did more than just fry their hapless targets. The lasers pounded into the unshielded bay floor, buckling tiles and bursting what lay beneath, prompting sparking gouts, steam flares, and a quick swap in the bay’s lighting to a panicked orange.
DefenseCorp tied that color to vacuum breaches, and if Eponi had to guess, the Nautilus thought the bay’s shields might fail. If that happened, Eponi’s rifle fire wouldn’t matter. Sai’s katana and its victims—already several, going by the sword’s red splatter—wouldn’t matter. Even the big transport, with its boarding ramps open, would rip apart as outer space attacked.
“Time to go!” Eponi shouted, following in Sai’s wake and picking off anyone Rovo’s turrets missed. “Break for the door, or we’re dead.”
The docking bay door, at least, didn’t sport much resistance. As the duo broke that way, the agents went the opposite, heading towards their transport.
“What if she’s on their ship?” Sai said, ducking a clumsy swing by an agent trying to use his fists after Sai had chopped his rifle in two. As Sai crouched, Eponi snapped off a shot over his head, dropping the agent. “We’ll miss—“
“We’d die on that ship, Sai.” Eponi interrupted, almost tripping on another body. Rovo’s turret barrage shifted, lacing behind Sai and Eponi now for cover. “Not a chance we take out that many, just the two of us.”
Sai grunted an assent and kept moving. Their targets dwindled as they neared the door, the portal shunting open as they came close.
Aurora flew out. Not like a bird, but like a rock. Sever’s captain struck the ground and rolled with the momentum, catching herself on a half-burned body. Aurora had a slicing cut on her face and down an arm, a broken pistol in one hand. Burnt holes pocked her vest, and in a snapshot, Eponi figured she was about to witness Aurora’s untimely death.
Sai adjusted his course
like a magnet finding its polar opposite, veering to his right and towards Aurora. Eponi looked towards the door, towards what could’ve flung Aurora like that, and saw nothing. Was about to say she saw nothing, when the bay’s orange light vanished in a whole new, terrifying glow.
Pitched against the void, the massive lasers tossed from ship to ship looked small. Splashing against the Prisa’s shields, they felt dangerous.
Fired from the transport’s massive turrets, meant to support full-scale ground invasions, the bolts flared through Eponi’s closed eyes, their heat boiled the air in the docking bay, and their energy crashed into Rovo’s drop shuttle and the hull above and around it, cracking the shuttle’s meager shielding and sending the craft into a fast, spiraling crash towards the bay’s far wall. On its way down, the shuttle smashed into the transport’s armored body, bending and breaking a turret or two before turning over, smoking, and sticking into the gap between the transport’s very right end and the bay wall.
Eponi realized she’d hit the floor, skipping the states in between. Her rifle pressed against her chest, its pressure a reminder she was still, very much, in active combat. This wasn’t a kart race, where a crash would leave you in a sort of peace, waiting for rescue.
“Watch out!” Aurora’s warning pierced Eponi’s ringing ears, bringing her back into the crackling, broken bay. “It’s a new suit!”
New suit? Eponi pushed herself up, saw Sai standing in front of Aurora, katana at the ready. Ready for what, Eponi couldn’t tell. Nothing seemed to stand between Sai and the docking bay door, and beyond it sat an empty, if blast-marked, concourse.
“What’re you talking about?” Eponi said, seeing nothing. She chanced a look behind her, witnessing the transport’s ramps climbing into the giant ship.
Which presented its own problem. If those engines came on while anyone stood in the docking bay, they’d all melt like ice on a hot day. And Rovo, if he still lived, would turn to ash.
Eponi broke into a run while Aurora shouted an answer to the pilot’s question. The Sever captain’s words cut out quick when metal-on-metal clashes rang out. Eponi, dashing over body parts, didn’t have to look to see what made that noise.
Sai and his katana had found an enemy. Good for him.
Ahead, the drop shuttle littered its parts to the ground. Burnt and broken plating made a shrapnel waterfall as the ship’s structure fractured. Every piece fit into the sonic cracks left by Sai’s fighting, clashing to the floor as Eponi cleared the bodies and broke into a full sprint.
Somewhere along the way, she’d lost the rifle. Somewhere along the way, she’d ceased giving a damn about the weapon.
“Rovo!” Eponi shouted as she made it up to the shuttle, staring towards the flickering engines as the ruined ship’s ass made a bad first impression. “Tell me you’re not dead yet?”
Up close, the shuttle’s continued disintegration added blue and white crackles as its power sources flared their lives away. Burning everything suffused the air, and Eponi fought off the urge to cough, sneeze, and vomit all at once at the dusty fumes spreading from the wreck.
The shuttle’s cockpit, where Rovo ought to be, hung several meters over Eponi’s head, and she didn’t have a great way to climb that far. On any normal planet, Eponi would’ve been stuck.
But the Nautilus wasn’t a planet. It was a big rock with engines attached.
“I’m coming to get you, rookie!” Eponi shouted. “Don’t do anything stupid!”
Before she jumped, Eponi cracked a look back along the bay, hoping to see Aurora and Sai coming after, ready to assist. Or, failing that, doing something to delay the big transport’s takeoff. Instead, it looked like both Sai and Aurora were doing some dance around each other. Sai’s katana whirled and slashed, bounced off of something and rebounded, while Aurora ducked and swung, using the broken pistol as a weapon, aiming at the air.
“The hell are they doing?” Eponi muttered, then blinked her eyes back to the problem at hand.
Maybe Sai and Aurora had lost it. That could wait.
Eponi ran towards the bay’s interior wall, a flat surface scored here and there with the remnants of engines past. Chromed silver steel wouldn’t normally make for much of a foothold, but gravity’s light touch helped Eponi adjust her jump enough to plant her right foot against the wall and kick off, back towards the drop shuttle and still getting higher.
Lower gravity made life feel magical.
Floating into a smoky, sparky haze ruined most of that magic.
Eponi crashed into the drop shuttle’s open right side, the one facing the wall. Hull plates ruined by turret burns draped over the opening, and at least one sliced through Eponi’s clothes, dragging on the cloth and probably drawing blood beneath. Eponi’s eyes seared as she blinked through the ash, her feet coming to rest on the shuttle’s haphazard remnants.
The craft had turned upside down in its crash, putting Eponi on a ceiling crossed over with handholds meant for landing troops. Now the damn loops served as small traps, dangling near her feet as Eponi went towards the cockpit. Keeping low kept the smoke going over her head, giving Eponi a chance to see a path forward, one lit by blown conduits and small fires still burning from the transport’s assault.
“Talk to me, Rovo!” Eponi called as she started forward.
She’d be so, so annoyed if she came all this way for Rovo to be dead.
A drop shuttle’s cockpit had all the amenities afforded a rusted out scrap pile. With the ships designed to be ditched at any moment, every expense was spared, except in the crash department. Protective padding, roll cages, and shocks built into the shuttles gave them the sturdy chance to let passengers and pilots survive a wild plunge to the surface. They did little to help with laser fire, so Eponi’s first good look at the seats showed a molten, charred mess.
At least for all except the front pair, the ones farthest away from the disaster claiming the shuttle’s back half. Deep blue-black smoke flowed up along the ruined seats, passing up and through the shuttle’s shattered windshield into the bay. Like some half-dead prophet, Rovo hung in his chair, body parting the smoke. Eponi closed, avoiding the smoldering back seats and reaching for the clasps holding Rovo in.
“Can you hear me?” Eponi asked. Rovo’s eyes looked closed, his head hung limp, and there was a brand new cut crossing the kid’s forehead, but it looked shallow. Glass, maybe. “Time to go, Rovo.”
The rookie said nothing. Didn’t move.
Not a great sign.
“Guess we’re doing this the messy way then.”
Eponi reached for the clasps, felt them burn her fingers with residual heat, and she yanked her hands away. Winced as she realized what those hot straps must be doing to Rovo’s body, trapped against them. The rookie didn’t deserve this. Nobody did.
Well, maybe those agents.
Summoning up that kart racer courage, Eponi went for the straps again. Biting her lip, she ignored the burn, unlatched the clasps, which, loosed, crumbled away to pieces anyway. Rovo fell from the seat, a descent that should’ve had his head cracking to the drop shuttle’s ceiling. Gravity played its reduced role again, though, and Eponi caught Rovo by the shoulders.
Before she could figure a way to get the rookie turned upright, the entire drop shuttle jolted. A new hum overrode every snapping, crackling sound around Eponi, as if the universe had decided to take up a low-grade monotone. Eponi started to curse, because she knew damn well what that hum meant.
They were out of time.
The drop shuttle tilted left, sending both Eponi and Rovo tumbling towards its broken side. Eponi’s metal-sliced shoulder led the way, crashing into the shuttle’s now downward-facing left side, with Rovo nestling into her. Another lurch, and the drop shuttle . . . dropped.
The descent wasn’t all that far, they didn’t fall all that fast, but the impact broke down what structure the shuttle had left. The side above her, its plates already riven by turret fire, by the crash, splintered, cracked. If Eponi didn�
�t move, she and Rovo would be buried in burning metal.
Feet, hands, will. They all coupled with desperation to get Eponi moving towards that shattered windshield, pulling Rovo with her as she went over the broken glass and out onto the docking bay floor. Behind them, just missing Rovo’s taller toes, the shuttle collapsed into a smoking charnel pit. One last alarm gave one last howl as the shuttle died, a fitting eulogy to a craft that’d performed its purpose.
Another ship living up to its ideals burst to life over Eponi’s head. The massive transport had its maneuvering jets humming, lifting off the bay floor and getting ready for its departure. Unless Eponi and Rovo wanted a quick, fiery death, they had to move.
“You are gonna owe me so much for this,” Eponi said, picking herself and Rovo up and breaking into an awkward run back towards those bay doors.
Only to see Sai dashing towards her, katana sheathed and arms pumping as he ran to meet them. Without saying a word—air was better used to keep running—Sai picked up Rovo’s other shoulder and together, with one last torching kiss from the transporter’s engines, they sprinted from the bay. Aurora, standing next to the door, slammed it shut as the ship turned up its acceleration.
Eponi laid Rovo down on the concourse floor, then flopped over next to him, blinking up at the red Nautilus lights. She took one breath. Two breaths. Tried to think of things that had nothing to do with fire, with ash, with the debris stuck in her hair and between her teeth.
“He’s alive,” Sai said, kneeling between Eponi and Rovo. “But he needs to get to the med bay fast.”
“You’re the healthiest of us,” Aurora said, and Eponi sat up to see the captain had a few new bruises since the rescue. “Take him. Eponi and I can handle the bridge.”
“Aurora, you’re in no condition—”
