by A. R. Knight
That skill, too, had come about through these corridors. Aurora had been a trigger-happy security guard when she first arrived, but the discipline and its cash rewards chiseled her raw edges into sharp, strong habits. They—
“We didn’t shoot it,” Eponi said, interrupting Aurora’s focused advance. “The bridge, right?”
“What?”
“I didn’t really think about it, that you wouldn’t know.” Eponi, while keeping up with Aurora’s light jog, brushed more ash from her hair with her hands. “But you said you wanted to check out the bridge. I’m telling you, whatever happened there, not my fault.”
Aurora blinked, focused on her steps, “We couldn’t raise the bridge from the comm center, so something went wrong.”
“Well, yeah,” Eponi said. “They started shooting at each other, then the fighters came after us and we booked it.”
“They?”
“I guess the agents? Deepak gave the order to round them up, and I don’t think the ones on the bridge took it very well.”
“Good.”
Given Deepak’s stunned look when Aurora took out the pistol, showed some force in the meetings this morning, the ones that seemed about a thousand years ago, the admiral needed to get his hands dirty more often. The man still led a combat force.
The bridge entry backed up Eponi’s version of events. The wide door sat half closed, the occasional spark still popping the gliding slits. Blood and blast stains marked the walls and floor in front, and two soldiers, both bearing bandages and looking exhausted, swung rifles up to meet Aurora and Eponi as they closed.
“Friendlies,” Aurora said, pulling up and raising her hands. No sense going this far to get shot by a trigger-happy squaddie. “I’m trying to find out if Deepak’s all right?”
One soldier barked for their identification, a command that came as more of a yip, a desperate attempt to get some order back into a frazzled day. Aurora didn’t have any identification to offer, and she started to spin up some excuse when Eponi launched instead.
“Identification?” Eponi said. “Do you have eyes, man? Do you not see that I have no weapons on me, she’s wearing a busted pistol, and we look like we just took a spin cycle through a crap machine? Who’s in charge here, because it better not be you.”
The squaddie’s mouth opened and shut like a gulping fish, and then, not finding any suitable comeback, the man told his teammate to keep his rifle up and vanished inside the bridge.
“Well said,” Aurora noted.
“I feel like trash and I look worse,” Eponi said. “The faster you get to talk with the admiral, the sooner I can get to a shower.”
Whatever kept you motivated.
The soldier returned without anymore casualties, verbal or physical, and said Deepak waited inside. Aurora led the way, catching Eponi giving the soldier a hard eye roll on the way past. There were many reasons the pilot had found her way to Sever Squad, not least because standard-issue discipline didn’t fit with Eponi’s worldview.
Today, Aurora could live with that.
The bridge bore little resemblance to Aurora’s earlier, unpleasant experience. Where before workstations had stretched down and away from the entrance like a networked, mechanical hillside, now broken and burnt shreds remained. The pristine walls, swooping in a big curve along the bridge’s back, bore hideous black pocks, while the grand viewing shield . . . wasn’t. All the fire, smoke, and damage had coated the glass in mottled gray-white, making the bridge feel less like the stellar apex of a great ship and more a rotting egg.
“It’s going to take some work,” Deepak admitted as they walked in. The admiral, leaning on his standing-height consoles, offered up a haggard grin. “Which is why I was so happy to hear you also destroyed my back-up bridge.”
“Blame the agents.” Aurora came all the way up to the admiral and gave him a once-over. “How many shots did you take?”
“Three. One in the leg, one in the shoulder,” Deepak sighed, looked down, “and, somehow, one on my foot. I think the shooter fired as he fell.” Returning to Aurora’s face, Deepak didn’t quite suppress a chuckle. “Looks like I’m not the only one taking heat today.”
“We’re alive, that’s what matters,” Aurora said.
She wanted to ask the admiral how he really felt, wanted to ask why he was standing here at all and not getting to the med bay. Those bandages on his wounds couldn’t be doing much to help. But asking those questions wouldn’t get Sever where it needed to go.
“You need to get fighters out, after the transport that just launched,” Aurora said, nodding past Deepak to a console showing near-field scans, which had the transport showing as a big blot in the otherwise empty deep space. “The agents are on there, and they have a weapon we don’t want to let get away.”
Deepak didn’t move, “We? Aurora, I gave you your lockdown. I told my soldiers to round up the agents, a move which may guarantee my removal from this post. That will guarantee I’ll have to check my room every night for hidden traps before I sleep, lest some agent deliver vengeance. I did this for you—”
“Cut it,” Aurora snapped. “You didn’t do this for me. You did it because you knew anything else would be suicide. The agents don’t give a damn about your troopers. I do, because I used to be one.”
Deepak nodded, “I saw your message. Very good, with all the right words. Not that it will matter.”
“Because?”
“Because by the time your missive reaches the right people, the agents will have ensured their loyalty, or replaced them with ones receptive to their demands. That’s what I was trying to tell you before. There is no winning here.”
“Then why?”
Deepak closed his eyes, shook his head, “Because I’m an idiot who cannot let go, that’s why.”
Cannot forget? Aurora tried to parse that, follow through Deepak’s words from start to finish. Started, and stopped when an officer shouted up from below, one stationed at one of the few remaining workstations still running.
A ship had left the Nautilus. A small one, registered to Renard.
“Stop that ship,” Aurora replied, brushing past Deepak and looking towards the officer. “Shoot it down, if you can.”
“Admiral?” The officer did the proper thing and ignored Aurora. Hurtful, but right. “What should we do?”
“You heard the commander,” Deepak said, sounding ever more tired. “Renard’s a traitor and a danger to everyone here. Bring it down.”
Aurora thought Renard had been on the transport, had already departed the Nautilus for another hideaway. The big ship had already fled beyond the reach of the Nautilus turrets, and Aurora would be asking Deepak why he hadn’t fired on it. Renard, though, would be an easy target for the Nautilus teeth.
“They’re hailing us, sir,” called the same officer, whose flustered state amplified with every declaration, like a top winding up. “It’s Renard himself.”
“Then send it, man, and calm down,” Deepak replied. “He cannot hurt us from his little ship.”
Aurora couldn’t be confident in that, but she let Deepak have his station. Standing behind him as the admiral turned to see the incoming hail light up the console, Aurora saw not Renard’s grainy head, as expected, but a different one.
“Rovo?” Eponi said, as confused as Aurora felt. “The hell’s he doing with Renard?”
The rookie didn’t look well, and his eyes were closed. Head lolling to the side, Rovo sported bruises, cuts, and all the evidence of a day gone far worse than planned.
“Deepak!” Renard’s voice cut in, and the officer stuck his face into the frame, a leering glare. “See my precious cargo? One of your friend’s squad members, I believe. A young one. Shoot me down, and he goes too.”
Renard hadn’t stopped, his ship still cruising away. In seconds, he’d fly beyond the Nautilus’s reach. Deepak had to make a decision, and Aurora knew she could pull the trigger for him. Rovo was a Sever Squad member. She could tell Deepak to fire, and he
would.
“A deserter, and a civilian,” Deepak offered Aurora a solemn look, his finger navigating to the mute button, cutting off Renard’s continued jibes. “A single casualty falls within the limits. We should fire.”
The words weren’t loud enough to trigger a response, weren’t directed at the others on the bridge, or back at Renard.
Aurora didn’t flinch.
“No,” Aurora answered. “Don’t shoot.”
“Always knew you had a heart in there somewhere,” Eponi said as they ran down the concourse, behind a soldier ready to scan them through to the target. “All that talk about cash and command and here—”
“Eponi, shut it,” Aurora said as they hit far enough to enter the Nautilus bays.
On the upper level, the slots stayed fixed for official ships. DefenseCorp bigwigs and important visitors. Except for a trio meant as fast-access fighters, sharp craft designated as a last ditch escort for officers forced to flee.
Deepak suggested the idea, offering them up as an option if Aurora wanted to try and save Rovo. Aurora had dished off a thanks and left. Deepak would survive, would no doubt mention this little moment later.
Maybe Deepak had been trying for the same thing, shoving Sever into all those safe slots. Rovo, though, had been taken hostage. Not his fault, not his choice. Rovo didn’t deserve to die for that.
“First one’s good,” Eponi said, and the soldier scanned them through, right to a shimmery yellow ship crammed with turrets, shields, and two giant engines stuffed into its half-moon shape.
For a rescue, the ship would serve.
Thirty-Two
The Left Behind
Punched, shot, even stabbed during an early DefenseCorp assignment roaming the streets of a planet in a rebellion, but never choked. Not with a hand holding him up off the ground, squeezing Sai’s life away one second at a time. His legs went numb first, as black spots danced over his eyes. His hands, at first trying to get the grip off his throat, went limp, like a power switch turning off.
The blood pounded through his head, trapped and circling and dying.
And through those black spots, Sai saw the tearing glimmers, the false bending tied to the strange suit he’d fought back near the transport and now here. Through the schisms, Sai saw Renard, the officer at the heart of all this, talking to Rovo. The spoken words went into Sai’s ears, where they vanished into the panicked, pulsing cacophony wracking his desperate self.
The throw registered only as relief.
Sai took a long time to move after he’d been tossed aside. Beneath him were the two ruined soldiers, dead by virtue of their own misfortune. Any other station but that lift, at that hour, and they’d have glided through this whole day without a problem. Now Sai used their cooling, hardening bodies as a nightmare bed.
He should’ve forced himself up. Should’ve forced himself to grab that katana and sprint after Rovo. Thrown everything he had at those two bastards.
Except Sai couldn’t move.
You die a thousand deaths in a career like this. See yourself at life’s end time and time again until you acquire a certain mocking attitude. That shot, this mission, those bombs should’ve been the ones to cast Sai into the great beyond, but they didn’t, and they never had. Even Anaskya’s virus, tearing through his body, or the patrol craft on Wexer, or the hero laser blast on the Prisa.
In the last few months, Sai had knocked on death’s door plenty and come away without an answer.
But none, not one, of those moments had made him feel so damn weak.
“You want to go?” she asked him, on that rainbow rain day beneath the glassy, manufactured sky. “Leave all this?”
This, as it was most other mornings, consisted of a frenzied dash to get his son and daughter ready for school. To get his wife into a place where she could resume the always-on responsibilities due an engineer. Finally, to get himself into a uniform, to the apportioned place in around the vast city where Sai could stand, sit, or walk for hours and pray nothing that day would take him from the next.
Today, though, went slower. His children, as they had throughout the years, needed less and less. They made their breakfast, they packed their bags, they left with a wave to their waiting friends. His wife blurred from the bed to the board room, leaving Sai pulling together a meal with nothing but the birds. Today had been like yesterday, like the one before that and the one—
“When did you know,” Sai asked, “that this is what you wanted to do?”
The kids weren’t home yet, wouldn’t be for a while. The porch, with fearless birds ducking inside the covering to avoid the rain, served as neutral territory. The soft lab-spun cedar made for a beautiful table, a gift Sai had given his wife, on a month’s salary that she made in a day. The hanging flowers her stamp on things. Equal partners in an equal space for an equal conversation.
“When I saw the impact,” his wife replied.
“You’re more charitable than me,” Sai said, his eyes drifting to the katana. It sat near the doorway back into the house. He’d been practicing in the yard when his wife came home early, after he’d called. “They look up to you, you know.”
“You too.” She always had that way, always knew how to turn a compliment for one into a success for all. “You’re brave. Strong.”
“Static,” Sai said. He couldn’t be that today, though. The offer had come through, an opening for someone with his skillset. “I don’t want them to watch me get old. To watch me do this every day.”
Six months later, after passing through more tests and training than Sai had ever done, the mercenary minds at DefenseCorp passed him along to the Nautilus. He’d left home with open tears, hard hugs, and a promise to come back when Sai felt like he’d earned his rest. In the meantime, the extra cash would pay for schools, would pay for his wife’s parents to come live with her. All benefits.
Those last looks would be the terrible cost.
“Sai,” the heavy voice said, “wake up, my friend.”
Sai saw the concourse, felt the katana’s hilt in his hand. He must’ve passed out again. His throat still hurt, that dull ache ringing when Gregor held a small water cup to Sai’s mouth and forced the liquid down.
“There’s medicine in there,” Gregor said. “You’ll feel better.”
At some point, maybe. Gregor’s tonic didn’t work instantly, but Sai pushed himself into a sit anyway, legs sticking out like a child. Gregor loomed over him, near the lift, while other squaddies tended to the bodies behind Sai.
“They have Rovo,” Sai said, the urgency coming back. “We have to—”
“Gone,” Gregor replied. “The cowards fled. Aurora and Eponi are chasing now.”
“Where? Can we catch them?”
Gregor shook his head, leaned down and helped Sai up. The man gave Sai an odd look as he did so, no doubt tracking the shredded burns from the Prisa, the bruising along Sai’s neck.
“What happened to you?” Gregor said.
“A lot,” Sai replied, glancing back at the fallen squaddies with a sigh. “They didn’t make it?”
Gregor chased Sai’s look, matched his sigh too, “Does not look like it. Who?”
“Someone in a new suit, I think.” Sai gripped the katana tighter. “Fought two of them today. Invisible bastards.”
“Ah. Me too,” Gregor said. “Dangerous.”
“Renard came here too.”
“Not surprising. I followed them.” Gregor shifted Sai towards the lift. “Do you need the med bay?”
“Wouldn’t be a bad plan, I think.” Sai ran a mental count of his aches, his pains, before settling on Gregor’s disappointed look. “’Cept I get the feeling you’ve got another idea?”
“Renard left behind evidence. We should destroy it.”
“What?”
“Follow me.”
Following, here, meant trailing Gregor down near the mess hall, on the Nautilus’s bottom floor. Past the doors leading to the ship’s large labs, and finally to one nea
r the concourse’s end. Squaddies posted up here too, putting broken bodies on stretchers to send up to the med bay.
“The same thing you saw above. Vana,” Gregor said while they watched, “is very dangerous. More than Renard. But I am not certain whose side she is really on.”
“Looks like it’s not our side.” Sai gestured to the bodies as the two Sever members stepped past them and into the lab beyond.
The squaddies didn’t challenge the Sever members, maybe because they knew Gregor, or maybe because they had enough problems right now that didn’t need adding to. Either way, Weapons Lab 5 sported one big broken power armor, some empty hooks, and marks in the walls and floor telling a tough story.
“She could have killed me,” Gregor said. “It would have taken only a second, but she did not.”
“You look pretty tough to kill, Gregor. Maybe she didn’t think she had the time.”
“The blade was at my throat. I couldn’t move.”
Sai shrugged, watched as Gregor went further into the lab. The man took a right turn, headed for the room’s corner. As Gregor bent down, Sai saw the flickers, the light bending. Without a second’s hesitation, pushing through the aches, Sai had his katana back in his hands. No way he’d get caught off guard by one of those suits again.
“It’s okay,” Gregor said. “This one is smashed.”
With his katana ready, Sai crept closer, watched as Gregor felt around the glitchy air and found the suit’s release. Like some bad movie effect, the suit’s visor retracted, revealing a man’s face, with a bloody broken nose and glassy eyes. Still breathing, though.
“You left him, alive?” Sai asked, lowering the katana towards the target.
“Legs broken,” Gregor said. “Didn’t want the others to find him.”
The man coughed when Gregor gave him a light slap on the cheek. His eyes flipped open, bloodshot and hurting.
