“Do what?” said El.
“It didn’t fizz over or anything,” said Will.
“Years of misspent youth,” said El. She dreaded asking the next question, but as no one had come up to claim this kid in the middle of an alien invasion of the station, she figured the answer needed knowing. El tried to make her tone casual. “Where are your parents?”
“I dunno,” said Will. “Dad’s on shift. Mom too, I think.”
“Uh huh,” said El. “They work for the station?”
“I guess,” said Will. “They were fighting last night.”
“About?” El took another sip of her whiskey.
“Well, Dad said the emperor is a good for nothing pirate and we shouldn’t be bending the knee. And Mom said the emperor is a good man who came to take the chains off us.” Will sipped his soda, then looked at El. “What do you think?”
El winced. “I figure both can be true,” she offered. “Emperor’s a complicated man.” She thought before continuing, perhaps a little reluctantly. “Seems the emperor tries to do the right thing. Don’t always get it right, mind. But he tries.”
“Huh,” said Will. “How does he know what’s right?”
“Because he’s a fool,” said El. She sighed. “Always trying to put his own damn self in harm’s way.”
“Maybe he should come to my school,” said Will. He wasn’t looking at El, remembering something less sweet than his soda. “Not everyone’s nice there.”
El ran a hand through her hair, feeling tired. “No, Will. Not everyone’s nice. Sometimes people, they try and right the scales. Tip the odds, back the way they should be. Equal. The emperor is … not fond of bullies.” She remembered a time in a restaurant, back on Earth, years ago, when a man she barely knew stood shoulder to shoulder with her so she didn’t have to fight alone.
Will looked doubtful. “You said he was a pirate.”
“No,” said El. “You said he was a pirate. Or, your dad.” She waved the whiskey glass. “Whatever.”
“But you agreed,” said Will, chin jutting in a stubborn manner.
“What are you, some kind of lawyer? Let’s say I did,” said El. “He can still … look, it’s not important.” She rubbed her face with a hand, feeling a strange sense of deja vu. “When are your parents getting here?”
“They work up decks,” said Will.
“Oh,” said El, her voice softening as if it had a mind of its own. “Well, I figure we got time.”
“Time for what?” said Will.
“I think we should get some of these old machines running,” said El, pointing at the pinball tables against the wall. Power lines draped over the top, dust heavy on the tops. They were emulators, a holo stage providing depth and texture for simulated metal balls. Or, that’s what El figured would happen if they got a little bit of power. “C’mon.”
She poured herself a refill, sashaying around the bar, Will bobbing along in her wake. El made the machines, finding that, as expected, some fool had removed the power. She ducked under one of them, connecting the cord to a socket. The machine chimed, and by the time she’d come up for air, the holo stage was alight with bright colors and a faux metal ball.
“Hey,” called a man, standing nearby. “We turned those off because of the noise.”
“Oh,” said Will.
“Wait here,” said El. She looked about, finding a stool, and hauled it close so Will could have a seat. He played like a natural, so El walked toward the killjoy who’d spoken. “Hey,” she said, companionably.
“I said—”
“I heard what you said.” El cleared her throat. “Thing is, kid’s parents are up decks.”
“Do I look like I give a fuck?” said Killjoy, his voice rising. He looked familiar, not that El could put her finger on why. Like an image you might have seen in a holo once, a little too much weight flowing over his belt line.
El leaned in close. “Look,” she said. “Do you know about the Ezeroc?”
“Of course,” said Killjoy, waving his arms, still talking louder than was necessary for polite conversation.
“Do you know where they are?” said El.
“Yeah,” said Killjoy. “They’re up … oh.”
“Right,” said El. “So, how about you shut the fuck up for a second? Maybe you’ve missed your flight down to the planet. Or out of here. Maybe you’re a very important person. Maybe you’ve been inconvenienced. But can we both agree that your level of annoyance is low compared to his?” She jerked her thumb behind her at Will.
“I guess,” said Killjoy.
“Wait a second,” said El. “Can you say Tyche?”
“Oh God,” said Killjoy. “You’re … her.”
“Dock Control motherfucker,” said El, with feeling. “You were on Absalom Delta when I went to pick up Chad.”
“Maybe,” said Killjoy, evasively enough it screamed bingo!
“While we’re talking shop,” said El. “How’d you get here?”
“Hated that place. I know it seems weird, but I thought the whole station smelled of boiled crab.”
“How’s this place treating you?” said El.
“Much the same,” said Killjoy, with a sad nod. “Fucking roaches.”
“Well,” said El. “I’d like to say it was nice talking, but it wasn’t. Just keep your fucking voice down, get me?”
“Yes,” said Killjoy, turning his face away.
El made the short walk back to Will, the kid having reached a high score in a short time. The table continued to make beeps and chimed as the emulated ball ricocheted around the inside of the holo stage. “How are you doing?” she asked.
“Still on my first ball,” said Will, not looking at her. His entire focus was on the table.
A movement drew El’s gaze. She looked through the bar’s windows to the concourse outside. A few people wandering around, more or less the normal order of events in a place like this. But right over there, an empty piece of corridor sat, like an accusation. The empty corridor had a service door as a distinguishing feature.
El sipped her whiskey. The thing about being a Helm? Attention to detail. Good reflexes, sure, and it didn’t hurt to be handsome like the devil. But when there was railgun fire lancing the hard black, lasers and masers and particle cannons shouting at each other? An eye for detail kept you alive. Your ship, breathing around you. All souls alive and intact.
And two seconds ago, there’d been a guy standing there. Short. Maintenance look to him. She closed her eyes for a second, remembering. Yellow coveralls, more grease than fabric. Tools hanging from a belt, not sure what kind — Hope might. Three days of beard on his face, thirty years of hard drinking on his gut. El opened her eyes. Nope. Not there anymore.
She walked towards the bar’s windows, looking left and right for greasy yellow coveralls. Nothing.
El wandered to the door of the bar, Will and his pinball machine behind her, still making excited noises as his score ramped higher and higher. She was about to step outside, when a woman to her left said, “You can’t take that out of here,” no doubt referring to her whiskey.
El didn’t turn. “Sure,” she said. “Go fuck yourself.” El walked outside the bar, the station feeling too open, too wide. Not the comforting closeness of a flight deck. No weapons under her fingers. No PDCs to chatter against those who’d do you harm. Just her whiskey, her sidearm, and the tatters of her spent courage. Not enough. Not by far.
The walk across the concourse felt like it didn’t take long enough. El passed a planter, deep and lush vegetation growing to the ceiling. Some seats to the side provided a place to rest your feet, if that was your frame of mind. El wished it was. She wished Kohl was here, or Grace, or fuckit, even Nate. Because the Helm of a starship didn’t go looking for trouble dockside.
She made the door, hand hovering above the panel that would open it. You can turn back. Walk away. Just leave, and it’ll be fine. There are people for this. Station’s got security. El turned back to look at
the bar, lights glinting in the windows as Will played pinball, possibly for the last time in what would be a short life. El breathed out, then pressed the panel to open the door.
It opened with a whine. Inside, a smear of red. An arm, minus the rest of the body, tatters of cloth around it. The sleeve was maintenance yellow. The blood went up a set of metal stairs. The lights were out the next flight up. Something hissed in the darkness.
El took a step back, slowly, and carefully, pressing the door close button. It shut with a clank. She keyed the lock, the pleasing green shifting to an angry red. Then, one step at a time, she backed away from the door.
She made it five paces before El turned and ran. Her glass fell to the concourse deck, a shattering of wasted whiskey amid glittering shards. El made the bar’s entrance, the woman at the door looking like she wanted to say see, I told you. Whatever she was about to say was lost behind El as she ran to Will, grabbing the kid like a sack under one arm. He shouted “Hey!” as she hefted him. Then she turned, looking for a way out of this fucking bar.
Nada. It was a space station, for chrissakes. It’s not like there was a convenient alley behind it. El ran toward the bar, Will bouncing against her. She put a little spring in her step, vaulted the bar, and crashed down behind it, curled around the boy. El almost didn’t make it, one of her boots catching on the sill of the bar. It spilled her on her back rather than on her feet, and that slight indignity probably saved her life.
Will was still demanding answers, his face centimeters from hers. She said, “Hush.”
“What?”
Lying on their sides, it felt like they were in a different world. Like what was to come wasn’t real. “Will, I need you to be quiet. No matter what happens. No matter what you hear.” El noticed — an odd time to be aware of a limiting factor like this — his wrist carried no bracelet. No protection from the Ezeroc. Ignore that. Solve it when you can. “Do you understand?” He nodded. “Good. While you’re being quiet, I’ll get us out of here.”
“But Mom and Dad—”
“Quiet,” said El. “Remember?”
He nodded again.
A short, sharp scream came from outside the bar. The sound was faint enough to be mistaken for birdlife if you were on a crust. A macaw, maybe. El had never heard a macaw, but it’s what she reckoned one might sound like. Will’s eyes went wide. He’d heard it too. El got to her knees, then put their backs to the bar. She pulled her sidearm out with hands that were back to shaking. Or maybe they’d just never stopped, but with the whiskey it had felt okay.
From inside the bar, a shout. Then another scream. The sound of something massive breaking through a wall, followed by the clatter of what sounded like wood against the deck. A rending, tearing sound, and a whole bunch of screaming.
El wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, but no way that would help.
A man shouted They’re inside! before his voice choked out a scream. Another man said something that sounded like Take this motherfucker! and then said nothing else at all. The sound of running feet, and an impact behind El against the bar, shaking it. She pulled Will close, wrapping an arm around him, covering his mouth. Quiet. No noise. Don’t even breathe, kid. She wanted him to hear her, but she couldn’t speak. It would give them away.
There was a crunnnch, the paneling beside El’s head splintering out, an Ezeroc claw stabbing through. She almost screamed. The claw was covered in blood, and after a couple tugs, retracted back through the ceramic of the bar. The sound of scuttling claws receded.
El counted ten breaths, and then another ten for luck, because she felt like she was panting.
She let Will go. The kid’s eyes were wide, unseeing. El slipped her bracelet off, putting it on his wrist, the strap tightening automatically. She turned around, standing at about a centimeter an hour, so slowly it felt like a freeze frame. All El wanted to do was run, just get gone, but that wouldn’t work for two reasons.
First reason, the roaches had got onto this deck, which meant they were everywhere. No place was safe, not really.
Second reason, she wasn’t the kind of asshole who’d let an orphan turn into a corpse.
As her eyes cleared the bar’s top, she saw what remained of the makeshift refugee camp. Not many corpses, the Ezeroc no doubt dragging people away for food or fuel or whatever they did. The odd spray of blood, but surprisingly little of that. Half an arm lay atop the bar, sheared clean at the elbow. It had one of Hope’s bracelets on, so El reached out with the hand not holding her sidearm to get it off.
She couldn’t. Not with one hand. El didn’t want to stop looking at the concourse outside the bar, or to put down her sidearm, but she needed both hands and all her attention for just a second.
Gun down.
Both hands, on the bracelet.
Pull it away.
On your own wrist. Strap tightens.
Gun up.
El looked back up. Nothing had changed. She was sure of it. El hadn’t missed anything. No new threats.
She lowered herself behind the bar. She put her lips close to Will’s ear. “Will, listen to me. I’ll get us out of here. Nod if you understand.”
He looked at her, then shook his head.
Maybe it’s time for a little marketing, El. She put her face next to his ear again, smelling his fear. Or maybe it was her own. “Do you know who I am, Will? How I know the emperor? I’m the Captain of the Skyguard. Best Helm in the universe. Make no mistake. You and me, Will? We’ll fly right out of here. You get me?”
She pulled back. This time, she got a nod. Captain of the Skyguard. Hunkering down behind the bar, she didn’t feel like a captain of anything. She felt like just another refugee, and maybe she was. Earth had been invaded, and all they’d done—
All she’d done.
—was to run away. Left other people to the dying. Debts like that had a way of catching up with a woman, and here she was. The boatman was calling for his coins.
“Fuck the boatman,” she said. El looked at Will. “Sorry. Screw the boatman. Let’s go.”
She helped the kid up, edging around the bar. There was a clear run to the elevators at the end of the concourse. No movement. No giant centaur-like insects, ready to tear her limb from limb. No, those assholes had done their sweep-and-clear. El held onto Will’s hand, pulling him along as she jogged. She kept herself low, head on a swivel, eyes trying to be everywhere.
An Ezeroc hissed at her from the doorway of a shop that sold swimwear. The incongruity of it — not that an Ezeroc was here, but that someone sold swimwear on a space station — hit her, and she almost laughed. El raised her sidearm instead, pulling the trigger. The boom! of the weapon felt like the call of justice as the insect’s torso blew apart in a shower of pale green gore. El pulled another shell from her belt, feeding the weapon, snapping the breach closed.
Another Ezeroc appeared above them, the ceiling panels showering outward in a spray of ceramic. El swiveled and fired, her sidearm shearing away its leading claws. It keened, pulling back into the ceiling. Another shell in her sidearm. One less on her belt. But there’d be enough. There had to be enough shells on her belt. The elevator wasn’t that far away.
El grabbed Will’s arm again. The boy was crying, and she wasn’t surprised. Fuck, she wanted to cry. She wanted to trade places with the kid, have someone bigger and stronger pulling her out of this hellhole. “We’re good, Will,” she said, not sure if she was talking to him. Her voice didn’t shake, which surprised her almost into silence, but three words weren’t good enough to keep the kid together. “We’re good. Remember. We’re flying out of here. You and me. We’ve got a starship. She’s a good ship. Called the Tyche. You heard of the Tyche, Will?”
Nothing from the kid. Fair enough.
El hurried them along aways further, passing stores full of things to buy, empty of people to buy them. A beauty parlor’s front window was coated in blood, and El turned Will away as they passed.
The elevator was close. Twenty meters.
Easy.
The ground in front of El erupted, deck plates showering up like a fountain. Two Ezeroc surfaced, her sidearm speaking before she remembered she held it. Legs blew off one of them, and it skittered in a circle, trying to escape the pain. Another shell into the sidearm, breach snapping closed, weapon coming up.
Too late. The Ezeroc was on her. It would stab her. It knocked her sidearm away, the gun spinning into the shadows.
There was a clank. “No!” Will’s voice, behind the Ezeroc. He’d found a holo stage, a piece of signage outside a store, and had hit the insect with it.
The Ezeroc swiveled towards the boy, so El backed up, then shouted, “Hey, asshole! Here.” The Ezeroc looked between Will and her, Will and her. She could almost hear it thinking, the little one has less calories, but it’s an easier feed. El reached down to her wrist, pulling off the bracelet. She kept backing up. Her sidearm had to be over here somewhere.
Without the bracelet on, the Ezeroc turned towards her. She knew she’d have appeared like a beacon among the starless black, her mind visible to it. “That’s right, you cockthistle. Captain of the Skyguard. Be a prize, right? Someone like me? You’d want that.”
It screeched and ran at her. That moment, her foot hit something metal. El looked down, seeing her sidearm beside a table. She grabbed it, raising the weapon as the Ezeroc charged. The weapon roared as the Ezeroc reached her, blowing it’s head away. The mass of it still impacted her, knocking her back and through a window. El fell into a display case, a selection of toy dolls cascading around her.
El pushed the Ezeroc corpse away with her boot, standing upright. Will was outside, looking at her anxiously. El reloaded her sidearm, then put her bracelet back on. She walked out to Will. “You okay, kid?”
Tyche's Demons: A Space Opera Military Science Fiction Epic (Ezeroc Wars: Tyche's Progeny Book 1) Page 21
