by J. N. Chaney
He looked back to where he’d looped it around Nathis’s waist. It was tight enough that there was no way the body should be able to escape its grip. So, as long as nothing went catastrophically wrong, it should all work out.
“Yeah, Dash, you just keep telling yourself that,” he muttered, grabbing the plasma pistol he’d retrieved from another body on the bridge. As he did, the ship groaned again, deep in her components; this time, Dash was sure he felt the whole bridge shift slightly. At the same time, a loud clatter rose from the compartment behind the bridge, the one into which he’d crashed the Archetype.
“The Clan Shirna crew is finally breaking through the damaged portion of their ship. They appear to be intent on reclaiming the bridge,” Sentinel said.
Dash checked the plasma pistol. It was set to its lowest possible yield. “Of course they are.”
“It may be a futile effort, of course, because this ship’s structural integrity is now on the brink of failure.”
He raised the pistol. “Of course it is, Sentinel.”
“And the battlecruiser is now within weapons range, and will arrive in less than ten minutes time.”
Dash aimed at the viewport, at a point above and to the right of Nathis’s head. “Of course it will.”
“All of which is to say—”
“That the whole situation is going to hell, I know,” Dash said, interrupting Sentinel. “And I’m about to make it even worse.”
A change in the blinking icon on Nathis’s communicator caught his attention. Once more on impulse, Dash tapped the channel open.
“You are not Nathis,” the voice—an oddly rich, and even somewhat soothing baritone—said. “You are Sawyer, the one called Dash.”
Dash considered ignoring it, or even trying to deny it and keep pretending to be Nathis anyway. But he didn’t. Instead, he popped his face plate and said, “Yeah, you got me. What’s up? Is this the Prelate? You offering to surrender?”
“I assume you killed Nathis.”
“And I assume you’re trying to buy time. So, let’s say goodbye now, so we can all—”
“I do not care about Nathis, or you, or your ship or companions. I only wish to have the Lens.”
Not the Archetype, too? But Dash didn’t say that. Maybe the Prelate just hadn’t noticed it yet. Although, how do you miss a giant mechanical ass and legs hanging out the side of your underling’s ship?
“I will guarantee you safe passage off of Nathis’s ship,” the Prelate said, “in return for you handing over the Lens.”
“You know, I might be tempted by that if whoever was talking on here before you didn’t let that whole the Prelate wants to interrogate you thing slip out.”
“You have no hope of escape otherwise.”
Dash was about to snap something back, but was cut off by a sharp explosion from the compartment behind the bridge. A moment later, a figure appeared in the entrance, clad in a vac suit and holding a plasma pistol. An almost constant tremor shook the ship now, probably caused by the Shirna attempting to take back the bridge.
Idiots. Dash fired his own plasma pistol at the viewport.
Even on its lowest yield, the pistol pulsed out a dazzling flash and an earsplitting blast. The viewport shattered, the remnant fragment immediately blown into space by the explosive rush of atmosphere.
Dash was yanked off his feet, sucked out of the gaping port, then slammed to a hard stop as the tether snapped taut. He crashed into Nathis’s body, also held by the tether. The Shirna who had just arrived weren’t quite so prepared, the rush of venting atmosphere whipping two of them past Dash and into space. A third grabbed Dash, catching his leg and twisting it painfully upward.
Dash aimed the plasma pistol into the faceplate of the man’s helmet and, as the man’s eyes flew wide at the sight of the muzzle filling his face, pulled the trigger. After another flash, but almost silent this time, the Shirna’s head simply vanished. The remaining atmosphere roared out of the empty port as rushing mist, then died away.
Then there was utter silence.
Except, that is, for the low-pressure alert in Dash’s suit. He had about two minutes of breathable air left.
Holding his breath, Dash reached for the pocket on Nathis’s suit, upon which he’d pegged his hopes. If it was empty, then this was all a big and potentially lethal waste of time.
He got the pocket open, reached in, and extracted the Lens.
“Hey,” Dash whispered, “something went right!”
A minute and three quarters of air.
Dash thought back to what Conover had told him about the Lens and how it seemed to work. Dash gritted his teeth and tapped at the Lens as the kid had shown him.
Nothing happened.
But then a faint, bluish light glimmered in the heart of the alien crystal.
And in that strange way it just happened, Dash knew. He knew what he had to do with the Lens.
He started tapping at it. The movement made him and Nathis, who was still tethered to him, wobble about with tiny accelerations. By the time he was done, he had a minute and twenty-ish seconds of air.
Dash shoved the Lens back into Nathis’s pocket, opened the channel on his wrist-comm so it was transmitting, then pulled himself around Nathis, unlooping the tether around his waist. It brought him momentarily face-to-face with the Shirna, whose face was locked in a frozen rictus of what seemed to be both rage and agony.
Okay, that’s going to be haunting a few of my dreams later.
He got the final loop of tether off Nathis. Without hesitating, he shoved the body away from the open viewport as hard as he could. Nathis sailed off, drifting away in the wake of the other Shirna, who seemingly didn’t have suit thrusters, or just couldn’t use them to get themselves under control. The push sent Dash the other way, back toward the port. When he reached it, he had one minute of air left.
He grabbed the rim of the port and pulled himself inside. The artificial gravity reasserted itself, pulling him to the floor. He reached down and punched the emergency release on the tether, releasing it from his suit. Then he clambered to his feet and rushed to the exit. He still had the plasma pistol and kept it ready in case any other Shirna tried to block him.
“Given what you have done, you now have very little time to return to the Archetype and get clear of this region of space,” Sentinel said.
Now that he had weight on his leg and was trying to move fast, Dash realized just how injured he was. The burn on his leg sent searing pain shooting from his foot to his hip with each step, so he limped on his other leg, though that didn’t feel much better after being wrenched by the Shirna, and now his left shoulder burned with a deep ache, yet another wound he hadn’t even realized he’d suffered.
He reached the exit from the bridge. Forty seconds of air left. But he stopped and peered around the hatch-frame. It would suck to get this far, only to bumble in front of some Clan Shirna guy with a readied plasma pistol.
But there was no one in sight. Just the ruined compartment—much more ruined than he remembered it—and the head and shoulders of the Archetype, still smashed through the hull. Dash wasn’t sure if the emergency containment field was still operating, but it didn’t matter anyway, because the atmosphere had found a way through the shattered viewport. Besides, all that mattered was getting back aboard the Archetype, which Dash was going to do, even if he had to hobble to it.
He was still about ten paces away when the overburdened structural components of Nathis’s ship finally gave way. With a wrenching groan that Dash felt through the deck under his feet, the bow section of the ship tore free, tumbling in one direction, while the rest of the ship spun another.
And Dash sailed off in a third.
“Wha…?” he said, confused as to why the compartment suddenly dropped from under his feet, apparently leaving him just hanging there, watching as a vast expanse of hull-plating suddenly sprawled ahead of him, framed against the titanic, stripped wall of the gas giant. Then his brain caught up and
he gasped.
As the stricken ship rotated away from him, Dash saw a protruding structural piece, a beam, sweeping past him. Instinct made him grab for it; he caught it and was immediately yanked into motion after it. Fortunately, the relative velocities of the beam and him weren’t too different. The shock of sudden acceleration slammed through his arms and shoulders, but he managed to hang on, and suddenly everything changed—the expansive remnant of Nathis’s ship wasn’t moving, but everything else was. The gas giant slid across the distant stern, and the starfield rotated, while behind him, the shattered bow pulled slowly away, trailing sparks and debris.
Less than twenty seconds of air.
Dash heaved himself along the girder, wincing and groaning at every ache and pain. As he did, he sucked in air, and blew it out, deliberately hyperventilating. He reached the twisted edge of the nearest hull plate, then pulled himself around it, back into the smashed remains of the compartment containing the Archetype, though now along what had been its ceiling.
Ten seconds.
Dash kept sucking air in, blowing it out, trying to pull as much oxygen into his bloodstream as he could. For a panicked instant, he couldn’t see the Archetype. Was it ejected during the breakup of the ship? He opened his mouth to call out to it, but then realized he’d become disoriented and was looking in the wrong direction. He turned around and found it about twenty or so meters away.
He considered launching himself straight at it, but some dangling debris blocked his way. Grimly, he pulled himself along the ceiling of the compartment, reaching the obstruction just as his air ran out. Pain flared in his ears as the vac suit, unable to generate pressure, failed and Dash was exposed to a vacuum.
He tried holding his final breath, but it shoved hard at the back of his throat, while his chest expanded painfully. He gave up and blew it out, emptying his lungs. He now only had the oxygen in his bloodstream to keep him going, which, if he remembered his vacuum emergency drills, wouldn’t be for long.
He aimed himself at the Archetype. As he did, his vision blurred; the moisture on his eyeballs was starting to boil off into the vacuum. Dash had to do this and do it now.
Gritting his teeth, the only sound penetrating the preternatural silence the pounding throb of his own heart, Dash launched himself at the Archetype.
The next few seconds were the longest of Dash’s life. He felt a growing urge to breathe, but there wasn’t anything to pull into his lungs. His eyes tingled painfully, his vision clearing as the last of the fluid boiled away. His body felt like it was swelling, the gases in it expanding in the absence of any pressure pushing them back. In another few seconds, he’d likely start experiencing the searing pain of the bends, embolisms degassing from his blood and threatening to stop his heart.
He was dying. Literally dying.
His brain started to fog up. Dash focused as hard as he could, realizing he only had seconds of consciousness left. The Archetype’s open hatchway swelled in his vision; he scrabbled at the edge of it as he passed by, trying to pull himself in, but he had no strength left in his arms. He only succeeded in deflecting himself…in some direction, he wasn’t even sure which. Hopefully inside the Archetype, because if he’d just managed to bounce off of it…he was…was…
Was nothing. Nothing left. Just an airless dark, going on forever.
21
Dash blinked. He saw a dark roof above him. Oh. So, this was heaven, or whatever the religious types called the place you went after you died, anyway. Or was it the opposite place? He hadn’t exactly lived a very clean or pure life. Hell, he hadn’t exactly lived a pure moment, let alone a life.
No, wait.
Dash gasped, as searing needles of pain lanced into his body. For a panicked instant, he thought maybe this was hell, and this was going to be eternity now.
No. No, wait again.
He turned his head. He saw a device, a complex construct of arms and cables, and it was familiar, somehow.
Oh. It was the cradle. Inside the Archetype.
And he was breathing, pulling air into his lungs, gasping it back out. He fumbled with his faceplate, popping it open, being rewarded with a blast of air like the reverse of a sudden decompression, along with pain in his head so blindingly keen it yanked a sharp groan, almost a shriek, out of him.
He levered himself up so he was sitting.
“You have very little time to get away from this region of space,” Sentinel said. “I will assist.”
The Archetype shuddered and rumbled. Dash stabbed at the helmet release on his vac suit but missed. It took him two more tries. He finally yanked the helmet off and tossed it away with a clatter. For a while, he just lay on the floor, breathing and trying to sort out which pains seemed to be the worst.
Then he sensed movement around him. He saw the ruins of Nathis’s ship, the bow spinning toward the gas giant, the midships and stern tumbling in the opposite direction. Both would soon be pulled into the massive planet and incinerated. But he also saw the massive battlecruiser sliding into view, flanked by a pair of corvettes and a single frigate, all that remained of Nathis’s flotilla. But everything was rotating, making Dash instantly queasy.
He turned and dragged himself toward the cradle. He had to get control of the Archetype and go looking for…a ship. His ship. What is its name again?
“It’s a ship, I think. My ship?” Dash asked the air, his words uncertain.
“The Slipwing,” Sentinel said. “Also, I have launched the Archetype on an unpowered trajectory, with a severe spin. This is intended to make it appear as though the Archetype was simply thrown clear of Nathis’s ship and is now just drifting away.”
Dash reached the cradle, clawed at it, then dragged himself into it. It immediately embraced him, enclosing him. The searing blasts of pain abruptly subsided, and the desperate need to breathe faded. Dash took a couple deep breaths, simply enjoying the sudden absence of utter agony.
“Okay,” he said, “that whole thing I just did? The fusion explosions, and ships falling apart with me aboard them, and vacuum stuff? I never need to do that again.”
He took a moment to just sink back.
But something plucked at him. There was something important. Something he needed to do. Something about…
Like another explosive decompression, it all came rushing back to him. He looked around and realized he was still only a few kilometers away from the Clan Shirna ships.
“Oh. Goddammit.” The enormity of his position came rushing back like a returning tide, and Dash felt his adrenaline spike all over again.
Dash turned and launched himself away from them, driving the Archetype as fast as he could. It ceased tumbling and smoothly accelerated away from the gas giant and the flotilla of ships. They hadn’t come after him because they’d probably assumed the Archetype was derelict, something they could retrieve at their leisure.
They had no idea how wrong they were.
“Are we far enough yet, Sentinel?”
“No.”
The Archetype had regenerated a lot of its power while it had been embedded in the side of Nathis’s ship, but its reserves were still far below optimum. It didn’t matter. Despite the cost in power, he flung himself into unSpace, raced through it for a count of three, then translated back. He emerged back into real space millions of kilometers from the Clan Shirna ships. The gas giant was now just a disc he could cover with his thumb.
Hopefully, this would be far enough.
“Okay—” he started to say but was cut off by a sudden change in the space he’d just left.
The Lens was, in essence, similar to the Archetype’s distortion cannon, but orders of magnitude more powerful. It could generate a massive gravity well inside a star, causing its outer layers of superhot plasma to collapse, falling against the star’s core in a colossal implosion. This was essentially what happened naturally in a supernova; the compressed plasma would fuse into a host of much heavier elements, then rebound in a titanic explosion.
; Which is what happened back near the gas giant. Dash had set Nathis’s Lens to generate a huge gravitational distortion, which is what he now stared at, awestruck. He couldn’t see the Clan Shirna ships, of course, but he didn’t have to. Instead, he saw an abrupt surge of gas yanked out of the giant planet, as though something had reached down, scooped up a vast handful of its atmosphere, and pulled it into space. Which, in fact, it had.
And then, as suddenly as it happened, it was over. The enormous plume of gas went still, protruding hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the huge planet’s flank.
Dash let out a breath. It was unlikely that anything had survived that. Everything for tens of thousands of kilometers around Nathis’s drifting body had almost certainly been utterly pulverized.
Hopefully, that didn’t include the Slipwing.
With an excruciating mix of hope and dread, Dash started back in-system, back toward the epicenter of that massive blast of gravity.
Nothing remained of the Clan Shirna ships except fragments. Most were about the size of Dash’s fist, and few were larger than a cargo pod. It was a wrenching sight, even if they had been vicious, devious assholes; the aftermath of the blast, the way the ships had been so thoroughly pulverized, left Dash gaping.
It hadn’t just been the ships, either. Mixed among the cloud of debris was what amounted to gravel—the remains of at least one of the gas giant’s moons. And then there was the vast cloud of gas that had been ripped out of the great planet, wisps of which shot through the debris field like reaching fingers. They had already begun to smear, though, as the gas giant’s own, formidable gravity exerted itself.
Eventually, all of this, the wreckage of ships and moons alike, would be pulled into the huge planet and vaporized in its atmosphere. It would be a meteor shower that would probably go on for ages.
“There was no need to allow the Lens to destroy itself,” Sentinel said. “You could have used it remotely, instead of setting a trap the way you did. It is intended to be used at a safe distance from a star, after all.”
