Remnant

by Dwayne A Thomason

  The metal containment doors snapped open and Cel jerked despite herself. She heard a soft venting sound and the air filled with the smell of ozone. Then the doors slid apart revealing the N-space drive.

  “A shuttle that size won’t have a proper N-space jump drive, just a slip drive, for quick jaunts across the system. It’ll be shaped like a disk about a meter in diameter with a sphere in the center made up of rotating tori. At the bottom, where the drive links up with power and ship control, the disk will be squared off. There, above the cable, is the emergency breaker. Just rip it out.”

  Cel knelt and followed Ashla’s instructions. Down where a series of large cables plugged into the drive, she found a cartridge shaped device. Cel grabbed at it and pulled but her fingers kept sliding off. No handle or release button was visible. It didn’t appear to be screwed in. She pulled at it again, but it barely moved.

  Cel pulled her survival dagger and jabbed it in between the breaker and its housing and then tried to use it to jimmy the device out. She huffed, checked behind her and then went back to it, wriggling at the thing, digging her dagger in deeper and deeper until the cartridge pulled out with a metallic pop.

  Cel pocketed the breaker, sheathed her dagger and then went through the process of re-containing and re-energizing the n-drive. That done she left the maintenance hall, left the door open and then ran to the cockpit again.

  “Last but not least, I’ll put a program on your link that you can run from the ship’s cockpit controls. It will give you a thirty second timer—which should be plenty of time to get to safety—and then activate the drive.”

  “What good will that do?”

  Ashla screwed her face up in a disparaging sneer. “An N-slip drive activated outside of a gravity well will produce an N-space bubble that will permit a ship to slip across realspace at speeds approaching C. This doesn’t cause any problems because the ship isn’t actually in realspace, it’s in N-space, sort of. The physics is a bit too complex for me to explain right now.”

  Ashla sighed. “An N-slip drive activated inside a 1-G gravity well will only create a tiny bubbles of N-space inside the drive’s chamber. This bubble will dissipate almost instantly as N-space is incredibly unstable within a gravity well, but before it does it will result in a catastrophic explosion, which is why there are so many countermeasures against it happening. A drive this size will produce a similar result to a low-yield nuclear detonation, without the fallout. Because it’s only an explosion insofar as it accelerates all matter within a given area around it at incredible speeds.”

  “Okay,” Cel said. “I understand.”

  “Not really,” Ashla replied scornfully, but her smile was kind, “but enough to make you dangerous.”

  Cel ran the program off her link and watched as the screen switched to a countdown timer. The timer went from thirty to twenty-nine and she ran.

  Cel bolted out of the cockpit, through the passenger cabin, down the ramp...where the foursome of ship techs and MPs were heading in her direction.

  The techs jumped but the MPs were better trained. They raised their weapons at Cel.

  “Hold it right there!” One called.

  “Freeze or your dead!” shouted the other.

  Cel stopped, gun lowered. “Wow, you guys eat lunch fast for union men.”

  “Very funny,” one of the MPs, a tall, severe man with pale skin and deep shadows under his eyes, said. “Now drop your weapon.”

  “Twenty seconds,” called a voice from her pocket, her link letting her know she was a little closer to dying.

  “Listen fellas. In the grand scheme of things, I’m a small fish. Way more important than me is running for your life from the massive death-bomb I just created.”

  The two MPs looked at each other and Cel took her shot. In a flash she raised her weapon and fired. The pale MP cried out, staggered back and fell to the floor, his chestplate blackened but not penetrated by her shot. Cel turned and fired again, missed, re-aimed and fired a third time, this time hitting the second MP in the torso. He too roared, but he managed to lift his weapon and fire back. Cel ran.

  The techs dropped to the floor. The pale MP rolled and fired in her direction, but his shots mostly hit the ceiling. His friend was more accurate, but not accurate enough. Cel watched bolter fire rip through the racks and shelves she headed towards before she barreled over one of the workstations and dove for cover.

  “Stop firing and get out of here!” But it was no use. Cel hadn’t wanted to kill them, she had shot at their armor, only looking to stun, but these men were likely to fire at her until the explosion turned them all into moist confetti.

  Cel scrambled for the door on hands and feet, while firing over the shelves she passed in hopes to scare at least the technicians away. She tabbed the door control and rushed through as bolts fired after her, getting ever closer.

  “Ten seconds.”

  Cel sprinted down the corridor, passed the junction she had come from, but kept going, wanting to gain whatever distance she could.

  “Five seconds.”

  Cel holstered her gun and used both hands to pump, running as fast as she could.

  An explosion ripped through the corridor. The sound was deafening. Cel got three more steps before being launched into the air by the shockwave. Guarding her head with her hands she smashed into concrete, her foot striking something more fragile. Light strips flickered and went dark. Overhead pipes burst, hosing her down with water and hot air. She crashed back to the ground. Water pouring, splashing, soaked her clothes. Tremors and aftershocks groaned through the sublevel.

  Cel pushed herself off the ground, hurting everywhere. She was in the dark. There were distant flickers of lights but nothing that lasted long enough to help. Her elbows burned. They were bleeding. The wound in her thigh was now alive with pain. Her kneecap felt smashed. She pushed herself to her feet, unable to keep the groans and grunts of pain from passing her gritted teeth.

  She leaned against the wall, out of breath, panting and feeling sick. Well, she thought, I did my part. It’s up to you guys.

  As much as she wanted to, though, Cel knew she couldn’t stand around and be glad that she’d got the job done. Hopefully Ashla and Dothin were on their way to safety, but she had to get away too. They would be gunning for her now.

  Cel took a deep, shuttering breath. She drew her pistol, found it empty, and reloaded it with a fresh magazine from her belt. She tried putting weight on her hurt knee and found that it took it. Fractured maybe, but not broken. Maybe.

  She pushed off from the wall, fought the wave of nausea, and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

  Chapter Twenty-Five:

  Gifts of Healing

  “What the void are we doing down here, Sarge?” asked Keln as they climbed down the lift maintenance ladder to sublevel eight.

  Soma dropped to the landing, used his military override code to open the door, and then entered the lobby outside. It looked identical to the others he’d seen. Carts charging here, closet doors there, corridors going here and there, etc.

  “We’re capturing a saboteur, Private.” Soma held the same tranq dart pistol he had from the Elpizio mission. His CO had ordered he and Raven Squad to keep them, as they were still a safe and useful weapon to use if the prisoner attempted to escape. Now he would use it to capture an enemy agent alive.

  Soma covered as Fel, Dunnis and Keln filed out into the lobby. Fel covered the south corridor, Keln the north while Dunnis cleared the maintenance closets one by one. As he did he re-set the locks on them. Several minutes earlier Lieutenant Riza had alerted Soma that the enemy had clearance codes for the whole complex. Since then Soma’s team, and every other fireteam in the AO were now checking every room and re-setting every lock.

  The image of a noose tightening around the sabotuer’s neck thread by thread seemed appropriate to Soma.

  Dunnis shook his head at the last closet door.

  “Lieutenant, Sergeant Cross. S-8 North
hub is locked down. Commencing sweep northbound.”

  “Copy that, Cross.”

  The first several minutes since leaving Remnant had been full of hectic radio chatter as the saboteur seemed to run circles around the MPs. It was Riza’s leadership, not Colonel Tho’s, that changed the game. Soma logged that as valuable information.

  “Same as usual boys, two by two.”

  Soma led his men down the wide, darkened corridor. They hugged the walls, two to the left and two to the right, ready to deal with any trouble. They cleared rooms three at a time, while one remained in the passageway and every room from the landing bays to the maintenance closets got locks reset and shut down.

  They were maybe half way to the central hub when a voice crackled over the general comm.

  “Contact, contact. S9-323.”

  “We’re close,” called another. “Oscar Mike to—"

  “Stay cool, Erkan,” Soma called back. “Keep clearing your sector.”

  “Affirmative.” Lieutenant Riza agreed. “Stay low and do not pursue, Corporal. We’ll have her soon enough.”

  “Aw, Jin,” Dunnis said.

  Soma halted and turned to look at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “This sawking jag is tearing it up. We’re right on top of her but someone else is gonna bag her.”

  “The void you worried about?” asked Keln. “If they do it means we finally get to start our shore leave.”

  Fel chuckled but didn’t add anything.

  Dunnis shook his head. “Man, you know what kind of commendation we’d get for bringing in this lady? And commendations can come with cash.”

  The other two chuckled. Soma kept his eyes forward. They came to another doorway but this one was ajar. Soma lifted a fist and his men went silent.

  They were close to the blast sight, though separated from it by a few meters of solid rock. The light was shoddy here, which was why he didn’t notice the door half-open until they were almost at it. An unfurled bundle of cables swung from the ceiling, sparking from time to time. Light strips lay cracked on the floor here and there.

  Soma snapped, pointed at Dunnis, then to the floor. Your turn to stay here, the gesture said. Then two fingers waved at the door. Fel and Keln moved in. Fel moved to the far side, pieing the doorway as he did, then shook his head.

  Soma squeezed through the door and found himself in some kind of a fluid processing chamber. Massive tanks sat on stilts against the walls, with pipes going in and out of them from top and bottom. The room was unlit, but his visor offered him plenty of visibility. The pipes spewed big gouts of steam here and there.

  Keln and Fel filed in behind him.

  The room was much taller than the corridor outside, and Soma guessed its top would be close to the floor above. His foot hit something. He looked down to see thick chunks of concrete interspersed with metal netting. He looked up and found similar sized huge gaps in the ceiling. The floor below him had a smaller hole.

  “Well,” Soma said. “I suppose we know how she’s—”

  “Sarge!”

  Soma turned in time to see a form land on Fel, dropping him. Soma swung his weapon to aim at the saboteur but before he knew it he was flying into one of the tanks. He slammed into it, dropped his pistol.

  Keln fell against the tank opposite him and then the saboteur was out of the room.

  “Dunnis, contact!” Soma grabbed his pistol and bolted for the hallway.

  Dunnis shouted wordless shock. Soma emerged in time for Dunnis to aim. The saboteur fired a few shots at them as she ran down the corridor. One landed between Dunnis’s legs. Distracting for a Peace Corps MP maybe, not for a marine.

  Dunnis fired. The saboteur grunted and staggered but kept running.

  “Drop an elephant my—” Dunnis started, but Soma ran after her.

  “Contact S8-133,” Soma reported.

  The saboteur’s run turned into a staggering jog. She turned to fire more shots. She pulled the trigger three times, but her arm trembled and didn’t rise any higher than a 45 degree angle from her body.

  Soma slowed. His men started catching up. There was no need to keep running.

  The saboteur fought on, dragging herself against one wall, shaking her head, holding her limp right arm in her left hand. She stumbled, fell to her knees and cried out. She dropped her pistol. It skidded away from her. She crawled.

  “What the void is with this jag?” Dunnis asked. There was awe in his voice.

  The saboteur dragged herself a few more feet forward. She continued to shake her head but with less and less energy. She moaned and then lay still.

  “Benefactors’ Butts,” Fel said. “She was a tough cookie.”

  Soma smiled. “Lieutenant Riza. Sergeant Major Cross. Enemy saboteur has been captured and is in our custody. Awaiting orders.”

  Riza replied with a string of expletives, but Colonel Tho responded intelligibly. “Well done, Sergeant Major. Well done! Bring her to the S-7 holding cells at once.”

  “Affirmative Colonel.”

  The APC were not just MPs, they were builders too. Half the Peace Corps consisted of construction equipment, supplies, transports and workers. But Soma doubted the originators of the Corps had something like this in mind when they determined its purpose.

  The S-7 holding cells were a peculiar cell block built into one large room. Two cells sat ringed around with corridors. A small, partitioned security station sat in one corner, opposite the door to the main corridor. The cell interiors were black and a stark contrast against the bright white lights shining from the ceilings.

  Keln and Dunnis dragged the saboteur between them, an arm around each man’s neck. Her feet dragged no matter what. She was big, muscular, and the two men complained about her weight the whole way there. Colonel Tho with a few MPs at heel waited for them, and even his mustache was smiling.

  “Well done, gentlemen. Put her in here.”

  Keln and Dunnis obliged and dragged the woman into the room. The cell had no furniture besides a single table in its center. A medical tech waited for them. Fel and Soma took her legs and they put her on the table.

  The tech began a cursory examination, noting all the things Soma had noticed on the way in: multiple minor cuts, scrapes and bruises, possible fracture on the left knee with swelling, a few old wounds reopened. The tech sprayed the scrapes and cuts with first-aid spray. He injected her knee with something that calmed the swelling and probably helped heal the fracture.

  “Does she need to be awake for questioning now?” the tech asked.

  “That won’t be necessary at the moment.” Soma turned and found Tho right behind him. “As for you gentlemen, you have my recommendation for a commendation. In the meantime, meet with Lieutenant Riza for debriefing.”

  Soma turned and left the cell, peering in only to see the table collapsing back into the floor, leaving the cell devoid of furniture. As Soma walked the black corridor, ready for a meal and a rack, something caught his eye and he turned.

  Through a viewscreen in the security desk, he caught Remnant kneeling on the floor of her own bare, black cell. Soma stopped, watching the feed. Remnant’s eyes were closed, and her mouth moved soundlessly. Then she stopped, lifted her eyes and looked right at him.

  How do you always do that? Soma wondered. She smiled as if in response and went back to eyes closed and mouth working silently. Soma was getting tired of mysteries.

  “Any idea why she did it?”

  Soma sat in a chair in the third-floor lobby of the palace’s hospital. The lobby was empty. The sky outside was turning orange as the sun descended westward. A wall screen opposite him was showing a local news feed with a talking head jabbering on. Now and again whitecoats and nurses ran back and forth across the hallway abutting the waiting room, some pushing equipment carts, some with gurneys, and some by themselves, talking in their own language of medical jargon.

  In his hands Soma held his link. Lieutenant Riza’s expression on the screen mirrored how Soma felt: tired.
“It was a diversion. A high-value detainee was able to grab a ship and escape thanks to her,” she said.

  Soma smirked. “High-value detainee?”

  Rifa shrugged. “Supposedly the governor’s daughter or something.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Riza shook her head.

  “How old was she?”

  “The saboteur?”

  “No, the daughter.”

  “Sixteen. She escaped by piloting a ship she herself designed and built.”

  “The kid had her own ship?”

  Riza nodded.

  “Rich people.”

  “No kidding.”

  Footsteps approached down the hall and Soma looked up. The man who emerged was not the doctor he’d spoken to, so he looked back at the link.

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “The daughter?”

  “The saboteur.”

  Riza smiled and laughed. “Celeste Numbar. She’s a Meritine guardsman and the daughter’s bodyguard.”

  “Did she think we were going to lax the kid?”

  Riza shrugged again. “No way I’ll ever know. Above my paygrade.”

  “Yeah,” Soma said, scratching his chin. He needed to shave. “Mine too, I guess.”

  Riza laughed again. “Why’d you ask then?”

  Soma sighed. “I don’t know. It was weird. She worked through almost a full company of MPs. We only stopped her because my guy shot her with a modified super-tranquilizer. And she kept running like there was no tomorrow, until the dart knocked her out. And all dressed like a blue-collar soccer mom.”

  “Welcome to the life of an MP. It gets weird sometimes.”

  “And how many casualties?”

  “Fifteen wounded or injured, four KIA.”

  “That’s a significant body count.”

  “Yeah but get this, the four were killed by the initial explosion of the shuttle. Everyone else suffered only minor wounds, a few broken bones, more than a couple concussions—"

  “Sergeant Major?”

  Soma lifted his forefinger at Riza and looked up. A nurse stood on the hallway looking at him. Her slack, dark skin and baggy eyes were the image of exhaustion, but she maintained a professional non-expression.