Remnant

by Dwayne A Thomason

  “Well,” Nix said. “I’m armed. Hopefully this person isn’t too brave with a gun in his face.”

  Ashla frowned. “How did you get a—”

  “I talked to Vance,” Nix said. “A few days ago. I’m renting the same one I had on the station. It’s silent, so if any shooting has to be done...” He didn’t finish the thought. Ashla understood. Something about Nix’s fear made her feel safer. Had Nix responded with easy threats of violence and bluff masculinity, it would have made her nervous.

  Thin wisps of smoke rose from the town. It was early morning, the sun low behind the palace, but there was enough light to see the damage down there as she passed overhead, and enough darkness to see the flash of weapons fire. She thought about all the people down there that she had known. She hoped they were okay. She wished the Jessamine was big enough to bring them all with her. Dr. Kaline who had patched her up after she’d fallen and broken her wrist. Rifa, the rotund cook who had always baked her favorite treats when she was down.

  Ashla wished she had been nicer to them, wished she had shown her appreciation during the good old days. Now it was too late, and they and all her sort-of-friends were down there, and some of them probably dead.

  “Here we go,” Ashla said, “hold on.”

  She kept her speed high up to the last minute and then flared her inertials to life, all wings and stabilizers flipped to face forward, slowing her down so fast she could feel her head wanting to connect with the console.

  She started Luna’s landing procedure, dropped the landing gear and set her down on the pad.

  “Luna,” she said. “Once we’re out, seal up and don’t let anyone inside you, okay?”

  “Affirmative,” Luna responded. Ashla pulled off her straps and her helmet, climbed out of the cockpit and dropped onto the landing pad. Nix followed after her, not quite as comfortable with the process as she was but getting there. He turned towards her and then his eyes got wide.

  “Freeze,” Ashla heard behind her.

  “Great,” she said. The Jessamine screamed overhead. An unseen anti-air turret thundered, sending green lozenges of super-heated plasma at the ship. The Jessamine returned fire and an explosion roared in the distance.

  Ashla turned to see a pair of MPs aiming big, black assault repeaters on her and Nix.

  “A couple of kids?” one of them asked. With his helmet on, he was just a nose and a mouth. The rest of him was covered, and an opaque shield obscured his eyes.

  “What do we—” the second started, cut off. Ashla could hear the slightest crackle of radio chatter. “Sir, we—yes sir.”

  “The void do we do with them?” The first MP asked.

  The second one slung his repeater and pulled a pair of binder cuffs from his back.

  “No,” Ashla said, “please, I have to—”

  The MP ignored her complaints. He bound Ashla’s hands to Luna’s forward landing gear, threading the chain through the hydraulic arm.

  “Please,” Ashla said, but stopped. She had come so close to be locked up right outside the door. The MP grabbed his friend’s binders and did the same with Nix.

  “Don’t go nowhere,” the man said. “We’ll be back once the fighting stops.”

  The two MPs turned and sprinted back into the palace. The Jessamine roared overhead again, her guns firing in three different directions. She slowed and started descending.

  Ashla turned to Nix. “What are we...” she started before noticing his hands were free. She frowned. “How did you do that?”

  Nix smiled. He held up a small cylindrical object that could have been a laser pointer. “I borrowed this from Vance,” he said. He put one end of the device into a round socket in her cuffs and the bracelets released her. She considered dropping them but changed her mind. She might be able to use them. Ashla tucked the binders into a pocket in her flightsuit.

  “Let’s go,” Nix said.

  “Wait.” Ashla climbed back up into the cockpit, and found the little box tucked in one side. She opened the box up and pulled the small weapon out. Then she dropped back down.

  “What is that?” Nix asked.

  Ashla lifted it up. “It’s a stunner,” she said.

  “It doesn’t look like one.”

  Ashla nodded. “I know,” she said. “Cel had it made for me, so I could defend myself. She made sure it looked like a real pistol in order to be threatening.

  “I’m threatened,” Nix said, smiling nervously.

  Ashla smiled, tucked the stunner into her pocket and started running for the palace.

  “So how are we going to find your people?”

  Ashla nodded in response. She pulled her link and told it to make a call to the one person she had never wanted to talk to in her life. The link gave a few short electronic rings, then the screen flashed, and Elder Hando’s fat face appeared on the screen.

  “Ms. Vares?” his expression and the tone of his voice were full of shock and concern. Ashla knew it to be a lie. The only thing Hando was concerned about was himself. Sincerity was as alien to him as a third eye. “Thank the Benefactors you have returned. Where are you? This place is a warzone but tell me where you are, and I will come to you. I’ll get you safe.”

  Ashla feigned fear. “Okay,” she said. “I’m at the south landing pad outside the palace.”

  Hando smiled. The expression was so greasy Ashla expected to feel a slick residue on her link. “Stay there,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

  She nodded, tried to look relieved. “Okay.”

  Hando broke the connection and Ashla turned to Nix. He had a curious look on his face but didn’t ask any questions.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’re going to set a trap.”

  She led Nix into the palace, following the wide hallways she knew so well. Time had not been kind. There remained signs of the first battle everywhere. The brilliant veined marble had dark holes in it here and there. Tiles were chipped, and wallpaper burned.

  “This palace,” she said, “hadn’t seen conflict in a hundred years. It’s supposed to be a place of peace.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nix said.

  Ashla shook her head.

  “Okay,” she said, opening a side door in the hallway. It opened to a small parlor with a big window looking out onto the bombed-out town below. “Wait in here. Don’t show yourself unless there’s trouble.”

  “Where will you be?” Nix asked.

  “Just down the hall a bit,” Ashla said. “I’m not showing myself until I see he’s not got friends.”

  “If he does?” Nix asked.

  Ashla smiled. “Then we lock him out and go looking for a terminal to hack into.”

  Nix nodded. He went inside his little room and shut the door. Ashla found herself a hiding place and waited. Soon voices echoed down the hall.

  “This is Ashla Vares, you fool,” Hando’s voice came. So, he did find someone to come with him. “Now let me do the talking.”

  “Yes sir,” came a clipped male voice. An MP. “But I need to get back to the front as soon as possible.”

  Ashla let them pass. She checked the charge on her stunner then popped out of the room. Before either of them could turn towards her, she shot the MP with the stunner.

  The MP grunted and shook. He dropped his weapon and fell to the floor. Ashla shot him again, just in case, then aimed the stunner at Elder Hando. Without missing a beat, he affected his usual slimy smile and raised his hands.

  “Ms. Vares,” he said. “I-“

  “Tell me where my father is,” Ashla said.

  Hando began to sweat.

  “Okay,” he said. “Just put the stunner down. I’ll take you to him.”

  The temptation was so strong Ashla almost felt powerless against it. Not a temptation, a command. Almost. But more powerful than the desire to trust this man that had been in her father’s council for as long as she’d been alive, a man her father had supposedly trusted too, was the realization that he was lying.

  “Y
ou’re lying,” she said. “Be honest with me. For the first time ever be honest with me. I promise I won’t punish you for bad news.”

  His expression didn’t slip. Maybe Annister Vares was alive and close. She yearned for her father like she had never done so before.

  “Ms. Vares,” Hando said, his tone slipping into a teacher’s lecture, but a film of anxiety sat on his otherwise stern demeanor. “You put that weapon down right now. It isn’t ladylike for you to hold such a thing and threaten an old friend. And furthermore Nazeshon.”

  Ashla almost didn’t hear the foreign word. Had Hando kept talking, she might not have noticed at all. Her hands shook. The end of the weapon wavered.

  “Don’t do that,” she said. “I’ll shoot. Don’t—”

  “Nazeshon,” he said again, his earnest expression fading like a wax mask melting under a fire.

  Ashla felt unsteady on her legs, like she’d been running a long time and now they were tired and weak. The stunner was too heavy all of a sudden. It might have been a five-kilo weight she was holding out in front of her. Her arms trembled against the strain. She wanted to shoot, wanted to stun him, to stop him, but her finger wouldn’t move. She squeezed at the trigger, but it didn’t budge. The safety was off but she couldn’t fire it.

  “No,” was all she managed. It sounded slurred.

  “Nazeshon,” he said again, and the word sounded like it was coming from a distant place. Her eyes started closing. She couldn’t keep them open. She tried to speak again but all that came out was a desperate moan.

  Chapter Fifty-One:

  Vengeance is Mine

  Salazar floated down the stairway to the loading bay. He could have walked. The boots he was wearing had magnetic locks on them. But weightlessness was such a strange, free feeling, and he wanted to enjoy it while he could. He wanted more. He wanted to pilot the Jessamine into deep space, throw on a vac suit and EVA pack and go floating away from the ship. To have nothing holding him in but the faceplate of his helmet and the stars in every direction.

  He got to the door to the loading bay and opened it, thanks to the emergency battery set up by the door’s console. Nat had overseen the preparations, and she and Fish had made sure that every vital doorway had a portable power cell. The loading bay wasn’t anything like he was used to. It was neither empty, nor full of cargo. Instead it was full of people.

  Thirty-seven men and woman sat in portable high-G seats. They were not members of a single unit. Uniforms differed, as did weapon and armor configurations. These were the best men pulled from the various units of Eltar’s defense force. Some were Meritine guardsmen, obvious by their cyan and crimson armor, but many were not. Sal figured most of the guardsmen had died in the Alliance’s initial attack. He was sure the rest here were itching for revenge. So was he.

  The one other man in the bay not sitting was Lieutenant Omenda Quan, a tall square-jawed man sporting a straight scar across one eye. Whether that eye was a replacement or untouched by whatever had carved that wound, Sal couldn’t say.

  “Lieutenant,” Sal called as he floated to him. At the last minute he clicked his heels and put his feet on the deck so he could stand straight. “Are your men ready?”

  Quan smiled and nodded. “Yes, Captain. Locked and loaded.”

  “Good,” Sal said. “Naboris jumped ship. I expect we’ll hear from him in a little over an hour.”

  “One of these days you’re going to tell me how a smuggling captain got himself a pet Shaumri assassin,” Quan said.

  “You buy the drinks and you’ll get the story. It’s kind of a doozy.”

  Quan chuckled. “It’s a deal.”

  Sal nodded. If, he didn’t say, neither of us are dead by the end of the day. Instead he dropped a quick salute and clomped over to his seat. Vance was already sitting next to his chair. Like Salazar, the Kid had doffed his coat in favor of a nano-ceramic chest plate and pauldrons. He also wore a pair of heavy leg guards that covered him from knee to ankle.

  Sal sat down and pulled the heavy restraining strap over him. Then he looked at Vance. “You sure you’re in for this, Kid?” he asked. “I know Bel could use you on the bridge if you don’t want to drop with us.”

  Vance gave him an expression better suited on an older man’s face. “There’s no place in the galaxy I would rather be. And when you put a hole in this guy’s head, I’ll be ready to make it a matching set.”

  Sal lifted a fist. Vance’s fist slapped his.

  Sal fell asleep not long after. All the time and energy and work had left him with few hours, and he wanted to hit the battlefield rested.

  He woke up to Nat’s cheerful voice. “Alright,” she said over the general channel, “we’re spinning up the reactor. Prepare to break orbit and bust some heads.”

  The lights came on and Sal felt his stomach churn as artificial gravity was restored.

  Sal chimed in. “All crew to action stations. All crew to action stations.”

  He waited for the crew to respond in their rightful places. Besser took the portside turret, Kapa the starboard side. Yuki had come to Sal and asked for permission to drop with him and the platoon, but Sal had asked him to man the keel turret. They all checked in. Dr. Jens checked in and spoke for Dothin as well. Dothin’s kid was floating in an inflatable life pod not too far away. The bridge crew all checked in.

  The entry lights flashed, and alarms sounded. Anyone in the bay not strapped in, dropped their restraining rig over themselves and locked it in place.

  The Jessamine rumbled through Eltar’s upper atmosphere. Sal used his link to check her status. The ship’s reactor was back on and all six cylinders were spinning. All systems were active again, and the Jessamine was ready for combat.

  The rumble ceased and with it came Naboris’ voice on the new channel.

  “This is Ganyasu Naboris,” he said. “Encrypted channels 072, 078, and 084 are now as safe as I can make them, how copy?”

  “This is Meritus Actual,” Colonel Doru, Sal’s initial contact with the insurrection, replied. “Solid copy. All units check in and report.”

  “This is Jessamine Control,” Tally said over the channel. Sal couldn’t help but smile at how her little voice sounded after the Colonel’s gruff tone. “We are powered up and en route. ETA one hour.”

  “This is Meritus Alpha,” Quan said. His voice was strange coming both through the air and the communications lace in Sal’s helmet. “Checking in and standing by.”

  There were a few other voices coming through the channel, checking in, but Nat started speaking over them.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said over the general comm. “The docking bay doors are opening.”

  “Ashla,” Tally called. “Did you open the bay doors?”

  Sal, hit the release on his chair’s restraint. He ran to the door and then into the hallway between the two bays. He hit the button on the console to open the door to the docking bay, but it responded with an angry buzz. Sal pulled up video feed on the console and looked as the Lunar Seed hovered out over nothing as the world passed by underneath.

  “Ms. Vares,” Salazar said. “What the void are you doing?”

  “I’m going to the palace,” Ashla said, her voice as cheerful and light as if she were discussing an upcoming vacation. “There’re some things I left behind last time and I’m going to get them. Meet you there.”

  Before Sal could open his mouth to respond the docking clamp released and the Lunar Seed disappeared.

  Sal gritted his teeth. He heard Nat and Tally talking, discussing how they could stop Ashla. Sal spoke over them.

  “We’re in the middle of a combat operation,” he said. “Barring shooting her down, there’s nothing we can do accept hope she arrives safely.”

  He shook his head, hating himself for not keeping a better eye on the girl, resenting the fact he needed to watch over a kid on a smuggling ship, and then hating the resentment. Salazar returned to his seat.

  “The girl’s on her way to the pal
ace,” Sal said, responding to Vance’s questioning expression. “She’ll meet us there, I guess.”

  “Great,” Vance said. “The last thing we need is a kid in a combat zone.”

  Sal nodded.

  “A-A turrets are active and tracking,” Sabella said over the ship frequency. “Gunners be ready to knock them out.”

  “Copy that,” Besser said.

  “Let’s cut ‘em to shreds,” Kapa said. Sal switched his link to show feeds from the different turrets. He watched Kapa fire on one of the palace’s AA guns, watched the turret explode.

  “Well done, Kapa,” he called over the ship channel.

  This repeated while his other gunners wrecked the rest of the palace turrets.

  “Thirty seconds to the LZ,” Bel called. “Good hunting.”

  “This is Meritus Alpha,” Quan called, now over the command channel. “Preparing to advance.” Then off the comm, “Let’s get tactical people.”

  The men all threw back their restraining rigs, stood and readied weapons. Sal made sure the visor on his helmet was set to auto, then pulled the A-27 from the rack in his chair, one of the weapons he had tried smuggling to Lekem’s men. The repeater was a testament to why he was here. Vance drew and checked a similar weapon. Sal almost expected him to have brought his little modified sub-repeater but knew Vance was too smart to use it in preference to something much better suited to an open battle.

  Sal switched his link to pull the feed from one of the keel-mounted cameras. He could see men running out of the palace into the field, wielding assault repeaters. There was easily the same number out there as what Sal was bringing.

  “Yuki,” he called over the ship channel. “They’ve got a little greeting party waiting for us. Send them our regards.”

  Yuki’s response was to open up with the keel turret. The Jessamine’s guns were designed to counter armored and shielded fighters. Yuki’s spray leveled the entire enemy platoon, shredded bushes and shrubs and all but slagged that whole section of the palace’s wall. Sal would have expected it to cause serious structural damage if the brick and mortar were actually supporting the building.