From Ice to Ashes

by Rhett C. Bruno

  Most of the Ringers followed me, and once Yavik decided he’d rather live a little bit longer, so did he. Only then did Desmond finally lower his shoulders, sidestep the rifle, and mope toward the door.

  I exhaled. He was a pain in my ass, but I didn’t want to see him die. I didn’t want to see any of the crew die. Not even John, who took his rightful position as second in line behind the captain.

  “We’re complying,” Captain Saunders said, mustering his most authoritative tone. “Just tell us what’s happening and we’ll continue to. Nobody has to get hurt.”

  “Judgment, for your benefactor,” the attacker near the head of the line said.

  “Where are you taking us?” John asked. He could barely squeak the words out.

  None of the attackers answered. They signed something to one another, and then spread out at equal intervals along the line, guns still raised. “Time to move,” one of them ordered; it was impossible to tell which, maybe all. The unnatural voice seemed to be coming from all around me. “Move.”

  They simultaneously cocked their rifles. Everyone did what they were told. I had to look down just to make sure I didn’t trip over my feet as I started walking. After a few steps, I reached out without thinking about it and placed a quaking hand on Cora’s hip. Maybe it was to reassure her, but it was probably more for my own sake.

  “Hand,” the nearest attacker warned. I pulled it away immediately. She shuddered. As I looked up I couldn’t help but stare at the orange circle on the attacker’s chest. The same circle that had been there when I found Dexter dead. The same circle that had nearly given me a heart attack as I transported it through the heart of Pervenio Corp.

  “I should’ve never taken a job on this ship,” Desmond grumbled. He was directly behind me. “Had a good thing going, running food down from the Uppers. Barely any all-important credits in it, though.”

  I shushed him.

  “I’ll be quiet when they put a bullet in my brain,” he said.

  “I’m sure they’d be happy to,” I answered.

  Before he could say anything else, the nearest attacker slammed me in the gut with the butt of his or her rifle. I’m sure it wasn’t as hard as possible, since wearing a powered suit he or she could have ruptured my organs, but it was enough to knock the wind out of me and drop me to a knee.

  “Kale!” Cora yelped. She went to help me, but the attacker grabbed her and forced her back into place. I was lifted next.

  “Move quietly,” the attacker demanded, and shoved me into line.

  I guess there was a shred of decency in Desmond, because that got him to shut up real fast. Cora glanced back at me over her shoulder, tears dripping down her flushed cheeks. I forced a crooked smile and continued to limp, now also hunched over from the throbbing pain in my stomach.

  —

  We were led to the room outside of the Piccolo’s starboard docking airlock. It was little more than a wide hallway. Benches ran down the sides, with empty space suits hanging over them. The airlock was at the far end, from which a shaft extended to mate with stations or ships that didn’t have a hangar large enough to fit the entire vessel.

  The half of the Piccolo’s crew that hadn’t made it to the harvesting bay were already there, sitting on the benches under the guard of a fourth faceless attacker. Most of them were bruised and bloody. There was an order to it: The obvious Ringers sat on one side and the Earthers on the other. All of them appeared too exhausted to be afraid anymore. I couldn’t imagine what they’d gone through while we hid in the harvesting bay.

  “Lester!” Desmond shouted. He was promptly grabbed and thrown back into line after an attempt to run to him. Lester was the nearest seated Ringer. He turned his head, his eyes groggy from a hangover and wrapped in dark bruises. He looked like a man resigned to his fate, and he didn’t bother to respond.

  The attackers stopped us and then signed to each other. Test was one of the words I thought I recognized. The attacker who led us seized the captain, and then the one who’d awaited us at the airlock withdrew a long, detachable needle attached to some form of scanning device.

  “What the fuck is that!” the captain yelled, and tried to shake free. He was silenced by the barrel of a gun against his head. They restrained him and plunged the needle into his right arm just below the shoulder. He moaned until it was all the way in and the scanner beeped. The captain was then placed on the Earther side of the hall, and a new, clean needle was screwed into the device. That settled where the attackers were from. Only Ringers would care about being hygienic during a raid.

  It went on like that down the line. Some fought, most didn’t risk it. The first bunch were all Earthers, then there were a few Ringers interspersed who’d followed the orders to get on line ahead of me. They were placed across the hall adjacent to Lester.

  I was in the back half of the line, and by the time it was Cora’s turn ahead of me it was easy to figure out what they were scanning. They wanted to be sure of everyone’s origin by going deep enough to get a bone density reading. Sometimes newer-generation Ringers could be hard to identify, or there were tall Earthers whose families had spent too much time in their lives on asteroid mines. Other Ringers, like Yavik for example, had brownish-gray skin even though they displayed all the other physical traits of Ringers. But bone density was the key. Even the oldest Earther offworlders had only endured the low gravity beyond Earth for a handful of generations. The frail skeleton of someone with lineage dating back to Trass’s first settlers was impossible to replicate. Sanitary masks usually made it easy to tell without need for tests, but many of the Piccolo’s Ringer crew were missing theirs.

  I reached up to my mouth, only then realizing I’d forgotten mine during all the chaos. As I did, the attackers pulled Cora forward. She shrieked a bit, but managed to stay calm. My skin crawled as the needle sunk into her arm. I tried but failed to catch a glimpse of the information that popped up on the scanner after it beeped. She wasn’t sorted as quickly as the others. Some signing was exchanged, and one of the words was Earth.

  “She’s one of us,” I stepped forward and attested before I could second-guess myself. Seeing the rows arrayed before us, I realized that the Earther she’d be sitting next to if she was sent to that side was one of John’s security team. If we were all going to die, I wasn’t going to let her do it away from the people who accepted her.

  A rifle was immediately pressed against my back. Cora mouthed the word “No” to me, her eyes bright with concern.

  I swallowed hard and repeated myself. “She’s one of us.”

  My arm was grabbed and the long needle stabbed into it without warning. I winced. It felt like there was a sharp string of ice burrowing into me, and finally a stinging pressure on my bone that lasted for half a second. The needle slid out, along with a tiny smidge of blood, and when the scanner beeped two of the attackers crowded around the results. They signed to each other. I didn’t catch any of their words, but Cora was placed on the Ringer side, and me right beside her.

  “I told you, you’re one of us,” I whispered to her.

  I saw her lips twitch a bit, as if she wanted to smile but couldn’t. It was enough for me. Our hands brushed, but I didn’t dare hold hers while we were under watch. I’d already been defiant enough.

  Desmond arrived beside me shortly after, and the rest of the scans went smoothly. With everyone sorted, one of the attackers slowly crossed the room and stopped in front of the docking shaft airlock’s controls. He or she began typing into them.

  “Well, here we are,” Desmond said to me. “Nowhere to run now.”

  I hushed him, for what seemed like the thousandth time.

  “What now?” Captain Saunders addressed the attackers. “We’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

  The inner seal of the airlock opened, and the attacker there turned to face us, Earthers and Ringers split on either side of the hall. The lines were drawn, with no shades of gray. The other three attackers arrayed themselves between
the rows, rifles armed.

  The attacker by the airlock gestured into the open chamber. “Get in, Earthers, and you will be spared pain.”

  Every member of the Piccolo’s crew looked up, confused and petrified. The airlock led to only one place, and no human could survive out there no matter what race they were.

  “Get in,” the attacker repeated.

  Being at gunpoint convinced some of the Earthers to listen, but Captain Saunders held out his arms to stop them. He used the shoulders of the men at his sides for support and lifted himself onto his chair until his face was level with the attacker in front of him.

  “None of us are getting in there,” he growled. “I think it’s about time you all got the fuck off my ship!”

  Without hesitation, the attacker by the airlock aimed at the captain and shot him in the stomach. A cloud of red sprayed onto John. The captain howled in pain and lunged for the attacker’s rifle, but nobody else moved; we were too shocked. The attacker ducked out of the way, grabbed Captain Saunders by the collar, and hurled him down the hall. He went skidding to a halt right by my feet.

  “Captain!” I hollered. I slid down from my seat and went to press my palm against his wound before realizing I had no gloves on. Cora pushed my arm away while I hesitated, and did it herself. Blood bubbled in his mouth as he labored to breathe. An attacker lifted us away from him and forced us back into our seats.

  “He made his choice,” I was told by the attacker holding a gun in my face. “Make yours.” I remained as still as possible, but my entire body was quivering. Cora struggled to stifle her tears, staring at the writhing captain, completely aghast.

  “Don’t do it,” Desmond said to us, his voice cracking. “He isn’t worth it.”

  “Get in,” the attacker by the airlock ordered the Earthers once again. This time he or she didn’t wait for them to follow orders. Culver was the first one in line, and his untreated, broken leg had left him barely conscious. The attacker hoisted him up and dumped him into the airlock.

  One by one the rest were forced in. Some fought, others couldn’t manage to, but none of them could stop it.

  “What is this?” John stammered when it was his turn to be placed. “Don’t do this! I’ll do anything!” He was grabbed by the neck and flung into the airlock, slamming against the outer seal. “Don’t do this!” He scrambled to his knees and toward the exit, but another Earther was promptly thrust into him.

  “Kale…what’s happening?” Cora asked. She wasn’t stupid, so I knew that she had to know the answer. She just couldn’t comprehend it. I didn’t want to either. I wanted to hope that these faceless Ringers were just trying to show that they were serious, but only Earthers filled the airlock.

  I didn’t know what to say. Even Desmond, who’d no doubt heard her, remained silent. I kept hoping that I was going to wake up in Cora’s bed after a bad dream. That this was just my nerves getting the better of me following the fear I’d felt while saving my mom in the command deck.

  The last Earther was forced in, and then the inner seal of the airlock shut with a hiss. A circular viewport in the center allowed me to see the terrified Earthers within. The chamber was so small they were piled on top of one another.

  The attackers lowered their weapons, as if they were confident that none of us Ringer members of the crew would do anything rash. Apparently, they were right. It was like I was back in the Q-Zone across from my mother—totally helpless. I heard the captain coughing, but couldn’t tear my gaze from the airlock to look down at him. Suppressed sobs emanated from either side of me. More of my own tears gathered in the corner of my eyes.

  “Stop this,” the captain gurgled.

  The attacker in front of me ignored him and withdrew a familiar-looking hand-terminal. The one I’d placed in the command deck. Mine. He or she set the device to record and aimed it at the attacker standing by the airlock. I hadn’t noticed it on the way in, but a wire stretched away from it, across the floor, and toward the command deck. The other attackers positioned themselves so that they weren’t obstructing the view. A bit of signing was exchanged, and then the one by the airlock counted down from ten on his or her armored fingers.

  The Earthers trapped inside the airlock grew even more hysterical. Their voices were muted by the seal as they pounded on the viewport. I’d served beside many of them for months, if not years. John’s face was in the center, and as much as I despised him, seeing him so scared…I couldn’t bear to watch.

  “You must watch,” an attacker said to me, a hand turning my cheek. I couldn’t fight its augmented strength, and as I was compelled to look back toward the airlock, I felt Cora’s fingers threading through mine. They were ice-cold, trembling, and covered in the captain’s blood. At that moment disease was the last thing either of us were worried about. We needed each other. She squeezed and I squeezed back. A day ago I would’ve been thrilled by her attention; now I wished she were nowhere near me, nowhere near this nightmare.

  “Please, don’t do this,” I whispered through quaking lips.

  The attacker leaned over until his or her visor was only centimeters away from my face. “Take solace in knowing that they will not suffer, Kale Drayton.”

  Everyone else was too focused on what was happening to hear the words. Like M, the attacker knew my name. My throat went dry. My heart had been racing more often than not ever since the message came through, but at that moment it felt like it’d completely stopped. There was no more denying that all of what was happening was connected to me.

  “We are descendants of those chosen by Trass—Titanborn,” the distorted voice of the attacker by the airlock addressed the recording hand-terminal after the countdown finished. “We tire of being owned, of rotting in your Q-Zones as you suck our home dry. Retribution is coming. This is what happens to those who steal from our Ring.” The attacker placed his or her hand over the airlock controls. “From ice to ashes.”

  I wanted to scream for them to stop, but nothing came out. The attacker keyed a command on the controls and sentenced every Earther to death without even a second’s hesitation. The outer seal of the airlock blew open, and the winds of Saturn reached in to silently yank them all out.

  Chapter 13

  In seconds the faces of the Earther members of the crew were gone and I was gawking at the Piccolo’s empty airlock. The muffled whistling of the wind beyond the seal was all I could hear. The breathing of every Ringer around me seemed to have ceased.

  And then a hand fell on my arm. I was looking past Cora, so I knew it wasn’t her, and the grip was too strong to be Desmond’s. Before I knew it, I was heaved off my seat and slung over one of the attacker’s shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled, though I was in such deep shock that it was closer to a yelp.

  “Put him down!” Cora shouted once she realized what was happening. She clutched my hand and pulled. The attacker who’d grabbed me pushed her away with ease.

  “He’s coming with us,” he or she said.

  “Put him down!” Cora repeated. She sprung forward, and this time the attacker holding me seized her by the throat.

  “Let her go!” I hollered. I swung my arms and kicked my feet, but each blow slammed futilely against armor as unbreakable as stone. It was like I was an infant throwing a tantrum because I needed to be fed. Helpless, yet again. “Don’t hurt her!”

  “You motherfuckers!” Desmond growled. He pushed off the wall and dove forward, slamming into the thighs of the attacker holding me. Armored or not, he or she staggered from the force of Desmond’s blow. I dropped to the floor, and if my body was sore before, it was even more so after plummeting a few meters onto my back in Earth G.

  Cora fell free as well, landing on her feet and quickly hurrying over to me. “Kale,” she gasped, her voice hoarse from being choked.

  Another of the attackers charged us and smashed Desmond in the face with the butt of his or her rifle before he could do any more damage. Blood squirted out as his nose audibl
y cracked, and he toppled on top of Cora and me.

  Disoriented, I groped to try to find which arms belonged to Cora. I turned my head and saw that Captain Saunders was right in front of me, his eyes closed. The corner of my mouth was submerged in a pool of his blood, and without my sanitary mask on the metallic-tasting liquid seeped into the cracks in my chapped lips. I gagged.

  “You idiot!” an attacker barked. “He isn’t to be harmed.”

  A strong hand reached into the mess of tangled, blood-soaked limbs I was trapped beneath and dragged me along the floor. Cora grabbed my ankle.

  “Let him go!” she screamed. She was torn off me and pulled along the bloody floor in the other direction. I was again lifted over an attacker’s shoulder, too sickened and in pain to even attempt to squirm free.

  I caught a glimpse behind me as the upper half of my limp body swung. Almost every Ringer capable of moving had risen to their feet to stand beside Cora, with Yavik and Lester at the front, the latter hardly able to stay upright. The mix of terror and rage on their faces was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was no Earther; I was one of their own. They were done watching.

  Three attackers stood across from them, aiming their rifles. Desmond was in the center, covering his nose and writhing in pain next to our unconscious or dead captain.

  “Don’t…” I groaned.

  “You said nobody would be harmed,” Cora whimpered. Her clenched, red-stained fists shook.

  “He won’t be,” the attacker holding me said. “Neither will any of you if you stand down.”

  “Listen to them,” I said. “Please…Cora.”

  She stared into my eyes, and I could barely recognize her underneath the blood drenching her face and dribbling from the frayed ends of her hair.

  “Please,” I said. “Don’t.”

  The attackers slowly backed away, keeping their rifles aimed. I twisted my head around as I was carried and didn’t let my gaze leave Cora’s, begging her with my expression to stay put. I didn’t know what was going to happen to them, but it was a better option than them being mowed down with no other witness but me.