“Don’t get your head shot off by those Regime skews, girly.” This came from one of the Onari rifleman ducked into the alcove at her back. To Sela the voice seemed almost gleeful. But that was an Onari for you. Their kind were biochemically addicted to what passed for adrenaline in their physiques.
“I’m surprised you haven’t already,” she sneered.
“Making friends everywhere,” Jon said under his breath.
“Stay down, sir.”
At that moment, the Onari opened fire again onto the corridor. Their wild rounds struck bulkheads and sent a lighting element exploding in a shower of sparks. Sela took this moment for cover and leaned out into the corridor.
Looking left, she could make out the passage to the docking bay. The outer hatch was still open. The failsafe would have operated to permit access to escape craft. The way to the Cassandra was still open.
To her right, in the direction of the station’s inner rings, she saw the true impediment.
At the top of the corridor was the entrenched boarding party of EE troopers. She was able to count three hostiles to each side of the door before a round forced her to pull back behind the barricade. This was their way out too, but something was holding them up.
“Well?” Jon prodded.
“I count six hostiles. More EEs. Armed with ML4 compression rifles. Heavy field armor,” she said. “Like the rest.”
Why were they waiting? They could have overpowered this point without a second glance. Even used ‘cussion grenades and traipsed by in a simple fire-and-advance maneuver like nothing happened—
Then the realization struck her. “Pincer movement.”
“Care to share?”
“They’re waiting for the flank behind us. They must know we’re here.”
“What flank?”
She gritted her teeth. “The one Sergeant Valen just neutralized.”
“Valen’s here?”
She turned to look at him. Her voice was flat as she stilled the angry tremor. “Not anymore.”
Jon’s expression hardened. He did not know the whole story, but he understood enough.
“Glory all,” he muttered, placing a hand on her shoulder. But she shrugged him off.
Can’t get mired up in that again. Get the Captain out of here. Then deal.
Sela pulled back from her spot on the barricade and fell alongside the Onari gunmen. They were dressed in a half-assed attempt at uniforms similar to the brain-burnt dock agents. She guessed they might be station security, as dubious a mantle of authority as any. Their A2s were compression modifiable, better suited to do damage to the EE’s heavy field armor than her shiny new A6. The rifles were simply in need of better marksmen.
“We need to get that internal bulkhead closed. Seal off the troopers from the corridor,” she said to the one on her right. He seemed larger, more muscular than his partner.
“Firstly, Vokh don’t talk,” the smaller one answered, pressing close. “Got his tongue cut out back in slam. Second, girly, you conjure we’d not tried that already?”
Sela regarded the speaker. The Onari was thinner across the shoulders. The tiny horns that decorated the brow above the flat yellow eyes were red-tinged, indicating he was actually a she. The name plate on her neck read: Jint.
“And?” Sela asked.
“Welcome to it,” Jint sneered. She jerked her chin in the direction of the alcove directly across from their barricade. “Be m’guest.”
Sela saw a control interface like the one she had tried to repair near the marketplace. Its door hung ajar. The wall nearby bore a single bloody handprint. On the floor lay two bodies in an untidy tangle. Both were dressed like Jint and her mute partner.
“The keypass don’t work. Code’s gotta go in manual. Those skews will cut you t’meat ‘fore you know what of.”
Sela muttered a curse. But a strategy was already formulating for her. She turned back to Jint. “I need your weapons. Both of them, actually.”
“Sure. You wantin’ quartz tea and egg dumplings with that, girly?” Jint snarked. “Neither of which is happenin’”
Vokh seemed to sneer his agreement.
“Look, this station has what… five… maybe six minutes left before we’re all spaced. Do you think your frozen corpse will need that A2 then?” Sela countered.
Jint’s eyes narrowed. A round struck the bulkhead over her right shoulder, but impressively, the Onari did not flinch. Then, she said, “What’re your thinks?”
“Lay down a suppressing fire for one of us to make it across the corridor. The alcove looks deep enough to offer cover while we trigger the control to get the hatch shut on the EE’s.”
“And if’n that don’t work?”
“Then I owe you a rifle.”
“What’re you doing, Ty?” Jon asked, drawn in to their exchange.
“My job. Keeping you alive.”
The guard watched them. “That your mate, then?” she asked.
“He wishes,” Sela replied.
Jint made a stuttering hiss, what Sela realized was the Onari approximation of a chuckle.
“Right then, girly.” Jint handed the A2 over to Sela and gave her an appraising look. “I’m guessin’ you know which end to be dangerous.”
Jon extended a hand to Vokh, ready to claim his rifle as well. At this, the male Onari muttered a low snarl. Apparently life without a tongue did little to impair his ability to make threatening guttural noises. Jint smacked the back of her partner’s head. “Yours too. ‘Ain’t got much t’lose either way.”
Jint pried the rifle from Vokh and handed it to Jon.
“Never one t’follow orders well,” she groused. “Why change with six minutes left to live?”
Pausing, Sela held her hand out. The way Jon had offered her his, what seemed so long ago. The greeting he had taught her that meant respect, truce.
“Tyron,” she offered.
Jint, hesitant, grasped Sela’s forearm. The Onari’s skin was cold, hardened with scales. She shared the tremor of anxiety there.
“Hope you got a good memory there, Tyron-girly. The keycode is a long one.”
“Try me.” Sela smirked.
---
“There has to be another way,” Jon said, inspecting the battered A2. “I’ll go. I’ll do it.”
“It has to be me and you know it. You need to get to Erelah.”
Sela kept her attention on the rifle. As she suspected, its compression settings had been hacked, making them relatively safer for use in the sensitive environment of the station and less likely to burn through hull to cause a breach. Deftly, with hands slicked in sweat, she pulled the cover off. The nodes were corroded, but she was able to adjust the setting to increase the weapon’s output.
“Concentrate fire, waist high, along the jambs. They’ll have to draw back and it’ll make it hard for them to keep a line of sight,” Sela said, trading weapons with him. “The compression is at max. If you have a clear shot at one of them, take it. But you’ll—”
“Have fewer rounds to fire,” he finished. “I know how these work, Ty. Look at me.”
We’re burning time. Don’t look at him. Look at him and you’ll freeze up.
But she did it anyway. Dark hair mussed up in spikes. Impossibly warm brown eyes that held a silent plea for more time. A new bruise starting at the line of his temple. But he was still perfect. Sela carved that moment into her faultless memory.
“You’re the best and the worst thing to ever happen to me,” she said. Quickly she kissed him, pulling away before he could respond.
---
Sela maneuvered up to the right side of the hatchway. Tucked low, she looked back to Jon as he took up a position across from her along the left side of the door. Its downward angle afforded him cover with a better line of fire to the EE entrenchment.
He drew in a deep breath, then nodded. Ready.
She nodded back.
Jon opened fire. The volley was a well-placed cluster compared to the Onari
’s.
Sela crouched under the canted angle of the hatch, rifle raised. She had little time to aim, instead sprayed rounds in a rough pattern at the imagined location of the cowering troopers. But she missed her footing on the other side of the hatchway. It retrospect, it saved her. Her right foot met nothing but air. In the last possible moment, she decided to tuck and roll into the fall. A well-placed round hit the doorway where her head had been a second before.
A live wire of pain shot up her forearm as her hand went out to break her fall. A sprained wrist. Nasty one. Just enough to make the fingers in her hand feel numb, inflated.
Damnit all.
Jon’s cover fire continued. A round struck dead center of a trooper’s EE visor. The man fell back, never to reappear.
That’s five.
She rolled and pushed up with her right arm. Electric pain raced from wrist to elbow.
Up. Move.
Two strides and she dove into the alcove. It was unavoidable; she had to stand on the body of the dead station security guard to keep cover. Something wet crunched beneath her boots.
With a numb right hand, she flipped back the interface panel. This one had two sets of command pads compared to the sabotaged wire snarl of the one she’d encountered in the marketplace in what now seemed like a decade ago with Valen. One was for the exterior hatch, where Jon and the remaining trapped inhabitants now waited. The other was the interior hatch, where the EE troopers were perched.
She input the first string of the code.
A lucky round struck the wall inches above her right shoulder. The angle would have been tight for the trooper to have pulled that off. Which meant he would have been exposed. There was an answering report from Jon’s side of the corridor, then a guttural cry.
That’s four left. We might actually get out of this.
“Ty! Come on!” Jon called. Something in his voice made her look up. His attention was on his side of the passage. Bright white flashes lit up the interior of the corridor from inside their barricade.
More EE troopers were heading at them from behind. Either Valen had left some of them alive and they had found a way through the damaged blast door at the marketplace, or there was another way around.
No time to wonder.
She input the rest of the code and pressed the activation key, wrist throbbing. There was an unhealthy whir as the pneumatics on the pressure door cycled to life. She stole a glance into the corridor and saw the doors begin to roll shut on their tracks. At that moment Jon focused his shots on the Ravstar troopers, keeping them on their side of the hatch.
Then Sela saw the dark figure move among them.
Tristic stood in the center of the corridor, fully exposed, framed by the shutting doors. When half-breed saw Sela, her head lowered. Tristic’s expression seemed like an amused dare, as if to say: this is not done.
Their gazes locked.
I can end this. I can end this right now. For Valen.
Sela brought the A2 up and stepped out into the passage. Her rounds struck center body mass until the rifle charge was dry. Tristic staggered back with each hit. Head still lowered. Her stare still fixed on Sela.
The body armor was strong enough to repel a scatter gun. Or an amped out A2.
She dropped the spent A2. Striding toward the shutting doors, she drew her sidearm and fired, left handed. The move was clumsy. The rounds struck the shutting door just to Tristic’s right. Refocusing her aim, compensating for her non-dominant hand, Sela fired again. One struck on the shut hatch where Tristic’s hideous face would have been.
“Let’s move!” Jon grabbed her arm.
He tugged her along and they ran with the diminished crowd of refugees that flooded the passage, all headed for the docking bay.
25
“You want to tell me what in Nyxa’s name that was about?” Jon demanded as they sprinted up the Cassandra’s ramp.
“I saw an opportunity and I took it,” Sela snapped. She pounded the manual override with her fist as she ran past. The ramp began to retract. The inner hatch sealed behind her.
“An opportunity to get killed? Who were you firing on?” Jon replied as he climbed up the ladder to the command loft. Sela followed close behind.
She slid beneath the railway and onto the grav bench beside him. “A Defensor. Calls herself Tristic. The bitch killed Valen,” she answered. “She’s the reason why Ravstar is hunting your sister.”
The Cass’s engines were already rumbling awake. Their uncertain, angry rattle told her Veradin wasn’t going about this gracefully. They needed to get gone soon.
“Where is Erelah? How did she get out?”
“Does it matter? She’s secured now,” he shot back, his attention split between the forward view and keying up the ‘pulsion controls.
That meant he had made it safely to the Cassandra but had elected to go back for her. Strategically unsound.
“You came back to find me. It was a dumb risk to take.”
“You’re kidding, right?” he snapped.
Hurriedly, he keyed the propulsion activation. The sudden acceleration thrust her back into the cushions. Veradin guided the Cass under and around the outstretched arms of the dying station’s docking rings. At least a dozen other ships, all shapes and sizes, were leaving en masse.
As they dodged a large, slow-moving cargo tug, Sela saw it: the Ravstar vessel. Phantom class. It was a thing of deadly beauty. It had positioned itself between the station and the flex point, perched just beyond the swinging arch of Merx’s docking arms like a funnel spider standing guard at its trap. The size was unimpressive, compared to the station. But she made up for that with armaments.
“Jon.”
“I see them, I see them,” Veradin growled.
She squirmed as they darted under the body of a floundering panzer class transport.
He reached across her and set a new command on the enginesys.
Sela gaped. “That’s the maneuvering engine. We need that.”
“Wait. Just wait.”
She reached, but was held back by the straps of the chair. He swatted her hand away and unclipped her safety harness.
“I have an idea.” Jon said.
He paused, ducking instinctively as a fat-bellied freighter zigged into their present course. At that moment she saw what he was doing: using the bulk of the larger vessels to make it difficult for the Ravstar vessel to detect their position. The Cassandra was still transmitting a fraudulent ident, but her form and mass stood out in the sea of ancient transports and cargo skiffs.
“Go,” he said. “Find the cesium manifold.”
She climbed over the top of the seat and darted for the corridor, then turned. “Then what?”
“Just wait.” His attention was torn between the enginesys and the piloting controls.
“Wait. Be nice. Don’t kill anyone,” she muttered as she swung neatly down the ladder to the companionway.
For a moment she stalked in a hectic circle, peering through the grates of the decking underfoot. There! She spotted it, the dull flat box that protected the pressurized cesium line. With a metal clatter, she flipped the deck panel out of the way and hopped down into the smaller space.
“Still waiting!”
“Good. Get ready to prime the feed. We have to try a cold spool-up.”
Sela ran a hand through her hair, thinking. Cold spool-up was a brief training from years ago. Even that technology had been with a far newer vessel, an SP9 Crossfire, not a piece of antiquity like the Cassandra. It was a chancy maneuver to demand speed before the engines were at full prime.
Sighing, she tipped the case open with the toe of her boot and was greeted with a specimen fit for a museum.
Sela bellowed up at the loft. “It’s ancient—”
“S’ok, Ty. Either way, we’re dead.”
“Well… that makes it easier.”
“Wait for my mark.”
She located the primer feed. Corrosion peppered the joint with green speck
les. She reached for the valve and immediately drew her hand away, hissing. That bastard was hot!
The deck beneath her gave a sudden lurch, followed by a disconcerting groan of metal. She clenched her teeth. This might not be the best idea.
“Cap’n?”
“Okay, now!”
Wrapping her hand with her sleeve, she pulled. Nothing. The damned handle would not budge. Corrosion had sealed the joint.
“Ty! Now!” he bellowed. “Now would be good.”
Again, nothing. The access was awkwardly placed. Sela shifted, bracing against the deck and kicked at it. It swung open stubbornly. There was a shuddering pause. A horrifying metal groan issued from the Cass. She squeezed her eyes shut and flattened against the bulkhead.
Nothing.
Sela leaned forward to yell up at the command loft. “Nothing. It didn’t—”
Suddenly, the vessel lurched forward like a startled animal. Sela crashed against the lip of the deck. Her head struck something as a white flash filled her field of vision.
“Close it. Close it!”
She scrambled back to the line. This time the access valve moved much more easily. The seal clacked shut. The Cass gave another, less catastrophic lurch. Sela collapsed onto her back on the decking, nerves unbundling.
“Ty! You did it!” He released a jubilant shout from the loft. “We’re through the flex point!”
Sela lay that way for a long time as she entertained bodily harm to the Last Daughter of Veradin.
---
Erelah woke to darkness. Panic instantly settled onto her chest. Since childhood she had hated and feared the dark. Her time with Tristic had only worsened it.
Frantically, she reached out. Her hands met cold rounded metal shapes. Then, not far from that, a wall, an arm’s reach from the one against which her back rested. She was in a tiny room, all metal. The sounds of her movements, her breathing, echoed flatly in the small space. She recognized the pungent smell of sanitation fluids. Then she realized. This was the wasterec on the Cassandra. The door was to her left. Dimly she could make out a thin line of white light along the floor. She rose, sliding along the wall and pawed at the door. The latch would not turn. Jon had locked her in. Why?
Allies and Enemies: Fallen Page 20
