by Amie Kaufman
Leaning down, Scarlett kisses her brother’s cheek.
“I signed up for you, dummy.”
“An Ace backs her Alpha,” I say.
I meet Tyler’s eyes as he looks up at me.
“Always,” he replies.
I smile in return. “Always.”
“I am not normal,” Zila says into the quiet that follows.
We look at her, her eyes downturned, toying with the gold hoops in her ears. I realize they’ve got tiny pizza slices on them. Her curls are a dark curtain around her face, her voice a murmur.
“Zila?” Scar asks.
“The only places I fit are the places inside my head,” she continues. “It is as you said, sir. I do not understand people.” She looks around the bridge. “But I believe of all the places I have not fit, I fit here a little better.”
Scar smiles. “Who wants to be normal when you can be interesting instead?”
Zila looks at Scar and nods. “I will stay.”
Kal speaks up from his place by the weapons console. His knuckles are scabbed, his eyes burning as he looks to O’Malley.
“I will stay until the end of this road.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Finian says. “But speaking personally, breaking Galactic Interdiction is where this particular Betraskan draws the line. I’m not about to make an enemy out of every government in the galaxy for the sake of a two-hundred-year-old telekinetic dirtchild who starts tossing us around like kebar balls every time someone clobbers her on the brainthing. But have fun with the suicide mission, kids!”
We’re all a little stunned, I think. The whole squad watches as Finian twirls once in his seat, stands up and starts slowly limping toward the doors, his exosuit whining. I can’t blame him really. He’s Betraskan, after all, and the trouble we’re in only goes as far as Terra. If he follows the smart money and cuts ties now, he might even be able to …
Finian turns back to face us, points right at me.
“Had you going, didn’t I?”
“What?”
He breaks into a broad, shit-eating grin. “Admit it. All of you. You thought I was actually going to eject, didn’t you?”
I find myself grinning, too, picking up Shamrock and hurtling him across the bridge. Fin doesn’t try to catch it and the toy bounces off his chest and hits the deck.
“You’re an asshole, Finian,” Scarlett sighs.
“Yeah,” he replies. “But I’m your asshole.”
He makes a face.
“Wait, no, that didn’t come out right. Ew. Sorry. Terran as a second language and all …”
Tyler grins, looks around the bridge at Squad 312. Most of us have only known each other for a handful of days. We’ve already been through the wringer together. We’re maybe about to go through hell. But truth is, despite everything, there’s no one else in the ’Way I’d want leading me.
“Lock in a course for the Octavia system, Zero.”
I give him a salute, then give him a smile.
“Sir, yes sir.”
•••••
We’re almost at the Octavia gate when Bellerophon starts shooting at us.
Princeps has been trying to get us on comms for the last hour, but Ty ordered Scarlett to ignore the hails. It’s noisy enough in here without adding dire warnings from the GIA into the mix. Our systems have been wailing for the past twenty minutes, the local beacon alerting us that we’re approaching a system under Galactic Interdiction, that entry to the Octavia system is “extremely hazardous,” may result in “catastrophic consequences,” and “constitutes a violation of galactic law, as outlined by the Treaty of Verduum IV and cosigned by blah blah blah blah.”
I’m starting to hate life.
And then, a missile gets thrown our way and I remember why I like it so much.
Everyone’s changed out of their party gear and into uniform again, so at least we’re dressed for it. I deploy our decoys, warning everyone to hold on as I lay on the burn and go hard evasive. Our screens flare as the missile explodes behind us, lighting up the Fold a pure and burning white.
“Was that a nuke?” Scarlett asks, eyes wide.
“It sure wasn’t a pocket full of posies,” I reply.
“That poem is about the black death,” Zila says. “A pocket full of posies was supposed to ward off the—”
“Yes, thank you, little Legionnaire Sunshine,” Finian says. “But morbid Terran poetry aside, I do believe your fellow dirtchildren are trying to kill us and I thought our fearless leader said they didn’t want to do that!”
Tyler is looking at his scopes in disbelief. “I didn’t think they did?”
“Didn’t think? I thought you were meant to be a tactical genius!”
Ty raises his scarred eyebrow. “Finian, I hate to shatter your opinion of me, but this is probably as good a point as any to confess—”
“Hold on!” I roar.
Another three missiles are speeding our way along with a burst of fire from the Bellerophon’s rail gun batteries. I lean hard on the controls, throwing up another round of decoys. I weave through the firestorm, feeling the engine purr underneath me, fingers flowing over the controls, fast as thought. The blasts are thousands of kilometers wide, scorching the Fold as they blossom outward. But our Longbow is quicker, twirling and spinning through the rail gun storm, the rounds streaking soundlessly past her skin as she comes out the other side without a scratch on her.
“These bastards mean biz,” I growl.
“How long till we hit the Octavia FoldGate?” Tyler demands.
“Entry in four minutes, thirty-one seconds.”
“Can you hold them off till then?”
I look up at him and wink. “They didn’t name me Zero for nothing.”
We can see it in front of us now. Instead of the hexagonal titanium gates we Terrans use, or the teardrop-shaped crystal portals of the Syldrathi, this one is totally natural. It looks like a glimmering rend in the fabric of the Fold—as if torn by the claws of some impossible animal. It’s tens of thousands of kilometers across, edges rippling with quantum lightning. The view over its horizon shimmers like a mirage in a desert. And through that unthinkable tear in the universe’s skin, we can see faint glimpses of the Octavia star, burning red in a colored sea of realspace.
Bellerophon is pouring on the rail gun fire now. Any lingering question as to whether they actually want to kill us is answered as a dozen shells shear right past our port wing, missing us by less than a hundred meters.
“Great Maker, that was close,” Finian breathes.
“Shut up,” I growl. “I’ve got it under control. Realspace entry in sixty seconds.”
A rail gun round crashes into our backside, tearing a football-sized hole in the hull. Alarms shriek, the auto-containment systems kick in, locking off the breached deck. I glance at the damage report, realize we’ve taken a hit to engineering.
Not good.
“I thought you had it under control!” Finian shouts over the alerts.
“I thought I told you to shut up!”
Kal smiles, his eyes alight, totally at home in the chaos of battle. It’s the most relaxed I’ve seen him since we met. “You are not much of a warrior, are you, Finian?”
“Well, you’re not much of a …” The Betraskan blinks those big black eyes as he comes up short. “Wait, wait, honestly I had something really good for this yesterday. …”
Another depleted uranium round slices within three meters of our starboard flank. Hard as I’m flying, fast as I’m burning, there’s too many guns lighting us up. Longbows aren’t built to take on capital ships; it’s like throwing a terrier into a fight with a Doberman. Sure, the terrier might put up a show, but in the end, fast and angry as she gets, the little dog’s gonna end up on the bigger dog’s toothpick.
“Realspace
entry, fifteen seconds!”
“Everyone hold on!” Tyler shouts.
The tear looms in front of us, filling our display. I can feel the pull of it now, crawling over my body and stretching out my skin. Our alarms are blaring about the interdiction, our hull breach in Engineering, the incoming fire from Bellerophon. There’s a lurching in my stomach, a deafening silence as the whole galaxy flips on its head. And then, with the scream of engines and the bone-jarring impact of reality hitting home, we’re through, out into the welcoming colorscape of realspace.
Good news is we made it in one piece.
Bad news is, Bellerophon is still right behind us.
She rips out of the Fold like a bat out of hell, releasing another salvo of nukes. Whatever their earlier plans for getting hold of O’Malley were, it looks like they’ve decided to cut their losses and just flatline us, and the weird thing is, I’ve got no bloody idea why—on my scopes, Octavia seems like a perfectly normal system. There’s nothing I can see that they’d want to hide, or protect at all costs—even at the cost of giving up on taking Aurora.
As we close in on it, I can see Octavia III seems a completely run-of-the-mill M-class rock. A speck of blue-green land masses and blue-green water. Seventy-four percent ocean. Balmy temperatures, four major continents. In other words … boring.
So what the hells about it didn’t they want us to—
“Sir.” Zila glances up from her instruments, first to Aurora, then to Tyler.
“What is it, Legionnaire?” Ty asks.
With a flick of her wrist, Zila throws a scanner sweep of the continent below up onto the main display. And there, nestled in a lush valley beside a ribbon of glittering water, are thirty or forty buildings.
“That’s Butler,” Aurora whispers. “The first settlement of the Octavia colony.”
So, it’s true. There was a settlement here. People lived on this planet. Families. Kids. Something went wrong, and for the past two centuries, the highest branch of the Terran intelligence division has been covering it up.
“Lying bastards,” I whisper.
I look to the image of the Bellerophon behind us, then to Tyler, waiting for orders. His gamble that the GIA weren’t willing to kill us hasn’t paid off, and now we’re left with the unpleasant realities of trying to run from a ship we can’t outrun, or fighting a ship we can’t outfight. We’re close to Octavia III now, but the Bellerophon’s missile systems have us locked; their rail guns are ready for another burst. We’re leaking power, too—looks like that hit to Engineering damaged our reactor core. And good as I am, I honestly don’t know if I’m gonna be good enough to win this for him.
“Bellerophon is hailing us again,” Scarlett reports.
Tyler sighs, looking around the bridge. I can see it in his eyes; his fear for his people, his disappointment in himself. We’re so close to Octavia III now, I can see the swirls of cloud in the atmosphere, the jagged shapes of the continents beneath. Aurora is on her feet, looking at the image of the colony on the central display. This place where she was supposed to spend the rest of her life.
We almost made it. We almost brought her home. But in the end, maybe all Tyler’s faith was misplaced? Maybe this trip is finally over?
“Open a channel,” he orders Scarlett.
The image of Princeps appears on our central display, its white mirrormask featureless, its voice dead and metallic.
“Legionnaire Jones,” the G-man says. “This is your final warning. if you do not power down your engines immediately, you will be—”
The sound of an explosion cuts over the transmission, the feed momentarily dissolving into static. An alarm blares on the Bellerophon’s bridge, another on ours. I look at my scopes, try to make sense of what I’m seeing.
“Cat, report!” Ty barks.
“Bellerophon is … under attack?”
“From who?”
I shake my head. “I’ve got a half-dozen energy sigs out there, but I’m getting almost no profile off LADAR. Scanners can barely see them.”
“Visual?”
Pulling up a display of the Bellerophon, I can see she’s been hit bad in her portside engines, and she’s leaking coolant into space. Swarming around her, barely visible against the darkness, are a dozen slender, crescent-shaped ships. They’re totally black, their pilots keeping them angled with minimal profile, so there’s virtually no surface area to generate a LADAR hit. They’ve struck with surprise, and they’ve struck hard; their plasma cannons are melting the destroyer’s hull to vapor. And I can’t figure out if we’ve just been saved by a last-minute miracle, or if we’re in deeper crap than we were a minute ago.
“Those are Chellerian stealth frigates,” Kal says.
Princeps’s voice rings out over the open comms channel. “Attention, unidentified Chellerian vessels. You are firing on a Terran Defense Force vessel under command of the Global Intelligence Agen—”
“I know damn well who I’m shooting at, hoo-maaan,” comes the growling reply as the terrifying face of the sector’s most infamous crime lord materializes on the display. “You GIA shraakz sold me out, and nobody stabs Casseldon Bianchi in the back and lives to talk about it.”
“Looks like someone wants his Trigger back,” Scarlett breathes.
“Um.” Finian glances at Aurora. “Someone want to tell him we broke it?”
We’ve hit the gravity well of Octavia III now, the coolant leaking from the Bellerophon’s port engines slowly spiraling down into the planet’s upper atmo.
The Chellerian ships are moving quick as hummingbirds, flitting through the destroyer’s rail gun fire and blasting away at the bigger ship, like a swarm of ants on an elephant. I watch as the Bellerophon launches its fighters, smaller ships streaming out from its bay doors. Most of the destroyer’s birds turn to combat the smaller Chellerian ships, but at least half a dozen of them turn and zero in on us.
Our power levels are dropping quick, but this is where I live. I turn our Longbow to face the incoming fighters, weaving through their streams of fire like thread through a needle’s eye. All the years training, all the instinct, all the rhythm pulsing in my veins flow to the surface. I can’t feel my hands as they skim the controls. Can’t feel my body as the ship rolls and twists beneath me.
I sling us down and out of Octavia III’s gravity well, picking up an extra burst of speed. Kal has manned the secondary weapons array, and between us, we carve a swathe of fire through the TDF birds. Elation surges through me, watching the hunter become the hunted. Watching the Chellerians and the Bellerophon cutting each other to pieces. Watching the flashes of blue flame and shrapnel as we shoot down the fighters on our tails, one by one.
And then I remember my mum was a TDF pilot.
And I realize there are real people inside those fighters.
I’ve never shot down a living person before today. All the hours, all the training, the cockpit where I earned my nickname—all of that was just a sim. These are real people out here. Terrans, fighting for what they believe in.
Just like me.
The engine’s getting sluggish. The power drain from our damage is reaching the redline. And thinking about the people inside those cockpits, I’m getting sloppy. Bellerophon is on fire, oxygen pouring out of its melted hull and burning in the black. The Chellerians have been torn to ribbons, too, pieces of those sleek, black stealth ships glittering like shards of broken glass as they tumble away into space.
A flash of nuclear fire ignites Octavia III’s upper atmosphere—a desperate stab from the dying Bellerophon. Bianchi’s roaring over comms as his vessel gets caught in the blast. I see the fireball, watch the electromagnetic shock wave travel toward us.
I try to pull us up, but the engines don’t have the kick I need anymore—my girl’s too wounded to fly as fast as I need her to. The EMP burst hits us, a wave of light and sound, the instrumenta
tion in front of me lighting up in a hail of sparks.
I’m thrown sideways in my harness. Hear Fin cry out. Alarms are screaming. Temperature rising. We’ve hit atmo, our ship skipping across it like a stone skimmed along the water. I try to fight the drag, pulling back with everything I’ve got. But we’re hemorrhaging too much power.
We’ve taken too much damage.
“We’re going in!”
30
Finian
“Ty, boost the stabilizers! Squad, brace, and prayers if you got ’em!”
Cat’s covering her console like she’s one of our four-armed Chellerian friends up above: hands everywhere at once, flicking switches and dancing across buttons, trying to coax a little more lift out of our wounded steed.
“Everyone strap in,” Ty commands. Aurora buckles herself onto a spare velocity couch at the back of the cabin, and all around me my squad mates deploy their restraints. “Ready for impact.”
The whole Longbow shudders, tilting to the right with a scream of protest, and Zila crashes into the far wall before she can get to her seat. None of us can so much as lift a hand to help her out, and Cat keeps on rapping out orders. Goldenboy’s our Alpha in the field, but he’s trained to back her up at times like this, and that handsome face is all business.
“Stabilizers deployed,” he reports.
“Doesn’t feel like it!” Cat shouts as the whole craft shudders again, shaking like we’re on a bumpy road. If that road was a screamingly steep descent that ended in a drop off a cliff.
Maker’s bits, we’re going to die.
“I’m telling you, they’re deployed!” Ty reports again as Zila manages to grab her chair and throw herself into it, one hand smacking the harness button so the straps snake over her shoulders and into place.
“There are atmo pockets everywhere,” Cat growls. We hit another bout of turbulence, and there’s an insistent buzzing at my wrists as my exosuit tries to warn me to stop switching gravity levels so fast it can’t keep up.
“Pursuit?” Ty asks as blue sky whirls past the front screen, and we’re treated to a snatch of the continent below for an instant. It’s a lot closer than it was before.
