by S. J. Bryant
"No… no one would survive that." Kari frowned. Now that Atticus had said it, she could almost see the shape of a person in the irregular lump. There was its head, and there two arms and legs sprawled at cross angles. Something glittered near its head. A knife.
"Wren!" Kari reached for the handle and wrenched the door open before she'd finished processing what she'd seen.
The hot metal of the lever burned her palm, but she ignored the pain as she tossed the door open and ran inside. A blast of heat hit her, knocking her back a step. She held her hand over her eyes. The bright ball of fire at the other end of the room roared like some beast and sent up jets of flame in blinding orange streams.
Sweat poured down Kari's face and soaked her shirt but she ducked her head and pushed forward. Dim voices filtered through the roar of the engine, coming from somewhere behind her, but she didn't bother to turn. They'd be telling her to stop, to come back, that it was useless. Hell to them. It was her damn fault Wren lay here. The least she could do was bring her with them and give her a proper burial.
Heat soaked Kari's skin, turning it red and blistered, like the time she'd been caught outside on Zenith at dawn. She'd only just made it into a safety tunnel before third degree burns ate through her flesh. She probably had a half dozen cancers from exposure to the radiation, but at least she'd survived. Just like she'd survive this.
Each step took her closer to the flames and intensified the pain eating through her flesh. Flakes of skin lifted and peeled away like white snowflakes. She ignored them and pushed on. Wren lay only a few feet away. Two feet. One.
Kari fell to her knees at Wren's side.
Wren was curled up, her back to the flames and her face hidden by her arms. Her hands, where they appeared above the black mat of her hair were scorched and blistered. They barely looked like hands at all.
A tear dribbled out of Kari's eye but evaporated as soon as it hit her cheek. "I'm so sorry." Her voice choked off, dried out by the flames and the unshed tears. What a painful way to go, slowly burned alive, that's if she hadn't suffocated first. What the hell had she been thinking? Perhaps she wasn't thinking at that stage… it looked like she'd survived longer than everyone else. Perhaps she'd lost her mind in the last few moments. Probably a good thing if it meant she didn't feel her flesh burning.
"Kari! Get the hell out of there."
Kari glanced back. Ryker leaned through the door, a hand over his eyes, skin glowing red.
His words shook Kari back to the present. If she stayed there much longer, she'd be burned alive, just like Wren. Then what good would she be to anyone?
She scooped her arms under Wren, one at her knees and one behind her back. Wren's hot clothing scorched Kari's already burned skin. But as she pulled Wren closer, ready to hoist her upright, something fell out of Wren's seared hand. A black pipe. It clattered to the floor as Kari stood, Wren in her arms.
Kari frowned at it. What the hell? She traced the line of black tubing. It snaked across the floor into the wall where it joined a mass of other piping. The jagged end of a matched black pipe hung from the wall. Wren had cut it with her knife. Why?
"Kari!"
Ryker sounded desperate.
Kari hefted Wren higher in her arms and turned. The sudden heat at her back propelled her forward and she stumbled, dragged down by the weight of Wren's body. But she forced herself to stay upright despite the agony in her arms and the heat eating through the back of her shirt. She'd failed too many people today. She wouldn't fail again.
Each torturous step threatened to be her last, but she kept going. The further she got from the flames, the less the heat bit and she could breathe more easily.
Two steps from the door, Ryker lunged forward and dragged Kari, still holding Wren, out of the engine room. Atticus slammed the door shut, cutting off the worst of the heat.
Kari eased Wren to the floor and knelt beside her body.
"What the hell was she doing in there?" Atticus said.
"I think she might have been confused… at the end. She'd cut up a pipe and was holding it like a lifeline."
The others stood in grim silence around Wren's body. Her face was red and peeled, but her hands were the worst, blistered and twisted, not like hands at all.
Kari didn't feel the burn in her own flesh, although from the way Ryker kept looking at her she suspected it was bad. She'd feel it soon, she was sure, once the adrenalin of finding Wren wore off. But until then, her biggest ache came from her chest. Wren was dead. Painfully. And it was all Kari's fault.
"What was that?" Aydin said, suddenly standing straight.
Kari glanced up at him. "What was what?"
"I thought she moved…"
Kari could have killed him. Of all the bad jokes—then she caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye.
"I saw it that time," Ryker said.
Kari pressed her burned hand against Wren's throat and held her own breath. The seconds dragged by like hours, but then just as she was about to give up hope, the tiniest flicker of a pulse tickled the tips of her fingers.
"She's alive." Kari looked up at the circle of faces around her. "She's alive!"
CHAPTER 26
Wren drew a ragged, rasping breath and it seared her throat as if she'd inhaled hot coals. The pain caught in her lungs and she convulsed, her top half coming up off the floor as she coughed and fought for breath. She swallowed, trying to ease the scratching in her windpipe but it was like breathing splinters.
Her eyes flew open. A face loomed over her, the features distorted by Wren's watering eyes and the bright light behind them.
Instincts took over and Wren's hand lashed out, snapping around the person's neck, squeezing.
The figure grappled at her wrist, made a desperate croaking noise.
Wren couldn't hear them over the sound of her own choking and hacking. Why did her face burn? And why the hell couldn't she get a decent breath of air?
She squeezed harder on the person's throat. Better to go down fighting. What the hell had they done to her? Poison?
Memories trickled back. She'd poisoned herself, had been almost dead for a time, and then…
Blood.
She'd been coated in blood and it had felt good. But then the air changed. The gas.
Fingernails clawed at Wren's wrist but she didn't let go, even though the pain was a hundred times worse than it should have been. In a break between coughs she glanced at her arm. Blistered and bloody flesh coated her hands, reaching up under the sleeves of her singed shirt.
The fire.
Another hand grabbed Wren's shoulders, pulling at her. She twisted and tried to get away, but more hands joined in and she lost her grip on the soft throat she'd been about to crush.
"Wren!"
Wren bent double, coughing, desperate for air. Someone pressed a metal flask to her lips and cool water touched her skin. She snatched for it, tilted it up. Soothing liquid coated her mouth, easing her burning throat. She coughed once more and water dribbled down her chin. She wiped it away with her soot-stained sleeve and kept drinking. Only when the flask was empty did she toss it aside.
A deep breath that didn't descend into coughing. She drew three more. A pounding headache thumped at her temples from her coughing fit, but she could breathe.
Ready to fight, she looked up at the people who'd fought her off.
Ryker stared down at her, the others spread out on either side, except for Kari who stood doubled over at the back, red marks around her throat, and Aydin who stood apart from the others, eying the corridor behind them.
Wren shook her head and blinked. They should all be dead. The gas…
"Where'd you find the water?" Ryker said.
"Back in that storage room," Atticus said.
"Lucky."
Wren sat up straighter. "What the hell happened?"
"You nearly killed Kari," Ryker said.
"Again," Kari said in a choked voice. She was still bent over and massagi
ng her neck.
"Sorry," Wren said. It was lucky the others had interfered when they did. Wren had crushed the windpipes of people much bigger than Kari—she'd have purple bruises by the next day.
"We'll call it even," Kari said.
Wren allowed herself to enjoy a few more breaths—though her throat still burned. "How do you figure that?"
"I almost killed you too." Kari came and stood over Wren. "The gas."
"That was you?"
"Well, with Atticus' help."
Wren pressed her hands to the floor, meaning to stand, but hot spikes of pain jolted through her palms from the bloodied and burnt flesh. Her skin pulled taut over her hands, like too-small gloves. Her fingers curled like claws. When she tried to straighten them, agony ripped through her. She doubled over, her hands clutched to her stomach.
"Are you okay?" Atticus said, falling to his knee beside her.
"Burnt," Wren said through clenched teeth. She had vague memories of fire, and a lot of pain. If she'd had all her belongings she'd have cream that would ease the burns but she had nothing. "Where's Ghost?" On board the ship she had more supplies. If she could just get there in time she might be able to stop any permanent damage.
"We were hoping you would know," Kari said.
"It wasn't in the airlock," Wren said.
"Yeah, we know."
"You were going to leave without me?"
"We thought you were dead," Ryker said. "Remember that stunt you pulled with the poison?"
"You should know me better than that," Wren said, doing her best to hide the pain coursing through her hands, as if she held them in the heart of a fire.
"The storeroom had medical supplies," Atticus said. He stood and disappeared down the corridor.
Wren kept her face stony. Let the others guess that she might be in pain, but she wouldn't let them see just how much. They'd as good as left her for dead after all.
"You should have told us your plan," Kari said.
"I wasn't sure it would work."
"You mean you might have killed yourself?" Ryker said.
Wren shrugged. At the time there'd been no other plan, so she'd taken the risk. She'd had a partial chance of surviving, unlike the others who would have died for sure.
Atticus returned with a tube of gel that he squeezed onto Wren's blistered hands. The cold caused a brief sting, then numbness spread into her fingers. She massaged the gel across her skin until her whole hands were numb.
"Thanks," she muttered. With the pain dulled she could think clearly. "Why are we standing here doing nothing? Are you waiting for more pirates to appear?"
"I think you might have killed them all," Ryker said.
"Either that or the gas did," Atticus said, voice low.
Wren sensed there was something going unsaid, but she couldn't be bothered to decipher it. They might have killed all of Blanchard's crew but there'd be other scavengers who would come to investigate.
"Speaking of," Kari said. "How are you still alive? We were sure that… you should have suffocated."
"Oxygen," Wren said. "They use it to keep the engine running."
Atticus smacked his hand to his forehead. "Of course!"
"I think I'm missing something," Ryker said.
"It's a combustion-based engine," Atticus said. "It needs oxygen to keep the fire going. They must pump it in."
"That black pipe you were holding," Kari said.
Wren nodded. The memory of finding the right pipe and hacking at it with her knife filtered through a wall of pain. The flames from the engine had been licking at her back and her lungs burned from lack of oxygen. The sudden blast of air from the pipe when she cut it free kept her conscious and she'd clung to that pipe with every bit of strength she'd had left.
"Genius," Atticus said.
Wren didn't reply. She was embarrassed that it had taken her so long to think of it. Hell, she'd been just about ready to walk into the damn engine when she made the connection.
"I'm glad you survived," Kari said.
Wren locked eyes with her. "Me too."
"Well this is lovely," Aydin said. "And I'm glad you're alive and all. But we need to keep—"
A clang echoed down the hallway.
The whole group froze and shared long glances.
Aydin hoisted his gun. "They're here."
CHAPTER 27
Kari pulled her gun from her belt, peering down the long corridor. Her throat ached from where Wren had nearly choked her, but that could wait. It wouldn't mean much if she got shot to pieces by whoever was coming down the hall.
Ryker aimed two guns down the passage.
Wren lurched to her feet. "Weapon."
Atticus shoved his gun into her hands. "You'll do more with it than I will."
She gripped it despite the blisters and torn skin. Kari didn't like to think about the pain she must be feeling. If any of them could handle it, it was Wren.
"Please, I've got enough to spare," Ryker said, handing Atticus one of a dozen weapons strapped about his body.
"Do you think they've seen us on the cameras?" Atticus said.
"Yes," Ryker said. "They'd be idiots otherwise and we're never that lucky."
"Plan?" Aydin said.
"Wren, did you find any way out of here?" Kari said.
Wren shook her head once. "Was trying to find an escape ship before I went into the engine room."
"Great," Ryker said. "We're trapped."
"Not necessarily," Kari said. "Whoever that is had to get here somehow."
"Then we pirate the pirates," Ryker said. "And take whatever rust-bucket they arrived in."
Kari nodded. It wasn't as good as finding Ghost, but if it got them away from this mess then so be it. She'd work out a way to find Ghost, or buy a replacement, later.
"Aren't we forgetting the small matter of the battle droid?" Aydin said.
Kari and her companions stared at him. "What battle droid?"
He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. "You know. All those dead bodies we passed?"
Wren snorted. "No battle droid."
"Then what…?" He looked at Wren. "You?"
Wren nodded once.
"What are you?"
"I'm sure we can play 'get to know you' another time," Kari said. "In the meantime, there's the small matter of getting off this damn ship alive."
"I don't suppose we can hack into the system and take a peek at them?" Ryker said. "You know… level the playing field."
"Maybe if we had time and any kind of computer," Atticus said.
Ryker rolled his head so that his neck cracked. "Great. So we have no idea where they are, or how many of them there are."
"Three hundred yards, two turns away," Piper said. "No more than ten, at a guess."
"Probably no more than seven," Wren added.
"How can you possibly know that?" Aydin said
"The echo of the noise," Piper said. "And more than ten people would make more noise as they came closer, whereas we haven't heard anything more from them."
"Piper gives them more credit than I do," Wren said. "These are untrained pirates. I don't think they could get more than seven so close to us without us hearing them first."
Piper shrugged but said nothing more.
Kari looked between the two. She didn't think she'd ever get used to the uncanny way they had of seeing and noticing more than seemed humanly possible. But she'd be stupid not to trust them; they'd both proved themselves more than once.
"Are they still coming?" Ryker asked.
"If you closed your big mouth I'd be able to tell you," Wren said.
Ryker scowled but said nothing.
Wren tilted her head to the side, placing her blistered palm against the wall. Kari thought she saw a flicker of pain pass over the other woman's face but it was gone in an instant so Kari couldn't be sure that she hadn't imagined it.
After a pause, Wren lifted her hand from the wall. "They've stopped. Probably not long after they made
that noise."
"They'll be ready for us," Kari said. "Especially if they're watching us right now."
"So what are we supposed to do?" Aydin said.
Kari looked behind them but this corridor ended at the engine room. The only way out was past the group waiting for them in the passages ahead. "We fight," she said. "We have no choice."
"Wish I had my own weapons," Ryker said, lifting the two plasma rifles he held.
"A few grenades would take care of them," Aydin said.
"And blow a hole in the side of the ship and kill us all," Kari said. "Keep your heads on your shoulders."
"Not if they were small grenades," Aydin grumbled.
Kari ignored him and took the lead. "We edge around the corner, try to stay low and out of direct line of fire. Hopefully we can draw them out."
"They've got us outnumbered," Aydin said. "And they have a better position, better weapons, and more intel."
"Yeah," Ryker said. "But you haven't seen us fight."
Kari tried to look as confident as Ryker sounded but Aydin was right. One wrong step and they'd be turned to charcoal by a rain of plasma fire. She suspected Wren wouldn't be up to her usual fighting skills either, otherwise she could have taken seven hostiles on her own without breaking a sweat. As evidenced by the trail of bodies she'd left through the space station.
Kari crept up the corridor to the first corner and paused, ears straining. The gentle whir of the life-support system buzzed overhead. She glanced at Wren who shook her head.
Peeking with just one eye around the corner, Kari scoped the corridor beyond. Empty. But a second passage led off about halfway along. If she'd had the money to spare, she would have bet all of it on the enemy being just around that corner. It would mean Kari and her crew had to expose themselves in the passage, just to get a shot away.
Ryker glanced around the corner and scowled. "Not good."
"Tell me about it," Kari said.
"So?" Ryker said.
Kari leaned against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. It felt as though she'd been awake and fighting for survival for days. How long had it actually been? No way to tell. And what about the prisoners they'd left down in the cells? Would Gerbil come out of the cage eventually? And when he did, what would he find? If only there were some way to get behind the enemy. But Kari already knew there wasn't. This ship wasn't built to have hidden passages and escape hatches.
