The Hard Choice

by Fuad Baloch

  The Hard Choice

  A Short Story set in the Divine Space series

  Fuad Baloch

  Copyright © 2018 by Fuad Baloch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  Illustration © Tom Edwards — TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Editing by Bodie D. Dykstra

  * * *

  Note on Styling:

  Divine Space series utilises British English conventions. This means some words might have different spellings (colour vs color), and the vocabulary might be slightly varied (holidays instead of vacations), etc.

  Divine Space Duology

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  The Hard Choice

  With a casual flick of her hand, Ruma initiated the countdown and hopped back.

  1:59:59

  1:59:58

  “You’re out of your mind, human!” screamed Ujayna xol Zeresi, the Zrivisi captain, his limbs bound but the mouth regrettably unrestrained. “Switch off the bomb this very second!”

  Hanoos, her partner, almost as tall as the Zrivisi, laughed through the mask covering his face, then kicked the captain in the ribs. The blue-skinned alien doubled over, coughed, his conical head shaking this way and that. Beside him, the other six Zrivisi shot them both murderous looks, their amber eyes pools of lava.

  Ruma didn’t care much for what they thought of her. She had a timetable to maintain that couldn’t afford unnecessary complications. A point worth making to their captives.

  Turning away from the terminal counting down, she cleared her throat. “As you can see, we’re a little short on time, and my… giant companion is lacking in patience.” She pointed at the port screens looking out on the abandoned spaceport. “Give us the launch codes or become a part of the desert. Your choice.”

  “You’re bluffing.” The captain winced. “If you destroy us, you won’t be able to leave Doonya.”

  Ruma bared her teeth, then, realising they couldn’t see her through the mask, clicked her tongue. “Very thoughtful of you. But worry not. There’ll be other ships.” A sudden anger flashed through her. “Something your leadership seems very keen on.”

  “Human,” Ujayna moaned, his face twisted in pain, the sing-songy voice still too authoritative for her liking. “Do not threaten the peace between our peoples with your actions.”

  She massaged her right temple. Why couldn’t the fracking Zrivisi just skip through the motions and get to the point where he’d have to give them the codes? Violence wasn’t good for business. Hanoos stirred. She waved him off with a gesture. “Stick to my talking points, Captain, or I am not going to hold back my companion.”

  Hanoos raised his rifle. “I am not your attack dog.”

  Ruma chuckled. “Oh yes, you are. Now shut up and give me a moment of peace.”

  The giant glared at her for a long breath, then turned his attention back to the Zrivisi.

  Chewing her lower lip, Ruma began pacing the airlock. The Jaanan, the Zrivisi ship, wasn’t much bigger than the standard Arkos frigate, but her engineering background had quickly dispelled the surface similarities. Despite being stationed on Doonya, the Jaanan’s atmosphere contained 2.5 percent more oxygen and was infused with some other trace element she could almost sense but not name—something she could find out from the engineering terminals, if she had the time or inclination.

  She shook her head, her lungs protesting at the wrongness they breathed in. The Zrivisi showed their hubris in refusing to acclimate to Doonya’s perfect atmosphere. A race that wouldn’t even breathe the same air wasn’t one to be trusted—a fact the bureaucrats and Arkos refused to see.

  “You had your moment,” hissed Hanoos. “What’s the plan?”

  “Huh?” She snapped her fingers. “You’re disturbing me. Just stick to the guard duty.” She half expected him to challenge her—after all, this fanatic with a trigger-happy mentality didn’t really report to her—but Hanoos nodded, looked away.

  1:56:09

  Why did things have to be this damned complicated? Seven whole hours of sneaking to get onto the Jaanan unseen. Two solid months of planning. Six months of painful, irritating negotiations to convince the Misguided that her plan to capture a Zrivisi ship held value for both their parties. All that only to come up against a fracking captain with a misguided sense of duty accompanied by a mad dog high on the idealist drug these fanatics drank freely of.

  She licked her lips, casting an appreciative glance at the ship. She was here, though. A ship containing both the traditional fusion drive and Xeon engines capable of taking her deep into the galaxy. Unbidden, her eyes turned to the open skies. Neither of the moons were visible against the bright sunlight. It didn’t matter. Beyond the false facade, in the dark space, lurked the person she sought.

  “Leave,” came the Zrivisi captain’s irritating sing-songy voice again. “We’ve not seen your faces. If you leave, on my honour, I’ll give you enough of a head start before letting Arkos know.”

  She laughed, surprised by how blind the alien was. “I’ve got a better alternative. Give me the launch codes, surrender the ship to me, and I give you my word: no harm—no further harm—will come upon you or your crewmates.”

  “I cannot do that,” said Ujayna. “Not so long as I live and breathe.”

  Hanoos kicked the captain again, the viciousness of the attack taking even Ruma by surprise. “I say we gut this bastard in front of the others, then keep going until one of them gives in.”

  “No one else knows the codes,” gasped Ujayna, his long limbs flailing, his chest rising and falling as if he’d been running.

  “Not buying that,” Hanoos said, then kicked him again.

  Ruma closed her eyes, cursed whoever in the Misguided had decided to send this brute with her. Finesse would be useful, she had told them. Instead, she had been given the proverbial warship for a dance recital.

  Play the cards you have, not the ones you wish. She smiled, remembering her father’s words. There were other lessons she had learned, too, like the one about letting the other’s mind paint a scenario far worse than any words could achieve, his own demons devouring his restraints.

  Surely, that applied to the Zrivisi as well.

  “I’m thirsty,” she declared, stretching her arms. “Here’s hoping you guys stock something strong and sensible in your provisions.” She motioned to Hanoos, who blinked stupidly at her, then offered a mock bow to the Zrivisi. “Make yourselves… erm… comfortable. We’ll be back.”

  Without waiting to see if Hanoos followed her, she turned around and began walking towards the door leading deep into the ship. She felt the Zrivisi eyes watch her, could almost taste the hope rising in their chests. Soon they would try and feed strength to each other through empty words.

  All the while fighting a losing battle not to look at the counter ticking down, down, down.

  * * *

  “We shouldn’t be wasting time here,” said Hanoos, throwing back yet another shot of something that could have been grease oil, judging by its stench.

  She rolled her eyes. “Do you ever stop complaining? And for Alf’s sake, stop drowning in this muck. I need you sober yet.”

  Grinning, he placed the
drained glass back onto the counter beside his mask, burped. “I say we go back and finish what we came her to do.”

  “Oh yeah? And what’s that, exactly?”

  He blinked, sending another flash of anger through her.

  Remember your mission!

  Sighing, Ruma spread her arms. “The captain is not wrong. Only he seems to have the codes that would unlock the nav controls. If we had time, a lot of it, I could have hacked their systems. After all, no matter how sophisticated a system, it’s still powered by humble wiring and elementary electronics. But”—she raised her hand, hoping he would understand—“we do not have time. At best, two hours before the other Zrivisi ships come looking for us.”

  “So what?” Hanoos paused to burp once more. “That doesn’t change anything.”

  She arched an eyebrow, drank in the rising frustration. Only thing more irritating than a stupid man was one who kept talking. Leaning forward, she refilled his glass, waited till he had downed it. “By the way, remind me again, what do the Misguided want from the ship anyway?”

  A shadow crossed over Hanoos’s eyes. His senses were slowing down, but he wasn’t completely lost just yet. “Girl, we are all but Alf’s servants, doing His work of purification. That’s all you ought to know.”

  A non-answer if she ever heard one. Then again, she didn’t care—ends justified the means in the business world. Licking her lips, she glanced at her terminal. Thirty minutes had passed. Another hour and a half before the bomb went off. She exhaled, conscious of Hanoos refilling his glass. She frowned. For a believer of Alf whose prophet discouraged drinking, he sure had a selective way of following the injunctions.

  “You did check their bindings were secure, right?” she asked.

  “Did the sun rise from the west today?” he countered.

  “Did you?”

  By way of an answer, he burped again. When he placed the drained glass down, it sat precariously close to the edge.

  “You never said,” said Hanoos, his voice slurring now, the syllables mixing into each other, “why you wanted the ship?”

  She offered a smile through gritted teeth. “I didn’t, did I?”

  He blinked, the mental struggle to parse her words raging on his plain face. In the end, he shrugged, leaned back into his chair.

  Ruma unclenched her fists. All best-laid plans diverged once put into play, but this one was developing a real potential to go bad. She had to keep an eye out to ensure she could salvage it.

  Shaking her head, she studied her reflection staring at her from the polished steel counter. In the Zrivisi ship’s dim lighting, her red hair looked brown, almost black. Why in Alf’s name did they keep their ships so dark anyway? Almost as if they had secrets to hide.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” declared Hanoos again. “Had you let me have my way, we’d have the ship flying by now.”

  Or the airlocks would have been flowing with the aliens’ purple blood.

  She glanced at her terminal. Like it or not, her partner did have a point. Time was a precious commodity right about now, and enough of it had passed to see whether her tactic had the desired results.

  “Agreed. Let’s get going.” She rose, then pulled her hair back and put on the full-face mask.

  Grimacing, Hanoos headed for the door, his rifle swaying unsteadily.

  “Hanoos!” she called.

  “What?”

  “Put on your mask.”

  A strange expression crossed over his eyes. “What’s the point, love?”

  She ignored the jibe. “Put on the mask.”

  He grunted, stared at her for a long breath. Ruma braced herself, her hand hovering over the handgun she always carried with her. It only had two bullets—one for defence and one meant for offence.

  “Oh, what the hell!” Hanoos walked back and put on the mask.

  * * *

  Something hard and dense smashed into her skull as they entered the airlock. She went down, a lifeless puppet whose cords had been severed. Someone shouted. Grunts and more shouts responded. A bright, searing pain lanced through her temples. The world reduced until it was nothing but a pinpoint of pain too excruciating to bear.

  More screams came from her right. A guttural drawl. A scuffle of boots followed by the discharge of a plasma round. Someone tripped over, fell to her side, a warm fluid falling over her bare hands.

  The world returned with a vengeance. The pain was still there but beginning to recede bit by bit. Blinking and ignoring the shards of pain lancing her mind, she rolled up.

  The gun. She retrieved her gun, brought it up.

  There was no one to aim at.

  She blinked.

  Hanoos, somehow able to walk despite the world swaying around him as if on a see-saw, emerged into her vision from the right. She squinted. “Hanoos?”

  The Misguided looked towards her, grinned. “They messed you up bad.”

  She raised a hand to her head. Wet. Painful to the touch. When she brought it down, red blood covered spots of purple over her hand. She turned to her left. A Zrivisi lay slumped over, his purple lifeblood pouring out from a puncture to the side of his head.

  “No,” she whispered, then scrambled over to the lain figure. “Get up!” When the figure didn’t respond, she stepped forwards cautiously, trusting Hanoos was covering her. The Zrivisi’s bright eyes were still open but frozen in place even when she prodded him.

  “Don’t worry. Your golden duck is still alive,” came Hanoos’s voice. “Not for long, though!”

  Rage and regret burst through the bubble that had been trying to numb her senses. She whirled over to the Zrivisi crew. Six of them remained now, huddling against each other, their faces twisted in sorrow and fear.

  “What in Alf’s breath did you do?” she hissed at Ujayna. “What is the meaning of all this?”

  “Please,” said Ujayna xol Zeresi, “let us go.”

  Hanoos laughed. “After what your mate did to me, to us, you’ve some nerve saying that.”

  Ruma glanced at the countdown: 1:04:23. “Check their bindings.”

  Hanoos, an eyebrow raised, turned towards her. Ruma fought down the sudden panic that rose through her chest. Where was his mask? “Love, let’s just get what we need and move on.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Ujayna. “Just go. Leave us be.”

  Ruma closed her eyes, letting the shock roll through her body. This wasn’t going at all how she had planned. She had considered the possibility of some violence, some altercation. But this… a death at their hands? This wasn’t the plan. They weren’t meant to kill.

  “Hanoos, wasn’t your plasma rifle set to stun?”

  He shrugged. “Might have gotten turned off by mistake.”

  “He is a Misguided, isn’t he?” said Ujayna. “He is. I know the look. Don’t let him have the ship. Not unless you value the lives of your own people.”

  “Shut up!” said Hanoos, raising his rifle at the captain. “We are the Alf’s Chosen.”

  “You…” said the captain, still looking at Ruma. “Tell us what you want. There might be a way to help you. You do not want to give these terrorists an armed spaceship.”

  Hanoos’s rifle fired. The Zrivisi tied beside the captain slumped back, his conical head leaking blood from a dozen places all at once, the bright yellow eyes rolling back into their sockets.

  “No!” Ruma screamed, stepping forward between Hanoos and the Zrivisi. He didn’t fire again. His eyes glared at the Zrivisi captain. “Hanoos, do not fire! Understand?”

  Her heart pounded so hard in her chest she feared it would burst out any second. Two Zrivisi were dead now, their lives snuffed in a matter of seconds. She didn’t like the Zrivisi, but that didn’t mean she acceded to their deaths. And now she wailed at herself for smuggling weapons for the Misguided without asking what they used them for.

  “Hanoos, disobey me one more time,” she warned, her tone hard, brittle, despite the quiver that had crept into her hands, “and you’re
not going to like what happens.”

  Hanoos laughed, cocked his head to the side. “I just got a brilliant idea. Wanna hear?” He raised his rifle at a young Zrivisi crew member, her amber eyes downcast, her blue uniform rumpled and dirty. “Instead of offing the captain and hoping someone else knows the codes, let’s start with this one instead? If the captain values her—and others—he’ll give us what we need.”

  “Don’t,” said the captain again, his sing-songy voice tinged with regret and a hardness that surprised Ruma. “A xol Zeresi never gives up his ship.”

  She shook her head. “Come now, you don’t really mean that.”

  His unflinching yellow eyes, brighter than a cornered cat’s in a dark alley, met hers squarely. “I do.”

  She believed him.

  Regret for what would happen from this point onwards filled her chest. She motioned to Hanoos. Grunting, he leaned in to check that their bindings were intact. A breath later, huffing, he stood up, pointed at the dead Zrivisi behind Ruma. “That one wasn’t with the rest. Must have slipped away, found a way to fray the bindings. Lucky I was back in time, eh?”

  Ruma glanced at the countdown.

  00:55:02

  Events hadn’t worked out the way she had anticipated. But was there still a chance to somehow salvage the situation, keep it from getting any worse?

  “Captain Ujayna xol Zeresi,” she said, swallowing the rising lump in her throat. “Time’s ticking down, a thing that obeys no code of honour or abstract considerations like obligations. Unless you comply, you’re going to lose all of your crew.”

  The captain met her eyes for a long breath. Then, turning his head to the side, he spat.

  She closed her eyes, feeling the ground slip from underneath her. Many in her position would have continued to persist until the bitter end, then burned what they couldn’t pillage. She was a businesswoman, though, a smuggler who always left enough for a second visit.

  Alf, don’t let this Zrivisi know my limits.