by J. C. Hay
He stared at her, and she fixed her eyes on his to make certain he knew she was talking to him. “Where’s the rest of the crew? How many?”
“Just one. On the bridge.”
It took Syna a moment to realize that the crewman’s lips hadn’t moved. The river of blood pouring from his nose took on new meaning, and she pressed her arm to her eyes. She ran towards where she remembered seeing the bridge corridor, her mind racing through multiplication tables, lyrics of songs, anything she could think of to keep the fingers of the psi’s will from getting hold in her brain.
Her shoulder clipped the edge of the door and she spun into the wall, pain flashing white in her closed eyes. She risked a glance, realized she was in the bridge corridor and got ready to move.
“There’s another pod.” His voice, his real voice, in the air behind her.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. It was reflex. I panicked.”
She risked a look back, but the crewman had a hand covering his eyes. Protecting her. His leg, she realized, had been shredded by fléchettes. His tolerance for pain had to be amazing just to stand, let alone move around. “Where’s the emergency shuttle? Under the bridge?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
Only if you wanted off the ship. The Tse likely used it as a secondary entrance. Tertiary, she corrected. She’d occupied one of the airlocks with her own assault pod. Her presence may well have forced them to the shuttle locks.
“Tell your friend not to perforate me, and I’ll get these Tse vermin off your ship.”
“Who in the hells are you?”
“Just tell him.” She started up the corridor, dropping from bulkhead to bulkhead rather than making a straight shot. If the Tse came up through the shuttle, then they likely already held the bridge. Syna saw no point in giving them an easy shot.
She tucked into a corner and called back to the Quarry. “Bree, scan for life forms.”
“I’ve got four life forms aboard the yacht, Captain.”
Four. She and the psion were two of those, and she knew there was no chance that the Tse had only sent one in their pods. That meant her new friend had taken out one on his own. Perhaps the other crewmember had done the same. Hells, anything could happen.
There was a scream behind her as Syna darted up to the next bulkhead. She thought about looking back, but sudden movement in the door to the bridge pulled her attention forward. A ragged human form appeared in the doorway, chest ravaged by fléchette rounds. The corpse teetered for an instant before a boot sent it skidding down the corridor. Another saffron-suited soldier stepped into the door, rifle at the ready. Syna pressed back behind the bulkhead, anticipating the coughing bark of the autofléchette turning the hall into a whirlwind of sharp ceramics. Instead a heavy voice, thick with a Hegemony accent, filled the hall.
“Galen Fash, you are under arrest for violation of the Tse Precepts of Harmonious Living. Come quietly, and no one else will get hurt. Continue to resist, and your ship will be hulled.”
She looked back the way she’d come, but the mouth of the corridor stood empty.
Jonas was dead.
Galen had felt it, even though he hadn’t been connected to his partner at the time. One moment Jonas existed as a presence on the edge of Galen’s awareness and the next he was gone—noticeable by his total absence. Galen had screamed, he remembered that much, and had collapsed to one side of the corridor. The woman had charged towards the bridge. He could still sense her, he realized. She was alive.
Which made no sense at all. Who walked around with their defenses so low? He should never have been able to touch her so easily. And the rage in her mind—even the half-second he had made contact with her flooded him with hate for the Tse. The anger and pain she carried around like some kind of armor horrified him and drew him in at the same time. Such over-the-top emotions were frowned upon in psi-heavy populations. The constant emotional turmoil would flood into the senses of nearby empaths whether they wanted it or not.
A Tse soldier was reading a list of his crimes from the bridge. “Violation of the Precepts of Harmonious Living.” By which they meant failure to submit to psi-evaluation and the subsequent re-education that his talent would force. The Hegemony gathered psi-talents to itself like currency, most of them never to be seen again. Only rarely did one manage to escape their clutches, like Jonas had. They invariably brought back horror stories of the training academy.
Jonas.
Galen peered around the edge of the corridor. Jonas’s body lay sprawled on the white tile, blood spreading around him like an opening flower. The woman stood nearby, while the soldier covered her with his rifle. Galen wiped the blood from his nose and ducked back behind cover. With careful precision he expanded his senses until they encompassed both the woman and the soldier. A smile tweaked his lip—contrary to the woman’s fears, eye contact wasn’t necessary. It made things easier, certainly. Windows to the soul or whatever. The connection took more exertion without eye contact, but it was a minor effort for even the most rudimentary psion.
He found the soldier’s mind and pushed.
No psi-shield stopped him. Whoever had sent the soldiers had not warned them what they were going up against, a curiosity he filed away for later.
Galen felt panic flood the soldier’s bloodstream as he found the soldier’s nightmares and opened the neural paths that made them seem real. Visions of fire, of burning alive, of flesh blackening and peeling from bone. Galen let the Tse’s own phobias drive the fear higher.
The terrified scream from the bridge felt like a reward. “Go, now!” he shouted and hoped the woman understood.
When he looked again she was already in motion, all lethal grace, a predator bounding among a herd of gazelles. Her monoblade split the air, and both the rifle and the hands that wielded it dropped to the deck. Galen could still see the nightmare fires crackling in the soldier’s mind in the moment he had before the woman finished him.
Galen choked as blood filled the back of his throat and flowed in a flood from his nose. He steadied himself with a hand on the white wall of the ship, surprised at the crimson smear his fingers left behind.
She vaulted over the soldier’s body and into the bridge, her combined rage and exuberance like a flame against Galen’s psychic senses. He blinked and tried to get a sense of the room around the glare of the woman’s unchecked emotions. There was another mind, but like a fish in deep water, it slipped out of his grasp. He couldn’t focus around all the emotions she threw out.
What would that be like? So free. So—open. His head ached from trying to focus his perception. Or from whatever blood vessel had burst from pushing his talent.
Like it matters. If you weren’t pushing it, you’d be dead. Certainly the Tse weren’t interested in taking prisoners now, they’d be out for blood. He crouched low and ran up the corridor, certain that at any moment he would hear the lethal cough of an autofléchette.
Jonas lay where the Tse had thrown him, an awkward rag doll. Galen reached the body and closed his friend’s unfocused eyes. “Rest well. Gods know you’ve earned it.” The twin metal studs gleamed from Jonas’s temple, and Galen felt the anger rise in him. How much of the rage is mine? How much hers? Close proximity of such strong emotions could bleed into an incautious psion, half the reason they were so careful to moderate their own emotions.
He wavered, dizzy, and rested his back against the wall. Blood poured from his nose, stained his shirt scarlet. The shape of the stain seemed like a match to the pool that covered the deck beneath Jonas’s corpse.
A shout from the bridge made him look up—a vac-suit’s speaker amplified the cry of surprise and alarm. Galen focused on the sound and was finally able to grip the other mind hiding in the shadow of his would-be savior. He inhaled, ready to push again, force an emotional response in the Tse bastard, but the mind slipped out of his grip again.
At least someone wore a shield, he thought, then the contact faded out like a snuffed flu
orescent. Galen slid down the wall until he rested on the deck across from Jonas. The deck lurched once as he lay there, and he realized, as consciousness fled, that he and Jonas were floating.
“Bree! What’s going on?” The deck lurched again and Syna thanked whatever gods had seen to it that gravity went out first. At least she wasn’t in danger of being thrown into a bulkhead or otherwise injured in the assault. She had a good idea of what the Tse had screamed into his helmet mic before she’d cut him down, but she maintained hope until Bree confirmed her suspicions.
“The Tse ship has opened fire on the vessel, Captain. Kinetics only. They do not appear to be concerned with crew retrieval.”
Because there’s no one left, she thought, but bit back the comment. Certainly if they kept hurling accelerated chunks of ferroalloy through the yacht’s hull there wouldn’t be. “I thought I told you to hull them if they got within range.”
“If they pulled within range of me, certainly. I assumed you were unconcerned about the other vessel.” The AI’s voice held a vaguely haughty tone, as though it couldn’t imagine Syna’s concern for any other ship.
“Let’s try this another way. If I die on this ship, you’re still stuck out here. Care to get me out now?”
The ship shook again, and a vac-warning light lit up on the bridge. Hull breach. The yacht had small-scale repair systems to deal with such things—all ships did. The Tse would have to put a lot more holes in the ship before it ripped apart under the pressure differences. Still, it was time to go.
She looked down at the shuttle, but the control panel had been crippled when the Tse came aboard. Standard procedure, if you wanted to keep survivors from escaping. But why out here?
No time to think about it. If she didn’t get off the yacht and fast, she was going to be joining the two Tse floating lifeless in the bridge. Syna pushed off the edge of the shuttle hatch and floated into the hall. The two crewmembers hung in the air, neither terribly high off the plates. She checked the dark-haired one—the psion, she corrected—and found a strong pulse despite the blood that covered his face and shirt. The other had been dead before the Tse shoved him down the hall.
“I’ve disabled them temporarily with a scramble missile, Captain. I would not hesitate if I were you.”
“Thanks for the advice, Bree.” Scramble missiles would disrupt the Tse’s ability to lock on, which meant the kinetic rounds would lose their accuracy. They could probably still hit the yacht with visual targeting, but a small, fast-moving target like the assault pod would be out of their league.
She looked at the psion again. He’d done something to trip up the Tse soldier. She’d seen the terrified face in the window of his vac-suit. If he could do that without eye contact, then he was a danger to have anywhere near her. Not to mention that the Tse had a particular hard-on for chasing down psi-talent wherever they could find it.
But you can’t leave him here. It’s a death sentence.
She didn’t care why the Tse wanted him, only that she could get him off the yacht before it collapsed under the attack. She could drop him off at Pantoum or one of the other outlier planets. What happened after that was on his head, but she’d be damned to just leave him to die under a Tse assault.
Like you did Anbjorn.
She pushed the voice out of her head. She’d done everything to save Anbjorn. He held the Tse back to buy her time to escape and they’d still captured her. She grabbed the unconscious psion and dragged him down the hall towards the assault pod.
The pod had room for them both, but only on a technicality. She’d sold off the original two-man pod right after her release. Anything that would have put fuel in the Quarry and put her in the air. The single-seat she’d replaced it with was as much an acceptance of Anbjorn’s death as anything else. She slid into the pod and pressed back against the acceleration cushion. With careful maneuvering, there was just enough room for her to squeeze the psi into the pod beside her.
“I’m picking up additional life forms in the pod, Captain.”
“There’s a survivor, Bree. I’m bringing him back with me.”
“Are you certain that’s wise?”
“Don’t argue, dammit. What are the Tse doing?”
“They’ve pulled in closer.”
Manual targeting, easier to judge at close range, she knew. That meant they’d see the flare as her pod launched. “Take them out.”
“You can still get away. I see no reason to—”
“I said take them out, damn you, do it!” Bree’s do no harm overrides had been bypassed long before, but that didn’t stop the ship from trying to find every way possible out of autonomous violence.
There was no response on the other end. Syna reached past the psion, could smell the metallic bite of blood in the tight confines of the pod. With a tug, she brought the door shut, forcing his unconscious body against her.
Tighter than he looks. There was wiry muscle under the nondescript jumpsuit—not Anbjorn’s brute strength. The crewman’s build was more…athletic. Syna scowled at the thought. No time to think about such foolishness, and certainly not with someone whose ability to turn her mind to jelly was in no way a metaphor. She recalled the look of abject terror on the Tse soldier’s face and a chill raced along her spine. No. Not the person for those sorts of thoughts at all.
“How are they doing out there?”
“First shot took out main power and life support. Second impacted against the bridge.” Syna had to give the AI credit. When Bree struck, she struck to kill. She wasn’t going to let the Tse notify anyone else.
“All right. I’m launching the pod. We’re over capacity in here so air’s at a premium. Don’t dawdle.” She hit the recall button over her head, and the rush of jettison engines almost drowned out the ship’s affirmative reply.
Chapter Two
Syna looked down at the infirmary bed and checked the psion’s vital signs on the wall monitor. Pulse and respiration were strong, but she had no idea how much internal damage the psi may have suffered. Certainly he’d bled enough for a war zone.
He stirred and she debated giving him another dose of sedatives. The autosurgeon had repaired his calf, and the healing accelerant appeared to be working—she had no reason to keep him unconscious. “Other than convenience,” she muttered, and he groaned in response. He had plenty of willpower, she had to give him that much credit. His leg had been turned into ground meat by the ceramic fléchettes. What hadn’t been damaged by the initial shot got torn apart in his subsequent bout of wandering around on the injured leg. That was the worst part of the needle-weapons so common in shipboard combat—any muscle contraction after the initial injury only drove the razor-sharp shards deeper. That this psion had moved around ignoring an injury that she’d seen cripple veteran soldiers spoke volumes.
“Bree? Keep us in the moon’s shadow for now. I want to know if the Tse come sniffing around for their missing boat. And let me know when our guest wakes up.”
The AI’s “Aye, Captain” sounded in the hall as Syna left the medical bay.
The forward mess sat below the bridge, and paired transteel windows lined the front of the room. Outside, the craggy mass of Hamunaptra’s moon dominated the view. She could see the long parallel gouges where a surface miner had stripped the top layers of soil for minerals, and squinted to see if she could spot the miner itself, but they were apparently too high.
A ship the size of the Quarry could handle a crew of five easily, even though it only required one. The mess reflected that capability, with a single long table and attached benches. Syna grabbed a bag of orange juice out of the chiller and bit open the spout.
“You going to share that or should I get my own?”
Syna started and turned to find the psion propping himself against the doorframe. The bandages that covered his calf stretched taut, but she could see no indication that the stitches hadn’t held.
“Captain? The patient is up and moving.”
“I see that, Bree.
Thanks for staying on top of the situation.” Stupid machine.
“She’s not so bad.” He limped across the floor to the chiller and grabbed a juice bag for himself. “It’s not her fault I slipped past her surveillance.”
Heat boiled up in Syna’s chest, and she squeezed the bag too tightly. Orange juice and pulp shot out of the spout and splashed onto her top. “Damn!” She tossed the bag on the table and reached for a towel.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just—”
“First rule. Stay the fuck out of my head, got it, Psi-boy? If I even suspect you’re rooting around in my skull, I’ll empty yours. Are we clear?”
He held up his hands and stepped back, unstable without the wall’s support. “Sorry. It was an accident. I’m just used to—”
“I said, are we clear? Because if we’re not, I can put you back on the vacuum-riddled remains of your yacht.”
He nodded. “Yeah, we’re clear.” His gaze drifted to the windows at the fore of the mess. “We’re still around Hamunaptra? Are you mad? We have to get out of here!”
“Right, because the jump point won’t be crawling with Tse corvettes, looking for you.” She toweled off the juice and frowned at the stain on her top. Not because of the stain itself—the long-sleeved shirt was discolored by all manner of industrial fluids—rather that the orange juice had dyed the fabric to a color reminiscent of Tse jumpsuits.
“If you’ve got soda water, it might lift the juice out.” She glared at him and he quickly added, “No reading, I promise. It was obvious what you were looking at.” He ran a hand back through his close-cropped, curly hair. “I’m Galen, by the way. So you don’t have to call me the patient or Psi-boy unless you want to.”
Syna looked at his outstretched hand and then turned to hang the towel. “It’s an old shirt. It’ll be fine. I’m Syna Davout, Captain of the Hangman’s Quarry.”
“So what happens now? I should tell you, there’s not much ransom for me.”
Syna smirked at him over her shoulder. “The Tse would probably pay handsomely for you.” When he blanched she let out a chuckle. “But they’re as interested in me as they seem to be in you, so visiting them is right out.”
