by A. R. Knight
"Don't think about it," Davin said. "When the doors open, stick to one side. Only shoot if you have a clear target. Let me work the room first."
Viola nodded. Let Davin work the room. Shoot if there's a clear shot. What did that mean, exactly? Did that mean any opening? Only if the enemy was going to shoot Davin if she didn't?
"Kill or stun?" Viola blurted.
"Stun. Lower energy. More shots," Davin said. "We can always do the other one later if we have to."
The elevator dinged. They'd arrived. Viola took a breath as the doors opened. And she saw Opal running into the wide room, yelling. The scene planted itself in Viola's mind - Mox, tied to a chair in the middle of the room. A hijacker behind the metal man, gun pointed at his head. Another, pacing the room, turning towards Opal. And a third, there in the back, getting water from the reclamation machine. Opal had run right past that one, maybe hidden from view from Opal's vantage point.
Davin reacted first, pulling trigger on his sidearm and sending a blue bolt straight into the side of the man one trigger point away from blowing Mox into oblivion. Opal popped the big shotgun next, sending the green bolts at the pacing man, knocking him to the ground. Viola felt her hand on the trigger of her sidearm as she brought it up, aimed across the room at the third man, who was pulling his own rifle up to shoot Opal in the back.
The trigger felt hard, tight. A pulse down her hand. The gun shook as chemicals mixed, energy ionized and sent forth. An orange beam lancing in front of Davin, behind Opal, and catching the third man in the chest. Viola saw the burst of flame, the charred moment bursting out as the laser burned through the man's uniform and sent him crumpling to the ground. Viola lowered the weapon as Davin ran out of the elevator towards his target. Opal moved to Mox, ignoring the burning man on the ground beside her, covered in dying green fire.
C'mon, move. Viola kept her eyes glued on the man she'd shot. Twitch, roll over. Something. She moved out of the elevator. In the side of her eye, she saw Mox stand, put a hand on Opal to steady himself. Davin busy taking the cords they'd used to tie Mox and already tying up his man. Viola's target still hadn't moved. No sign of life. Viola put the sidearm in her holster, her fingers slow to let go of the handle. If he was dead, then she'd been the one to kill him. Kill. Him.
Part of her blasted rationalization after rationalization. He would shoot Opal. He'd already chosen when he'd hijacked the Karat. But behind every reverberating excuse was Davin's voice saying stun. Saying stun and then the elevator dinged and Viola hadn't flipped the setting. Had reacted. Had done precisely what trained soldiers, professional mercenaries, aren't supposed to do.
The man's mask was pulled down, showing his wrinkled face, matted gray hair. Eyes shut, cheek pressed into the ground where he'd fallen forward. No blood, the wound cauterized by the heat of the laser. Viola reached down, pulled the man's gun away. None of the hardness of death had settled in and his fingers slipped out of the rifle's grip, fell to the floor with the tiniest of thuds. Who was he? Where had he come from, and had he expected to die today? Viola suspected the answer was no, but he had. Because of her.
"Viola?" Opal asked, coming up behind the girl and putting a hand on her shoulder. "You all right?"
"He's dead?" Viola said. It's possible she was missing a sign. Viola worked with machines more than men, after all. Opal leaned down, put a pair of fingers inside the man's shirt and pressed them against his neck.
"Gone," Opal said. The word hit like a hammer, Viola's lungs squeezing. She closed her eyes. "Viola, he wasn't your first?"
Viola only nodded. There had to be some protocol here. Something she was missing. Was Viola responsible for contacting his family, now? Was she a lawbreaker? Was Viola still herself?
Opal wrapped her in a hug. Gripped her tight.
"Hold on to what you're feeling," Opal whispered. "Never let it go. You lose it, and you'll lose who you are."
"I don't understand. I was protecting you."
"And you did, Viola. Helluva job. He would've had me," Opal said. "There's nothing worse than taking a life for no reason, and you saved mine. Thank you."
Viola heard the words. Internalized what Opal was trying to say. The man's body laid there, and, looking at it, Viola could only think of one word. It ballooned in her mind, knocking every other piece of her aside.
Killer.
39
Crash Landing
The shuttle hit the webbing with more force than Trina expected, but the webbing held. It was designed for the Viper, a much heavier craft. Simple math, really. Merc, of course, would have been better served telling Trina ahead of time that the plan called for the webbing. As it was, the bay was still full of containers and tools for maintaining the Viper, and the shuttle barged through them. A charging container spilled its batteries across the floor, black bars looking like bugs scurrying to freedom. A severed fuel cable spewed rainbow sparks until Trina, running over to the source, cut the power.
"Forewarned is forearmed, Merc," Trina said into her comm.
The shuttle sat, smoke pouring from its engines as their hot temps came into contact with the Whiskey Jumper's atmosphere. Scraps jagged their way along the shuttle walls and, Trina noticed, along the previously pristine bay floor. Davin wouldn't be liking the cost to fix this one.
"I hear you. Is Phyla alive?" Merc replied.
Ah. Good point. The shuttle had both fore and aft exits to allow for a crash landing of the pilot's choice. Trina went for the nose exit, pressing the release and stepping back as the windshield detached and rose away. No pressurization safety here. The minimum for survival, these shuttles. Peeking in, Trina noticed Phyla sprawled out on the shuttle's floor, breathing.
"Alive, but Erick, I believe you have a patient."
"And to think, here I was wondering if a doctor even had a place aboard this ship," Erick replied. "Please try not to move her. I'm already on my way."
Trina stepped into the shuttle, glanced at the console. A newer model, with that quality screen there. Eden, taking care to outfit its ships with quality gear. Who'd have thought.
"Phyla?" Trina said, for once not holding her wrist up and speaking into it. The feeling was strange - you become so used to speaking to those that aren't there that interacting with a physical, live person was disconcerting.
"Here," Phyla muttered. "I don't want to get up."
"Erick wouldn't want you to anyway," Trina replied. "Given your incoming velocity, the tardiness of the webbing deployment, I'm still putting it as lucky you survived."
"Thanks," Phyla said.
Then Erick was pushing past Trina, talking to Phyla and checking to see which muscles hurt the worst. The problem with bodies is that it's all relative. No exact degrees. Trina climbed out of the shuttle, moving towards the aft. The shuttle would not fly again, but that didn't mean she couldn't find some useful parts in those engines . . .
40
To the Bridge
"So I think we've solved your mutiny problem," Davin said into his comm, standing outside the sealed door to the Karat's bridge. "They're all, literally, tied up or unconscious back there."
Opal and Mox stood behind Davin, and Viola behind them, keeping a watch down the hallway towards the cafeteria in case they'd miscounted or one of Opal's victims had returned to the world of the conscious. Not a bad count, all told. Neutralizing six mercenaries without a single real casualty? Viola hadn't even batted an eye when Opal said Puk had been shot. Said she could have the little bot back up and running in an hour once they got back to the Jumper.
"Hello?" Davin said, and the door slid open, vanishing into the Karat's walls. On the other side stood a shorter man, all-black hair and beard seeming to glisten in the artificial light. Like the guy doused himself with grease every morning.
"It keeps me young." The man stated, noticing Davin's stare. "I am captain Yuan San-ye, and as is custom, I give you permission to board my ship."
"Davin Masters," Davin replied catching Yuan's offered hand
with his own. "Sorry we didn't get it earlier. Things were, uh, hectic."
"It's nothing," Yuan said. "However, I would appreciate it if all of you remained outside of the bridge. Unless one of you is a pilot."
“What?” Davin said.
"If you had recently been betrayed by your crew, including several whom you considered friends, perhaps you too would feel cautious before letting them into your home?"
"He's got weapons on us," Opal blurted. "Behind him, in the corners. A pair of—”
"Yes," Yuan interrupted. "The Karat keeps its bridge safe. For exactly our circumstances. Greed, it seems, is a universal problem. One that Eden saw fit to prepare for."
"And you're going to, what, shoot us with those?" Davin said.
On either side of the large command console sat thin, reed-like rods. On the top of each was a dome with a tiny point sticking out. Those points aimed at Davin and Mox.
"They are concentrated beams. Tiny, yet potent. They will lance your heart with enough heat to make you burst into flame from the inside out," Yuan said. "Please, time is pressing. Do you have a pilot? Are you one?"
"I can fly," Viola said.
"But why can't you, if the Karat is supposed to be so secure?" Davin asked Yuan.
Yuan gave Davin a slight nod.
"Levels of skill," Yuan said. "I can glide Karat along the roads of space, but leaving Neptune requires more talent than I possess."
"You think you can fly this thing?" Davin said to Viola. The girl looked at nobody for a moment, thinking. Davin felt she'd done well with the shuttle, done a fine job putting the cargo hauler on Europa during their comeback assault, but the Karat was larger than both. Neptune a more complicated atmosphere. But that was how you grew, right? Put yourself in new situations?
"I can try," Viola said. "Doesn't sound like we have a choice, anyway."
"We do not," Yuan said. "The rest of you should leave. Secure yourself in the cafeteria. You will know when we rise."
"Viola, you comfortable being alone with this guy?" Davin said.
"He tries anything, I've still got this," Viola said, tapping the sidearm clipped to her waist. Then Yuan was shooing them off the bridge, the door sliding shut a moment after Davin stepped into the hallway.
"Not what I expected," Davin said as Opal and Mox stared at him.
"Stupid," Growled Mox.
"Agreed," Said Opal.
"Didn't hear either of you two saying anything in there," Davin shot back. "Now, let's go make sure none of our friends want to play again."
41
Reunited
The Karat's console was digital. No buttons. No stick for piloting. Instead, virtual sliders appeared on the screen as Viola hovered her hands over them. A killer, maybe, but the ship didn't seem to care. Surrounded by a pair of storms, the Karat was still in a precarious position. It didn't have much choice if it wanted to get out intact.
Viola expanded the fingers on her left hand, and the left screen shifted from a close view of the Karat to the atmosphere surrounding the ship. Viola brought her hand away, closed it, then reached in and expanded it again. Now the screen was pushing out past the edge of Neptune's atmosphere, the fuzzy limit of the Karat's sensors. A blot out past the atmosphere shaded a slight yellow, an indicator that the Karat's computer believed the shape was a ship.
"To the Amerigo?" Viola said.
"While you are new to Neptune's atmosphere, I have been here for some time," Yuan said, nodding.
"Trust me, a little goes a long way here," Viola replied.
Tapping the blot on the screen, the console drew out a path for the Karat to execute. Much faster than the shuttle, the Karat's calculations came back with the precise speed, tilt, and fuel burn to make a rendezvous with the freighter. When the calculations wrapped, a green oval appeared towards the bottom of the screen imploring Viola to tap it and start the course.
"Why did you need a pilot?" Viola said, looking at the circle. "The computer did it all for me."
"Then perhaps I did not, but there are chances I choose not to take," Yuan replied. "Please, start."
"Is that why Eden chose you for this? Because you're cautious?"
"Because I don't let my ego get in the way of my crew."
"That didn't work out so well."
"I was prepared to counteract bribes of coin, but not of cause."
"Cause?"
Yuan looked at her.
"You don't have the eyes of the others. Hardened and wary. Your's are still wet around the edges, still being formed."
"I'm new to this," Viola said. Wet around the edges? Who was this guy?
"One day, you will find something to believe in. Something to fight for. And then you will understand the ones you hurt today."
Viola nodded, tapped the button. No time for this mystical talk right now.
A countdown appeared and various system checks spat their output to the console. If any of the Karat's bits and pieces weren't ready for the rigors of the journey, the computer would cancel the course. Viola figured the trashing of the docking bay wouldn't interfere with any critical pieces of the ship, but when everything came back green, she felt relieved. She wasn't sure what they would've done if the Karat had some sort of failure.
"Can you tell me what happened?" Viola said as the Karat shuddered, its orbital engines warming up for the first time in days. "How they took the ship?"
Yuan, who'd been staring out the front viewport into the nothing of the Neptune night, nodded without turning around.
"It started," Yuan began. "When my friends died."
42
Mutiny
It was easy work, done in shifts. Supervising machines. Fixing broken parts. Monitoring Neptune's storms and making adjustments as necessary. Ten of them, trading turns. Only Yuan and Silwa, the pilot, stayed out of the cargo hold and the intake valves. Wan, the lead engineer, supervised the other seven and kept them rotating through food, mining, and maintenance duties. The mining itself was a series of short excavations - plunge the Karat into hot, pressurized depths of Neptune's inner core and suck up the solid diamonds, then move to the next area after an hour.
They repeated the process for a week without problems. A week of watching more coin than any of them expected roll into the Karat's cargo hold. And it was towards the end of that week when Wan first cornered Yuan, there on the bridge. Silwa was sleeping, her next navigation shift not due for several hours yet.
"I am seeing a change," Wan said. "The crew are quieter. Fewer smiles."
"You count their smiles?" Yuan replied.
"Their morale is a resource like anything else," Wan said. "It is my job to manage the resources."
"And morale is low?" Yuan said. "We are almost full. We'll be returning to orbit in a day. They'll be back with their friends and families in a few weeks."
"Yet, morale is low."
Yuan accepted the statement. The common sense said to wait it out. So little time until circumstances changed. The flight back to space would keep everyone too busy to think about morale. At dinner that night, a shared experience with the whole crew, Yuan reminded everyone that they were nearly done. That it was an amazing feat they had accomplished. That they should be proud. Silwa raised her glass, a poured bottle of fizzing wine saved for an evening like this one. Wan joined the toast. As did the others.
"What do you think?" Yuan asked Silwa later, back on the bridge. He'd told Silwa what Wan had mentioned, told the pilot to keep her eyes on the others at dinner.
"They had no joy in them tonight," Silwa replied. "As though instead of toasting our success, they were watching their own souls die."
"You are always so dramatic," Yuan said. "Raise the ship tonight, away from the core to the halfway point. They will have tomorrow off, to look and see the Sun again."
That night, Yuan fell asleep listening to the rumble of the Karat's engines. There were no nightmares. No sounds of struggle. Yet the Karat's computer triggered an alarm. Hours before the sched
uled time. An indication that the bridge's defense mechanisms had been armed.
"An error." Yuan muttered to himself, pulling clothes on and stepping out from his quarters. Adjacent to the bridge, part of Eden's devotion to security, Yuan walked the short private hallway to a second door. Yuan's hand went on the scanner, and after a short beep, the door opened. Silwa lied on the console, a small line of smoke rising from her chest. Over by the bridge's main door, the body of one of the miner's, weapon in hand, sat against the wall. The main door itself, according to the security measures, had sealed itself.
Yuan first went to Silwa, her stomach a black mess of torched flesh, but perhaps it was not fatal. A cauterizing laser wound is often more survivable than the hard, tearing pellets of older weapons. Silwa's breath still came lightly, in and out as Yuan picked her off the console, carried her back down the short hallway to his bed. Then he ran back to the bridge, checked the miner's body to confirm the bridge's defense systems had done their job, and tried the comm.
"Wan?" Yuan sent a tight-beamed message to the engineer's direct frequency. "Are you awake?"
"Real sorry, captain," Came a voice that was not Wan's. "Wan didn't see things from our point of view."
No point in asking for more information. The dead miner's sidearm, set to kill, was more than enough evidence.
"And what is your point of view?" Yuan said into the comm.
"That Eden and its partners have been running the show for too long," Said the miner.
"Th e Karat has no weapons, and we aren't close to a war zone," Yuan replied.
"Turns out causes need coin, captain,"
Yuan cut the communication. The miner had told Yuan everything that they'd done, why they did it, and what they wanted next. In the isolated vacuum of the bridge, Yuan felt his adrenaline draining away, leaving only exhausting failure.
