by Nick Webb
“Are you deaf, Corporal, or did your vagina suddenly shrink to the size of an acorn?” He did not respond, so she continued. “In case you haven’t been paying attention, we’re at war. We’ve got the entire Imperial fleet breathing down our backs looking to smear our asses into the closest god-forsaken desolate moon they can find. We don’t have the luxury of time. Under normal circumstances, you would all have had months of classroom and simulator instruction before I let you even touch one of my birds, but you’ve already been out in them twice today. Average cadets don’t graduate from flight school for two years, and half flunk out.”
Corporal Taylor went on. “But days, sir? Aren’t we liable to get ourselves killed?”
She cast a cold glance at him. “You either die strapped into the coffin of your barracks, or the coffin of your fighter. At least in the fighter you might take out a few of them with you.” Pivoting, she stepped back around her podium and looked at the console again. “Any more dumb-ass questions?”
Gavin, slowly and tentatively, raised his hand. Lieutenant Grace looked a little annoyed at him, but said, “Yes, newbie?”
“Do you really think we’ll be seeing combat in a few days, sir?” As excited as he was to be doing something that mattered more than slopping mashed potatoes onto platters, the thought of live combat—other people actually shooting at him, Gavin Ashdown, terrified him.
Without skipping a beat, she said, “You’ve seen our situation. What the fuck do you think? Would you rather go back to the mess hall to scrub floors and play your videogames at night?”
“No, sir,” he said.
She smiled, the first time she’d done anything but frown the entire day. “Good. Then let’s get back out there and blow some shit up.”
As if in answer, the deck rumbled and shook, as if rocked by a massive explosion several decks down. Gavin glanced over at Jet, whose jaw momentarily hung open.
Anya hit the comm button on her podium. “Lieutenant Grace to Bridge. Commander, are we under attack?”
“Stand by, Anya, we’re not quite sure.…” Po glanced over at the tactical octagon. Willow was absent—hopefully resting—and the station was manned by several ensigns and yeomen from the second shift. “Sensors?”
The Ensign at the sensor station shook his head. “Nothing unusual, sir. No ships anywhere near us.”
“Anya,” began Po, “We’re clear. No enemy craft nearby.”
“Well, shit. I was hoping for some fun. Grace out.”
Po rolled her eyes at the bravado, and hit the comm button. “Engineering, this is Commander Po. Anything I need to know about?”
Shouts and cursing drifted through the speakers, and momentarily the deputy chief engineer’s voice piped through. “Yes, sir. We’ve had a backup in the main coolant line. It ruptured on deck fourteen, aft.”
“Damage?” She glanced back at the operations center.
Operations. That was supposed to be her station, before all hell broke loose. That was where Captain Watson was going to assign her. Instead, she was sitting in the captain’s chair while her brash young friend was cavorting around in a cowboy hat down on some god-forsaken dustbin.
“Part of deck fourteen is flooded, sir. Only minor injuries reported so far.”
Po turned back to the comm. “Chief Simmons, engine status?”
More muffled swearing from the speakers. “Sir, without that main coolant line, we’re down to the backup line. I wouldn’t dare do any shifting without the mains. We’re ok to use gravitic propulsion, but one long distance shift will melt down the drive.”
Po leaned back in the captain’s chair. “So. Looks like we’re stuck here for the time being. Chief, when you can, run some diagnostic checks to see what the cause was.”
“Aye, sir!”
She didn’t dare suspect one of the crew. The ramifications of sabotage were almost unthinkable. And since they’d all only been together for just over a week, nearly everyone was suspect.
Unless Tomaga was responsible. But how could he or any of his men have done it? They were confined to deck fifteen. Could one of them have slipped out unnoticed?
She turned to the comm officer. “Ensign, get me Sergeant Jayce.”
After several moments of furrowed brows, Ensign Falstaff looked up. “I’ve found him, sir.”
“Yeah? What’s up, Commander?” Jayce’s voice huffed through the speaker. He sounded out of breath.
“Caught you at a bad time, Sergeant?”
She could hear him spit, and she imagined some new brown spot on a brand new deckplate somewhere. “Just running these training drills you requested, Sir. With my boys and the Fifty-First.”
“Sergeant, please report to the Captain’s ready room in an hour. Bring Sergeant Tomaga with you.”
Another spitting sound. “Shit, that motherfucker? He’s been giving me grief all day, sir.”
“Fine. Report in an hour, and we can work out your differences then. Po out.” She sighed, and reached back to another loose strand of hair that had fallen out of her perpetual bun. Between a crazed Imperial Admiral hunting them down, Jake hanging out with pirates on the dusty planet below, possible sabotage, a half-broken ship, non-working engines, and a band of possibly hostile marines on board, she wasn’t sure how much longer it’d be before the shit hit the fan.
Judging by the previous week, it wouldn’t be long now.
CHAPTER FIVE
A BULLET BLASTED A CHUNK of concrete out of the wall next to Jake’s head. He flinched, diving further beneath the cover of the steel table he’d overturned. In response, Ben popped his sidearm over the table’s edge and emptied the gun in the direction of the nearest attacker.
“Who the hell are they?” hissed Ben as he yanked his weapon back down to the relative safety of cover.
“Thugs, I’d reckon,” Jake deadpanned. Sometimes Ben asked stupid questions.
“Thanks.” Ben glared, and checked his ammo, wincing in disappointment at what he saw. “Jake, I’m almost out, and those guys have assault rifles. We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”
“Working on it,” he said, and turned to the other overturned table not far away where their two marines and Alessandro had hunkered down. He pointed at Avery and held up his hands, indicating for the man to use whatever special ops training he’d had to think up some plan of escape. Avery only shrugged.
And he was right to do so. They were pinned down, and Jake knew it. At least six men with more powerful weaponry than they had now ringed their two tables in a large semicircle, about fifteen meters off, hunkered behind their own tables. Everyone else in the vast warehouse had either fled in terror, or hid behind whatever cover they could find for themselves, quaking in fear.
Avery peeked around the corner of his table and popped off three quick rounds. Even though his ears rung from the firing in the closed space of the warehouse, Jake could hear the cries of a dying man. He nodded at Avery—at least there was only five now, that they knew of.
Jake could see Alessandro fiddling with something in his hands. The man stared intently at an odd black shape, vaguely familiar. Before he could think too much more about it, another hail of bullets leaped out from their pursuers and Jake hunched over even further. The other marine popped around their table and showered the nearest target with rounds of his own, which bounced harmlessly off the steel tables.
“Get down, friends!” yelled Alessandro, and Jake suddenly recognized the black cylinder in his hands.
One of the anti-matter Vesuvius mines they’d promised to buy earlier.
An anti-matter bomb.
“What the hell do you think you’re—” Jake yelled, but it was too late. With a grunt, Alessandro lobbed the small black cylinder as high and as far as he could throw. The rest of them had no choice but to lie flat on the ground and wonder if they’d be alive in a few moments.
A gargantuan blast rocked the building, and tables, chairs, and scattered merchandise went flying, pelting the walls and ceiling. But it wasn’t nearl
y as large as he would have expected from an anti-matter bomb, even if it only had a few nanograms of the stuff.
Jake shook his head, and squinted through the smoke. He reached down and yanked at Ben’s arm.
“Let’s go.”
They sprang to their feet, joining the other three who’d already started running for the exit, which they dove through just as it was pelted with another volley of rounds. Jake looked around, and saw an old, dusty board on the ground, which he seized and shoved through the two handles on the door. It wouldn’t hold them for long, but it might buy them ten seconds or so.
Running towards where they’d left the vehicles, Jake immediately saw something amiss. Volaski and his car were gone. A tickling feeling of suspicion spread over Jake as he jumped into the other vehicle and cranked the engine—luckily it required no key or identification. It roared to life just as the door burst open and an assault-rifle-toting figure bolted from the warehouse.
Jake gaped. “Velar?”
“Go!” she shouted, and pointed towards the setting sun. She dashed towards them. Jake put the vehicle into gear, and, checking to make sure the rest of his men had jumped in, slammed on the accelerator.
Another man darted out of the warehouse and aimed his assault rifle at them, spraying rounds, several of which hit the side of the vehicle. Velar spun around and, aiming her own rifle, felled him with a blast through his temple, which sprayed the wall behind him with blood and bits of gray chunks.
That was enough to convince Jake of her intentions, and he wheeled the vehicle around towards her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ben shouted in his ear.
“We might need her to get out of here,” he replied, as calmly as he could.
“You still trust her?” Ben’s voice sounded incredulous.
“No. But I doubt she’d splatter the brains of one of her men all over the wall of the warehouse. For the moment, we’re on the same side.” They pulled up alongside her and she jumped on the rear fender and aimed her rifle again at the door of the warehouse, which billowed smoke from Alessandro’s handiwork.
“Move!” she shouted, again, pointing towards what Jake guessed was west.
He slammed down on the accelerator again, not looking back, but he could hear the firing of her rifle, and the side-arms of everyone else in the vehicle, spraying their pursuers with rounds. After half a minute or so, he’d put enough distance between them and the warehouse that the gunfire died down and he finally yelled out the question that had been burning in his mind for the past two minutes.
“Bernoulli, what the hell did you do? That was an anti-matter mine. It’s meant to take out a capital ship. What the hell were you thinking?”
Alessandro beamed at him, and extracted a tiny vial from the front pocket of his vest. He held it up to Jake’s eye, and grinned.
Jake swore. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Five nanograms of anti-boron?” said with a grin.
“Alessandro,” he said, turning to face his friend, “you’re the craziest-ass bastard I’ve ever met.”
Alessandro poked the vial back into his pocket. “Honestly, friend, you really think I’d lob an anti-matter bomb at someone so close? I’m not that dumb, you know.”
“Alessandro, dumb is the last word I’d use to describe you. Crazy, yes. Dumb, no. So, if the anti-matter is in your pocket, what the hell blasted back there?”
Jake swerved through the wide dusty streets, avoiding the piles of trash spilling out onto the road and the stray pedestrian.
Alessandro shrugged. “Just the initiator. It takes a pretty strong implosion to initiate the anti-matter interaction. You had nothing to worry about, friend.” He hesitated a moment, before adding, “except for the obviously deadly explosion that the initiator is capable of. I suspected we’d be ok, but one can never be too sure with explosives. I’ve got friends at Los Alamos, you see, and—”
Jake interrupted, trying to think and follow Velar’s periodic pointed driving instructions simultaneously. “Are we safe with that thing on your pocket? I mean, is it contained enough?”
“For now. It is not optimal, but it is not likely to explode in its current state.”
“You’re not assuaging my concern, buddy,” said Jake, spinning the wheel to turn down a street indicated by Velar, who had jumped into the backseat, crouching in between the legs of the two marines, half turned to watch behind them and working on getting Jake to drive where she wanted.
Alessandro continued, “The chances of a critical runaway matter interaction in this state is less than one in one hundred per day. We’re perfectly safe.”
The blood drained from Ben’s face as his jaw hung slack, but Jake only said, “I don’t like those odds, buddy, but I guess they’re better than our odds back in that warehouse.” He turned to look in the back seat. “Velar? Where are you taking us? Why aren’t we going back to our shuttle?”
She kept her eyes trained on the road behind them, scanning for pursuers. “To my home. I don’t think we’d make it to your shuttle. Obviously, someone knew we were coming and tipped off their men.”
Jake felt Ben eyeing him from the passenger’s seat, and he knew exactly what his friend was thinking. And he was right. They had no idea if Velar could be trusted at this point. But she was currently their best option, and Jake suspected that even Ben knew that.
“We’ve got a tail,” said Avery.
Velar offered her rifle to Avery. “You look a little more comfortable with guns than me.” He took it, and passed his sidearm to her, which she took and aimed at the vehicle now gaining on them.
“Where am I going, Velar?” Jake shouted.
“Keep going west. Head for that hill you see on the edge of town—my home is just behind that.”
The pop of Avery’s rifle interrupted her, and a hail of bullets whizzed past their head, riddling a building just ahead of them. Jake swerved down a side street and stepped on the accelerator, dodging tables set up by street vendors and other parked vehicles. Broken-down, dilapidated brick buildings flew past and dust swirled in his face as the wind picked up. He squinted to see.
“Velar, where the hell did Volaski go?” Jake asked, though he suspected he might not like the answer.
“I don’t know.” She continued staring behind them, resting her gun on the back of the seat.
“Could he be responsible for this?” Jake wondered if she would even tell them if he was. He realized he still had no idea what the relationship was between the two. Was she his boss, or was he hers? Or was their relationship one of mutual convenience?
“Unlikely,” was her only response. But it did not satisfy Jake.
He cranked on the steering wheel, turning onto another street heading west, the low sun in their eyes. The bright, bluish sun had dipped very low in the sky, which now glowed red and purple with the dying light. “Unlikely my ass. Talk, Velar.”
She sighed. “I can’t imagine him doing something like this. It’s far more likely that one of the syndicates was alerted to your presence. Have you got a bounty on your head or something?”
“Probably. But I wouldn’t think Admiral Trajan would be able to get the word out so fast,” he said, but instantly kicked himself inside for saying the Admiral’s name—best not to freely give up too much information to the woman behind him. He still had no idea who she was, beyond the fact that she claimed to be able to get them some rare earths for their gravitic drive.
The pops of more rifle fire sounded behind them and Jake swerved, pounding down on the accelerator. The brick buildings whirred past and he worried that someone might not see them coming and step into their path, but fortunately the roar of the engine was loud enough that people a block ahead turned and ran out of the way before they sped past, followed closely by the pursuing vehicle.
“Bernoulli, got any more of those mines?”
“Yes, but I don’t think I could safely remove the anti-matter with all this jolting about.”
; A bullet whizzed past Jake’s head and shattered the windshield in front of him. “Avery!” he yelled. “Take them out!”
“Working on it,” came the man’s harried reply, and he popped off several more rounds into the tailing vehicle. Finally, Jake heard a crash, and looked back to see the pursuing car slam into the brick wall of a building halfway down the street. “Got the driver, sir.”
“Nice shot, Avery,” Jake said, and breathed a sigh of relief. The hill loomed ahead and the buildings began to thin out somewhat. Jake veered down a street that looked like it led to an open, dusty field, and aimed for the south side of the hill, which looked a little less populated.
Before long, after passing another dozen structures ranging from corrugated tin roofed shacks to a few stately, swanky mansions, they found themselves in front of a large, iron gate that Velar pointed to.
“That’s it,” she said, and stood up in the back seat, waving her arms to some unseen gatekeeper. It swung open, and Jake revved the engine to drive into the courtyard of the sprawling compound laid out before them. The gate closed with a rattle behind them.
“Well. That was fun,” said Jake. “Any more surprises I should know about?” He turned back to look at Velar, whose gaze was fixed on one of the marines next to her. Not Avery, but the other one—Corporal Suarez. Red covered his shoulder, and he leaned back into his seat with clenched teeth. Jake swore. Avery had already tossed his rifle aside and stripped off his vest to press into Suarez’s bloody shoulder.
“Get him inside. We have medical supplies there,” said Velar, who jumped out of the vehicle and waved at a man that appeared at the entrance to one of the brick buildings. He was dressed like Volaski, and had the same sort of electronic gadget circling his neck, almost like a necklace, or a communications device. Running over, Velar directed him to lift Suarez out and carry him inside.
“We’ll be safe here, Mercer. At least for the moment.”
Jake nodded at the man assisting Sergeant Avery with the bleeding Corporal Suarez. “These are your people?”
She nodded. “Yes. I run my business from this compound, and it is adequately defended. We should be fine until we can get you back to your ship. Come.” She motioned to them, and Jake followed close behind, glancing back at Ben.
