by Huff, Tanya
“We’ll make a pirate of you yet,” Huirre snorted.
“Fuk you.”
“In three, two, one!” Cho sent the codes.
The Heart of Stone shuddered, jerked . . .
“What the hell?”
Torin dove behind the armory as bits of metal and plastic shot toward her. “The Heart just exploded the docking clamps and ripped away from the air lock.”
“Last resort blow. So as not to go down with a damaged station.”
Craig lived on his ship. He should know.
Torin ducked behind the armory, legs drawn up, as pieces of debris ricocheted back and found herself shoulder to shoulder with Craig. “You okay?”
“So far.”
Yeah. She fukking hated zero G shrapnel in an enclosed space. “Question.” They headed back to opposite sides as things cleared. “Is the Heart making a run for it, or lining up with the hatch to grab the armory?
“The Heart’s armed, Torin. And Cho’s got to be pretty pissed.”
“So the odds are high he’ll come back shooting. Let’s get this thing clear!”
They’d had to tip the armory onto its side to get it out of the storage pod—the cables, fed around a rod lowered from the runners, were attached at the lower edge of the armory with magnetic pads, and then the cables retracted. It was bit like threading a needle with explosives. Once out, Craig began moving the rod, and the horizontal armory tucked up against it, toward the doors.
Torin would have been happy to just fling it toward open space, but neither the runners nor the cables were set up for that. Nor for speed, she growled silently emerging from yet another duck and cover. Ressk might be able to remove the safety protocols that kept them at a sedate crawl—weightless or not, the usual loads through here had sufficient mass to crush mere flesh and bone—but without Ressk on call, they needed to come up with another solution. “Leave the cables attached so that we have something to hold, but let them run free.”
“Let the cables run free? You want us to drag this thing out of here by hand?” Craig sounded incredulous. “I know you hate to hear this kind of shit, babe, but we’re neither of us in great shape.”
Torin no longer felt an urge to comment on the endearment. “Cables have got it moving. Overcoming inertia, that’s the hard part. Right now, we could both be missing a leg and still be able to move faster.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“The Heart’s armed, Craig. And Cho’s got to be pretty pissed.”
“You’re a hard person to argue with.”
She could hear the smile in his voice, and her lips twitched in response. “You’re not the first to say it.”
It was going to hurt. Craig’s foot. Her ribs. Not to mention assorted mutual bruising. But it was going to hurt a lot less than having either Cho or Big Bill reclaim the armory.
Hurt a lot less than being hit by one of the remaining chunks of blown docking clamp.
Running was an acquired skill in zero G, and the armory skewed slightly sideways as Craig struggled to keep up. Torin adjusted her rhythm, matched her pace to his, and noted silently that the exit was about three times wider than the height of the armory, so even if they went through spinning on the long axis, there’d be room. It’d be the next thing to a clusterfuk, but there’d be room.
“I’m not going to be happy if you puncture a lung.”
“Me either.”
Craig was panting. Or she was. The sound of labored breathing filled her helmet, hard to separate into his or hers. Hers might have been a bit wetter. In a military suit, like the one that had saved her life, she’d have hit the foam the moment they cleared the dock and immobilized the broken rib. Unfortunately, without that option, all she could do was clamp her arm against her body and tell herself she’d survived worse. Her right hand, swollen to fill the glove, had immobilized itself.
“Release the clamps on three,” she called as they approached the edge of the ore dock. “One. Two. Three!”
As the cables retracted, Torin, Craig, and the armory shot out into space.
“There’s the Star!”
“And there’s the Heart.” Twisting to look back at the station, Torin could see the flares of half a dozen ships. “Looks like the docking clamps have unlocked.”
“Captain! Seven—no nine—ships are launching!”
“ETA?” Cho snapped, hand clamped white-knuckled around the edge of his screen.
Huirre turned to stare. “ETA? They’re right there!”
“Coat of Brown and Thegris Tay are powering weapons! No lock on us yet,” Dysun added. “But it’s a matter of minutes.”
“Nat! Grapples out!”
“Almon was . . .
“Almon’s unconscious, thanks to you! Get the fukking grapples on that armory!”
Craig caught the line from the Star with one hand and Torin with the other as its movement whipped him past her. “Hang on! You can’t do this with one hand!”
“Want to bet?” But he felt the tug as she grabbed his tanks and gave thanks she favored practical over posturing. “We’re in Mashona’s shot! Move!
“Mashona’s is not the shot I’m worried about!” What looked like a Navy shuttle retrofitted for Susumi had a line on the Star, the armory, and, more importantly, the two of them.
“Do not let that bastard get the armory!”
Confused, Huirre frowned. “What bastard?”
“Big Bill fukking William Ponner!” Cho snarled, on his feet. How the hell was he supposed to just sit there? He could slave the weapons screen to his board, but a good captain knew when to delegate to those who were more skilled. Who could blow those fukkers into their component atoms! “The ships out there are working for him, but right now, they’re all yours!”
Huirre’s nose ridges flared. He grinned and danced the fingers of both hands and the toes of his foot across the board.
Instinct had Torin duck her head down in her helmet as the first energy burst flashed by. “I hate being shot at when I can’t shoot back!”
“Good thing they’re crap shots!”
“They’re trying too hard not to hit the station.” Well, Big Bill’s ships were, she amended as a shot from the Heart left an elderly cargo vessel floating dead in space and another sent a di’Taykan design tumbling sideways. Problem was, no matter how good the gunner on the Heart might be, more and more ships were pulling away from Vrijheid and, in the end, numbers would tell.
Now she had more points of reference, Torin could see that they were moving toward the Star too quickly to be depending on Craig’s pulling them in hand over hand. “The line . . . ?”
“Is being rewound, yeah.”
Unable to look back over her shoulder because of the suit, or twist because of her ribs, Torin searched for other lines coming from the ship, other lines that should be hauling in the armory, and couldn’t see them.
“Brace for impact!”
“Holy fukking shit, Cap! I got it! I got the fukking armory! First try!”
Cho’s lip curled. It was a little fukking big to miss. “Roll it into the cargo bay while we move! Dysun, take the helm and get us out of here! Huirre, keep firing!” he yelled over his helmsman’s protests. “Do not let those sons of bitches line up to get a shot at us!”
“Because I was a little busy trying to keep this ship in one piece.” Hands still working the board, Mashona glanced toward the air lock just long enough for Torin to see she wasn’t going to apologize for not grappling the armory. “I could get you or the armory, Gunny. I chose you.”
“Thank you.” Craig already had his helmet down, lying against his tanks while Torin was still unsealing hers one-handed.
When it finally dropped, she shuffled toward the board, gravity making the suit one hell of a lot harder to drag around.
“There goes the Heart of Stone.” His suit abandoned on the deck, Craig slid into the pilot’s chair as Werst slid out, his hands dropping automatically to the controls. “They’ve got the armory.”
Torin had seen Craig pilot the Promise through a swarm of enemy vacuum jockeys with pens extended and full of Marines. Seeing him at the controls now made her believe they still had a chance. “Go after them.”
“Captain! In another hundred meters, we’ll be far enough out for them to target us with the station’s gun!”
The station only had one gun, but it was a big one. Originally from a battleship, rumor was Firrg had taken it from a salvage operator in Krai territory and sold it to Big Bill for enough to rebuild her engines and supply her ship for a year. Cho didn’t give a fuk about the rumor, but he’d seen a battleship’s guns in action and a ship the size of the Heart would be vaporized by that kind of firepower. “Nat!”
“I’d like to not slam a big metal box full of weapons through the fukking ship, Cap!”
“Captain!” Dysun’s voice had sharpened to near hysteria. “Fifty meters!”
“Speed it up, Nat. We can survive a few dents!” He dropped back into his chair and pulled up the Susumi equations. “Get ready,” he snarled at Dysun and Huirre. “You’ll lock your boards on my signal. The moment the armory is on board, we’ll fold.”
And if the Susumi vortex pulled apart the nearer half of Big Bill’s fleet, then that would teach the son of a bitch to try and bring down Mackenzie Cho.
“He’s got his Susumi engines on-line!” Craig’s fingers danced over the board and, under the touch of an experienced pilot, the Star responded by leaping forward and closing the distance to the Heart.
“Gunny!” Mashona shifted the aft screen up where everyone could see it. “We’re in range of the station’s guns . . . right . . . now!”
Torin stepped out of the HE suit, leaving it lying on the deck like another body. “Fortunately, in order to hit us, they’d have to shoot through a crowd of their own ships.”
One of the ships directly between them and the station’s guns flared and disappeared.
“I think they’re good with that, Gunny,” Ressk pointed out.
Star fields tipped as Craig took evasive action. “We need to get out of here.”
“Not without the armory.” Teeth clenched, Torin shouldered her way into the crowd around the board and pulled up the long-range scanners. “The Heart’s grapples have pulled the armory to the cargo doors.” She slid her thumb across the board, shifting programs between the dedicated stations. “I’ve slaved the scanners to the cutter. Mashona, can you hit it?” Mashona had been the best sniper Sh’quo Company had ever seen.
“Hit the armory with a cutter this size? Gunny, it’ll . . .”
“I know.” Torin met Mashona’s eyes. “Can you hit it?”
“Yes, Gunny.”
“Do it!” She snapped the order out with all the force of Gunnery Sergeant Kerr behind it. Her responsibility.
Lower lip caught between her teeth, Mashona bent over the controls. Training had her draw in a deep breath and hold it, settling into a moment of perfect stillness before she fired.
“Cargo doors are closing, Cap!”
“Ha!” Cho entered the Susumi equation and sat back. “We . . .”
The front port polarized as the Heart of Stone exploded, but it wasn’t quite fast enough to keep the sudden blast of light, white in the center and blue around the edges, from burning into Torin’s retinas. Hand gripping the back of Craig’s chair, she blinked away afterimages and tried to keep from feeling triumphant.
Because the feeling had very little to do with keeping the armory out of the hands of pirates and a great deal to do with the knowledge that Mackenzie Cho had just been reduced to his component parts.
“I’m not reading debris!”
“There is no debris!”
“What the fuk was in that thing?”
Mackenzie Cho had just been reduced to his component parts on a subatomic level.
Torin felt Craig’s hand cover hers and squeeze. He thought he understood. Maybe he did. One more thing on the list of things they should probably talk about.
He snatched his hand away as the view suddenly went completely opaque. Before he could get his hand back on the board, the radiation wave hit.
And the board died.
“On the bright side,” he muttered, hooking his thumbnails under the inert edging and popping it off. “There’s no debris. Torin, my . . .”
“Tools.” She nodded her thanks to Werst and passed them forward.
“What are the odds the blast took out the ships behind us?” Werst growled.
The Star bucked forward.
“Fuk!” Craig spat the word out. “Feels like we just lost one of the lateral port thrusters!”
“You can tell that from the feel?” Mashona had her hands in place to turn the cutter and fire the moment the board came back.
Craig twisted far enough to grin up at Torin. “Not the first port thruster I’ve lost in a firefight.”
“At least Werst and I are inside this time.”
“View was better outside,” Werst muttered.
“And you’re insane. Move,” Ressk added to Mashona. He shoved her out of her seat and slapped his slate down on the board.
“We can’t fly with a slate!” Mashona protested, reaching over the chair to keep her hands by the cutter’s dead controls.
“But when Ryder has the power back up, I can reroute past damaged parts of the board with it!” Ressk told her.
The Star shuddered. Inertial dampers went off.
“Helm’s back. Ressk get the rest. I need eyes aft!” Craig dropped the ship straight down. “I can’t avoid what I can’t see.”
Werst ducked under Torin’s arm to hold Ressk in place as he worked his slate with his hands and the board with his feet.
Pieces of metal rang against the upper hull.
This time when Craig twisted to look up, Torin reached out and twisted him back toward the board. “What the hell . . . ?”
“Missile debris,” she told him.
“Detonated early,” Werst added. “Someone’s mounted an XR779 externally.”
“Sounded more like a 778,” Torin said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, well, either way, Navy needs to keep better track of its toys.”
“Not arguing.”
“You two are fukking nuts,” Craig muttered.
“Comm’s back!” Ressk yelled, all four extremities still working.
“Screens or weapons, Ressk.” Mashona bumped him with her shoulder. “Why the hell were you working on communications?”
“I wasn’t. Came back on its own.”
“Nav would be useful.” Craig swept two fingers across the screen, fast to the right. “Hang on . . .”
Torin nearly landed in his lap as the Star swung hard to starboard and up on a forty-five-degree angle. The front port was still too dark for stars, but she thought she could see the streaks from an energy weapon move diagonally past. Past was good.
Wait . . .
“If nav isn’t up, and you can’t see forward, how are you steering this thing?”
Craig shrugged. “Space is big.”
“Yeah, and remarkably full of shit. Ressk!”
“Working on it, Gunny! Nav is . . . shit!” He slammed his fist down on the board. “Life support is out!”
“What?”
“It’s okay! It’s back.” The first two toes of his right foot tapped out a syncopated rhythm, and a screen popped up. “There’s the aft view.”
“Screen’s got to be burnt!” Mashona protested as everyone stared at the clusters of lights. “Because if those are all ships . . .”
Torin snorted. “Big Bill offered a station discount to whoever takes us out.”
“Fifteen percent off,” Craig added, throwing an arm around her hips and pulling her against his side.
Mashona frowned at the scrolling data. “At least the station seems to have stopped shooting.”
“Yeah, well, I imagine it’s bad for business to blow up too many of your customers.”
Nose ridges flared, Wers
t had a hand cupped around the back of Ressk’s head, thumb scraping small circles through the bristles. “We are so screwed.”
“This is the Confederation battleship Berganitan. Stand down!”
“Or not.” Ressk scrambled for the volume.
Mashona expanded the aft screen. “They’re scattering.”
“But they are not going to be going far, so I are suggesting you are getting yourselves the hell out of here!”
“Presit!” Torin touched the camera still attached to her tunic with the heel of her injured hand.
Craig felt his brows rise pretty much free of any conscious involvement in the motion. “Presit?”
“You are thinking Torin are able to save you alone? Well, you are being wrong.
“Wait. You and Presit?”
Torin’s smile looked almost fond. “Turns out we had something in common.”
He was fond of the little furball himself, but Presit didn’t . . . Right arm still holding Torin close, he reached across his body and wrapped his left hand around Torin’s wrist, pulling her hand away from one of the fasteners on her tunic. “That’s a camera? That’s an illegal camera.”
“So not the time to worry about that,” Mashona murmured.
Craig ignored her. “You were filming for Presit? On the station?”
“Although I are not getting visuals when she are wearing the suit,” Presit answered before Torin could.
Torin sighed, and Craig suddenly realized just how much of her weight she was resting against him. Her eyes, or at least the one eye not swelling shut, looked as tired as he’d ever seen them. “It’s a long story.”
“And there are being no time to tell it now. Merik are sending equations to station where Wardens are waiting!”
“Oh, I just bet they’re still waiting,” Torin growled. “God forbid they should actually do something.”
“I are still recording.”
