I point at them. “You already know she’s about to attack, don’t you? That’s why you’ve got this whole privateer swarm patching itself together suddenly.”
Ramses nods. “We knew – suspected – but this makes sense. Maybe if we had been able to stop all of the backups, she’d have delayed her attack. But they’re all moving too fast to intercept. This just confirms what we suspected: that the attack is imminent.”
“Kain,” Ramses says. “Go report to my father and uncle, join up with them and be ready to fight.”
“What are you doing?” Kain asks.
“I’m going with these privateers down to Atlantis.”
“Take Malcolm with you,” Kain says.
Malcolm’s eyes widen and his ears flick up, but he quickly regains composure. “Yes, sir.”
We all step aboard Malcolm’s ship. Once my whole crew is aboard, I seal the airlock behind me.
Minna grabs my hand and squeezes my arm. “Don’t worry, your ship will be safe.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Better than taking it into a battle, or having Atlantis fry all its electronics.”
“Atlantis doesn’t fry anything,” Ramses says. “It just makes everything go dormant. Everything except this bioglove.” He flexes his hand.
“So my biosuit won’t even work down there?” Minna asks.
“I read the report on it,” Ramses says. “It’s not a regular biosuit, so there’s no way to be sure. Even if it shuts down, it will be perfectly fine once we leave Atlantis.”
“If we leave Atlantis,” Ramu says, crossing his arms. “Must be why you were fine promising us 10 million. You know you only have to pay it to us if we survive.”
“Believe it or not,” Ramses says, “the Atlanteans are reclusive and seem very reluctant to fight. The main reason I’m dragging this Harmony corpse to them is to goad them into finally lifting a finger to help us rather than sitting on their asses. Atlantis is cold and creeping with giant spiders, but – ”
Minna grabs my arm and squeezes.
“But,” Ramses continues, “if I thought we were going to be fighting a battle down there, I’d have brought more than this skeleton crew.”
“We’re not skeletons,” Delphie huffs.
I look at the map. Atlantis shows up on the map, but I can’t see it at all through the windows. “You sure that map is right?”
“The field makes the planet invisible,” Ramses says. “We won’t see it until we’re within the field.”
“How do we land there if the field shuts down everything?” Delphie asks. “I’m a good engineer, but not that good.”
“Dropship,” Ramses says, “glides right down.”
“How do we get back up?” Minna asks.
“Primitive rocket,” Ramses says. “Took us a while to construct one that worked within the field, but we managed it. Look, as much as I don’t want to give you assholes 10 million rubles, I’ve got a wife and kid back home. I’m going down there with you, so I’m doing everything I can to get us off this planet alive.
We load onto the dropship. I sit next to Minna. I considered making her stay on the peacekeeper ship, but she’d have been alone. With the possibility of Harmony attacking, maybe being on the surface of Atlantis is the safest place in the solar system right now.
But I don’t trust Ramses. I saw the look on Malcolm’s face when Ramses first mentioned we’d be landing on Atlantis.
“I’m afraid of spiders,” Minna whispers to me. “Very afraid.”
I squeeze her hand. “I’ll squash any spider that gets near you. Do you think Malcolm’s afraid of spiders, too?”
“No, why?”
“He looked really uneasy when Ramses said he needed to go to Atlantis with us.”
“Ask him.”
“Yo, Malcolm!” I shout across the dropship.
“What?”
“You holding some information back on us? You know something about this place that should have us worried?”
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Ramses says.
“So he told you?” Delphie says. “You know what it is, but we don’t get to know?”
“It’s a rumor,” Ramses says. “The chance of it being true is low enough that we can’t afford to plan around it.”
“Malcolm shit his pants over a rumor?” I ask.
“Quiet, pirate!” Malcolm hisses.
“Okay,” Ramses says. “If you all promise to shut the hell up, I’ll tell you. Then we are launching this dropship either way. Kain was working undercover on Darkstar, where he recruited Malcolm –”
“Ha!” I say, pointing. “I knew you were Fallen Seraphim! And you went to Darkstar to act on it? You fell for all that shit?”
Malcolm unbuckles his harness and lunges at me, but Ramses grabs him and holds him back.
“Quiet!” Ramses shouts. “Sit the fuck down, Malcolm.”
Malcolm sits back down, but doesn’t strap in. He glares at me, his ears twitching up and down.
“Malcolm saw the error of his ways and he helped Kain escape. He also fought to defeat Darkstar’s High Command.”
“Wow,” I say sarcastically. “A true fucking hero.”
“Better than being a pirate!” Malcolm spits.
“Malcolm was on Darkstar longer than Kain. Just before he left, he overheard some Marauders talking of leaving Darkstar to go settle on Atlantis.”
“So there are Darkstar Marauders on Atlantis?” Ramu says, laughing. “Let me at ‘em.”
“There might be,” Ramses says. “If there are, they’ll be fighting us with basic weaponry. I have a bioglove and enough antimatter to power it for years. We’ll be fine.”
I cross my arms. “Any other surprises for us?”
“Everyone strap in,” Ramses says. “We’re going down.”
16 Minna
The shuttle begins to vibrate as we hit atmosphere. I still can’t see anything through the view screen; it looks like we’re still just floating through space.
And then, all at once, a snow-white planet appears, filling the entire view screen. I see snowy peaks and white coastlines meeting deep blue water. After a few moments, the view screen flickers and cuts off, denying me the view as we land. We must be within the field now.
I can still feel Jerky there with me, so he hasn’t shut off yet.
The shaking intensifies as we hit harder and faster against the atmosphere. We soon fall through the worst of it, and the pull of gravity is back on us as we glide through the air.
“All right,” Ramses says, “we’re going to be landing on a peninsula, on top of a frozen sea.”
“Why’s that?” Kronos asks.
“Because it’s where I landed last time. And it’s where I made contact with the Atlanteans.”
“How do we make contact?” Ramu asks. “You got some kind of signaling device?”
Ramses suddenly looks tight-lipped. “We’ll worry about that after we land.”
“My suit is still working,” I say. “Is that normal?”
“It should have shut off by now,” Ramses says. “Let me see.”
I hold up my hand and Jerky makes the biomaterial over my hand shimmer.
“That’s lucky for us,” Ramses says. “We’ll have to try to reverse-engineer that –”
“No,” I snap. “You’re not touching it.”
“But –”
“She said no,” Kronos says. “Drop it.”
“Touchdown in two minutes,” Malcolm says.
We all sit tight and wait for landing. Malcolm brings the shuttle down to a gentle landing, and I almost am able to convince myself that we’re landing on somewhere civilized like Mars, or in a floating city on Venus.
“Everyone suit up,” Ramses says. “Minna, your suit still working?”
I make Jerky form a helmet.
“Looks like it,” he says. “Just remember that it’s fucking cold here. Colder than Mars. Kronos, you may want to pack a back-up thermal suit for Minna, just in case
the suit fails.”
Kronos nods.
“Everyone’s bag should be packed to the brim,” Ramses says. “We don’t want to get stuck eating spider meat. Trust me.”
I feel queasy, and then the image of all the Marauders and Seraphim chowing down on giant spider’s meat fills my mind and I nearly vomit all over the shuttle.
I open up my bag and throw some of the magazines for the submachine gun onto the floor, and I grab more rations and stuff them into the bag.
Malcolm side-eyes me. “You know, if we don’t have enough ammo, it won’t be us eating the spiders. It will be the spiders eating us.”
“I have a biosuit,” I say. “The food is ammo for me. And I need as much as I can carry.”
“Shit!” Ramses says.
I look up and see him throwing his bioglove to the ground.
“Your bioglove busted?” Kronos asks.
“It worked here before,” Ramses says. “The Atlanteans themselves made it immune to the field.”
“Guess you aren’t such good buddies with them as you thought,” Ramu says, chuckling. “Hope they will still be willing to come out and play with us. Mind if I use the glove?”
“It’s deactivated,” Ramses says.
“So I can use it?”
“No,” Ramses says, staring him down.
“Worth a shot,” Ramu says, grabbing a rifle.
“So I have the only functioning biosuit,” I say. “Guess I’m pretty important.”
Kronos grabs my waist. “You’ve always been important.” He flicks his ears up at me.
“You know how to use that thing?” Ramses asks. “We may end up relying on you.”
“I know what I’m doing,” I say. “But this suit can’t run on antimatter. We’ll need a lot of food, and I am not eating spider meat.”
Ramses dumps out his bag and replaces several magazines with extra rations.
“Everyone bundle up,” Ramses says, “I’m opening the hatch.”
He presses it open. I hear the wind begin to howl, but Jerky has fully insulated me against the cold.
“Damn,” Kronos says, “that’s cold.”
We walk down the ramp, and I see tall and beautiful snow-capped mountains on one side and a frozen sea on the other. I spent most of my life on Mars, so I’m used to tall mountains, but never such beautiful purple and white ones...like out of a fairytale.
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
“It’s cold,” Delphie says, her teeth chattering as she pulls her big coat tighter against her body.
I feel almost guilty that I don’t feel the cold. Almost.
“So what’s the plan?” Kronos asks.
“Follow me.” Ramses goes down the ramp and steps into the snow. His body sinks into the snow up to his thighs.
We all follow behind him, hauling our huge bags.
“There’s a cave dug into the mountains,” Ramses says. “We’ll make camp there.”
“We’re camping in a mountain cave?” Delphie asks, throwing her arms out. “How are we supposed to get warm?”
“I’ll make a fire,” Ramses says. “Come on.”
We trot through the snow for 10 minutes or so, and suddenly Ramu spins around and raises his rifle.
“You see that?” he asks.
We all stop.
“I didn’t see anything,” Kronos says. “The snow is blinding me.”
My vision is worse than all of theirs. Marauders and Seraphim can see much better than humans. I definitely don’t see a thing, and I’m also blinded by the snow.
“Get down,” Kronos shouts.
He pulls me down with him, and we all land on our stomachs.
“I saw something, too,” Kronos hisses.
“Spider?” Malcolm asks.
“No,” Kronos and Ramu say in unison.
“Shit,” Malcolm says. “Must be Darkstar.”
“I’m checking it out,” Kronos says.
We’re all lying flat on a path that Ramses has carved out from walking through the snow, and Kronos crawls up the ridge, holding his submachine gun.
He reaches the ridge, then holds his gun up.
There’s a loud popping sound in the distance, and moments later I hear bullets whizzing over our heads.
Kronos pulls his gun back down. “Guess they weren’t just rumors. Nice intel, Ramses.”
I throw up a shield and jump out into the snow, before Kronos can stop me.
“Minna!” he shouts.
I make the shield transparent, and bullets start to hit it. After shielding the plasma beam, the bullets are nothing.
I yell back down to the others, “There are only three of them.”
The shooters are firing at me from behind rocks in the foothills, about 200 meters away. I shoot out a tendril for each of them, and as soon as they see the bright orange tendrils snaking toward them, they start to run.
I grab hold of one of them by the ankle, and he turns his gun toward the tendril. I divert one of the other tendrils to rip the gun from his hand, and then I start to drag him down the foothills and into the snow.
The other two open fire on me again, but the shield makes their bullets useless.
“I’m pulling us in a hostage,” I shout. “Get ready!”
I jump back down into the snowy trench and let the shield pull back into my biosuit. Moments later the tendril rips the hostage in with us.
Kronos punches him in the face and knocks him out cold. It’s a Marauder, a few decades older than Ramu – grey and wizened.
Ramses, Ramu, and Kronos pop back up, their guns raised.
“Looks like you scared them off, Minna,” Kronos says.
“Let’s head back to the shuttle,” Ramses says. “We can use the tents.”
“The tents?” Delphie says. “The tents? Why the hell were we trudging through the snow to go live in a cave if you have tents?”
“It’s a gut feeling I had,” Ramses says. “If you show the Atlanteans that you can live off the land, they respect you more.”
Everyone starts to groan, except Malcolm. He looks like he wants to groan, but he doesn’t want to be openly defiant toward his superior.
“Well,” I say, “at least we got a hostage out of it. We can ask this guy what Darkstar is doing here.”
“Is he a friend of yours, Malcolm?” Ramu asks.
Malcolm looks down. “I know him. His name’s Bala. He should be...willing to negotiate with us.”
“What’s his story?” Ramses asks.
We’re walking back down the path we came on. Ramses has hoisted Bala over his shoulder and his carrying him, while Kronos and Ramu have their guns pointed at the foothills as we retreat.
“He was part of High Command a few coups back,” Malcolm says. “One of the Marauders that just wanted to get the hell out of the solar system and leave humanity alone. Then there was a coup, and then there was another coup, and Bala and all the Marauders like him decided to break off and do their own thing. I heard rumblings that they may head to Atlantis, so I guess they actually did it.”
“So these guys didn’t really want anything to do with Darkstar?” I ask.
“He’s former High Command!” Delphie says. “He used to be a head honcho on Darkstar, so you can’t really say he ‘doesn’t want anything to do with Darkstar,’ can you?”
“He’s old,” Malcolm says. “He’s tired. He probably just wanted to see the sun again, even if it’s cold as balls here, at least you can see the sun. On Darkstar, the sun is barely brighter than any of the other stars. It really gets to you.”
I fall back and walk with Kronos once we are out of range of the foothills. “So 10 million rubles. You want to keep being a pirate if you have that much money?”
“I haven’t given it a lot of thought,” he says. “What do you think?”
“I like the part where you have heart,” I say, “but I’m not totally sold on piracy.”
He nods. “I guess it’s a means to an end, huh? Take on shady and n
ot so legal jobs to make ends meet. It’s probably not necessary if I’m already rich.”
I smile at him. “No, it’s really not, is it?”
“But I like being captain,” he says. “And I like taking care of my crew.”
“You could, uh, take on legit jobs? They pay less, but you can feel good about them.”
“Legit jobs?” he asks.
“Like, I could have hired you to escort me from Mars to Venus, and when I got attacked, you could have defended me. Instead of running away like those assholes did.”
Kronos laughs. “I never told you the full story there, did I?”
“What full story?”
“The guy in charge of that escort mission was about to retire, so we paid him off. We were going to pretend to attack, and his job was to just dump the cargo and run away. He made a show of trying to fight back for a bit, just enough that he wouldn’t lose his pension.”
I punch Kronos in the arm.
He laughs. “Hey! At least we didn’t intend to ever hurt you! I didn’t want to fire for real on some civilian ship, and I sure as hell didn’t expect him to dump a person in the cargo hold. For a legit escort company, that guy has less heart than a pirate.”
“You asshole. But you could do escort jobs like that. Or you could transport stuff...there’s lots of legitimate work someone like you could do, and you’d quickly get a reputation as someone who takes his work seriously. Someone who won’t take bribes from pirates.”
“Hmmm,” Kronos says. “That’s something to consider. I’m not really the type of guy to just retire early and sit on my ass. You’d stay on my crew though, right?”
“Why do you think I’m trying to convince you to go legit? I don’t want to be a pirate, Kronos.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “So...you’ll stay on board with me?”
“Of course I will.”
“Good,” he says, “because we need your biosuit!”
I punch him again, putting some biosuit power behind it this time.
“Ouch!” he shouts. “Damn, that was a real punch!” He rubs his arm. “That’s going to leave a bruise.”
I scowl at him.
“I’m joking, you know? I don’t care about the biosuit, I just want you close by my side...if you know what I mean.”
Marauder Kronos: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars) Page 11
