“Looks the same as yours,” Kiena said.
“All right.” He stopped fighting the urge and reached down and drew his pistol. The familiar feel of the polymer even through his flight gloves, the weight of the military-grade firearm in his hand. He flicked the laser sight with his finger, got both hands on it, and kept it pointed at the floor. “Anyone here?” he called.
Nothing. Not a sound or the smallest movement. The pile of bodies wrapped around the generators. Here a group of three charred to black and bone, here just a pair of boots with the feet still inside, a shinbone jutting out of one. Shiny and white and snapped cleanly off.
He took a shaking breath. “Hey!”
Still nothing. He kept circling. The red laser sight bouncing on the deck in front of him. Trying to picture the planet out there, hurdling toward him, swelling up to swallow the burning ship. Trying not to think of it at the same time.
And then he saw her.
6
She was standing with her back to him and the generator, looking at the bulkhead. Her hair as stark white as any he'd ever seen, but her body strong and young. Taller than him. Wearing a simple white dress, a stark counterpoint to the dark black, gray and olive drab of his flight suit. The same color as her hair. Flowing the same way down her back, like it was some liquid and not cloth at all.
Not wearing a helmet. So that meant the air was still on in here. He didn't reach up to touch his own helmet, even so. Recycled air was not the best but he was a damned pilot and in a dying ship and some things were so engrained nothing else really mattered.
She must have heard him, but still she didn't move. Her hands in front of her. Arms folded? He couldn't tell. Stock still in this wasteland of bodies. Not a streak of blood on her. He couldn't imagine she'd somehow done all of this on her own, but she was the only one still alive and astoundingly unhurt. Not wearing anything you'd wear on a warship.
“Hey,” he said, softly this time. Keeping the red point of the laser on her back, where it'd be on her chest if she turned. His finger off the trigger, straight and pressed against the side of the guard, but ready to slide down and fire.
“About two minutes, Nine.” Kiena on the comm. “Then you have to come back.”
“Turn around,” he said. Keeping his voice calm and steady. Slightly crouched, absorbing each step. Feeling the deck under his boots, the shift of the flight suit against his arms and legs. All senses heightened. How it always was in battle, this slow razor's edge and then the sudden horror of war and mayhem and death and then nothing again, all in the span of a breath.
And then, at last, she turned.
She looked young, that white hair aside, her skin smooth and clear and her eyes bright. Lips slightly parted. Looking at him with an expression on her face that he couldn't quite pin down. Slight confusion, maybe disbelief. But, at the same time, a peaceful serenity so out of place in this mass grave, falling toward its own end.
The front of that white dress covered in blood, streaked and matted, ghastly and horrible. In her hand, a short-barreled pistol. Those hands likewise coated in gore, gleaming with blood all the way up her forearms. And there, just a single drop running from the right side of her nose, down over that pale skin, so stark and red and reaching for the top of her lip.
“Down,” he said. “Hey. Put it down.”
She didn't move. Her arms crossed over her chest, the pistol held loosely in one hand. Not dropping it but also not flinching or bringing it up or doing anything else that meant he had to blow a hole through her chest and run for his ship.
He stopped and watched her, holding the laser sight steady, hearing Kiena tell him he had about sixty seconds or it'd be too close. The flight suit suddenly very warm, and, at the same time, so very cold.
She looked at him for a long moment and slowly tipped her head to the side. Just a small movement, but her lips parting a little more and then closing again. The confusion clear on her face now, though nothing of the panic and fear she should have felt. Just a slight confusion at one small piece being out of place.
“You're not supposed to be here,” she said. Her breath fogging slightly in front of her face. “No one's supposed to be here.”
Then, without another word, she uncrossed her arms and raised the short-barreled pistol and pressed it against her temple and shot herself in the side of the head.
7
Kiena must have heard the shot over the comm because she was screaming something in his ear over and over, even as he watched the thin body crumple to the deck. The red mist dissipating in the air. Half of her skull missing now, torn away along with one of her eyes. The hair on the other side on fire from the muzzle flash. A projectile gun, not a beam, he had time to think as he sucked in the suit's recycled air.
Her body lying still among all these others.
Finally he said: “Eight, I'm fine. I'm fine.” A pause. Kiena's ragged breathing. “She shot herself.”
“Then get the hell out of there. You're almost in atmo.”
“Just shot herself.”
“You hear me, Nine? Get out. Get the hell out.”
He stood looking at her. Lifeless and still. The blood pooling on the deck. He couldn't tell what she'd been looking at on the bulkhead. There was nothing there. The generators humming softly behind her, keeping this dead ship alive for a few more minutes, no matter the fact that it carried nothing but bodies and would soon be so much slag sinking into the ice.
“Her hand,” he said.
“Leave it,” Kiena barked.
“Her hand. Shit. Her hand.”
He stumbled forward across the decking, wading through the bodies now. Stepping on limbs and torsos that felt nothing like people. Just so many obstacles in the way. He tripped and fell, caught himself on a commander whose guts had been torn open, pushed himself up, kept going.
“You don't have time,” Kiena said.
“I can get it.” He had to. There was nothing here now but there had been and he had to. Tripping again, grabbing the scaffold, stumbling forward. If he didn't they might never find it again and he'd be in this room for the rest of his life, watching that drop of blood slowly slide down from her nose as she raised the pistol to the side of her head.
“Dammit, Nine.”
He got to her and knelt on the deck. Fumbling with his belt, unhooking the clasp, pulling his combat knife out of its sheath. The black blade seven inches long, smooth on one side and serrated on the other, tapered at the end. Not really a weapon for a pilot, but more of a survival tool if he got shot down behind enemy lines and had to work his way back to the front.
Reaching out, he rolled her onto her side and lifted her right arm. Thinking he'd been right about her age. She was young, perhaps nineteen or twenty. Not a child but so damned young. He looked at the side of her head and swore and looked at her arm again.
Already so cold.
He flipped the knife in his hand, pressed the blade against her skin, swore again, and began to cut through her wrist. It was the easiest place because he wouldn't have to saw the bone. Something they all learned long before flight school. Him standing in a long cold trench on a planet covered in ice, though not Riccana. Some place he didn't know the name of, the mountains rising in front of him, sawing off a dead man's hand.
Pushing, the skin and muscle giving way. Horribly warm now. Pressing through and feeling the knife bite. Striking a bone, slipping to the side, finding the groove where he could work it between. A sharp press then, a pop as it gave. Then just the simple matter of drawing the knife through the other side, and it was free.
Kiena screaming at him.
He stood, holding her detached hand in his. The awful weight of it. Looking down at her one more time where she lay still on the deck among all the others. He thought he could hear the ship burning up as it started to enter the atmosphere, but he didn't know if it was in his head. Couldn't remember the countdown. Couldn't remember anything.
And then he turned and ran. Tripping
twice more in the bodies, pounding across the deck. Gasping in air suddenly so thin. Coming to the edge of the bodies and crossing the open deck and hammering at the lift controls. It was already there and the door retracted and as it closed behind him he had for a split second the dark realization that the generators could give out while he was in the lift and there'd be nothing he could do but sit in this steel coffin and wait while the ship burned and tore itself apart around him.
But they didn't. The lift hummed on and opened and then he was running down the second hallway. Falling once against the wall, feeling the deck list. The artificial gravity starting to fail or weaken. A bright flash as his head hit the wall, and then he was at the second lift. Opening it as well. Wanting to stick to the passages but knowing how far he'd gone and that he'd be running still when the ship blew up if he didn't use the lift.
Stepping in, pushing the button for the bay floor. Hoping it was the right one. Unable to remember as the lift lurched off and he fell against the wall again. The girl's severed hand leaving a bright streak of blood on the metal as he reached out to catch himself. Cooling almost instantly in a ship that was rapidly freezing, right before it burst into flames.
8
The door opened and it was the right passage and he stumbled out and ran for the bay. So impossibly far. The ship lurching to the side as it rolled. The slow cycling of the emergency airlock as he stood in it gasping and then sprinted out the other side. He thought he had maybe a minute before the grav system gave out entirely and then he'd have to pull himself along, frantically grabbing at bulkheads that were made of clean, seamless metal.
Then he'd die, he thought, and it somehow didn't seem as insane as it would have this morning. When he woke up and looked over at Kiena's back naked and washed in pale sunlight and tried to get out of bed carefully so he wouldn't wake her up and went through the open living room to get a cup of the coffee he could already smell automatically brewing itself, the heat and warmth and grounds and earth of it on a planet covered in ice.
If the grav went out, he'd die. It was simple. So many people died. He would die and maybe they'd pull his body out of here but more likely they'd just have a posthumous court martial so no one could claim his pension and then they'd let the ship and the planet do the rest.
Simple.
He reached the door off of the
(claws)
passage and turned into the bay. It had been ruined before and it was worse now. The metal panels folding up in the middle of the deck. A broken wire sending lightning streaking out across the ceiling. A new warning light inexplicably now back on and flashing in the center of the bay.
The skelt, though, sat right where he'd left it, hooked to the deck with the maglifts.
And there was Riccana. That cold and tortured surface, a ball of ice sitting still in the void. The atmosphere tinting it pale blue and dark at the poles. But far too large. Consuming the view from the open bay as the ship turned. All he could see except for a sliver of blackness on the edges. Standing and feeling suddenly so small and lost on this darkened bay floor, staring down at the planet below with nothing between them but air.
Something happened deep in the heart of the ship. A ghost at last given up. A deep and heavy rumbling, a shaking beneath his feet. Not yet in atmosphere, but the ship already coming apart, breaking itself up from the inside out. So decimated by that barrage of lasers, the systems left to fail one by one. Fuel lines, electrical wires, pistons hammering out their last as engines shuttered and ripped themselves to pieces. When a ship had been gutted like this one, you couldn't even trust failsafes and hardwired emergency overrides. Designers couldn't plan for all of the destruction of battle, the unknowns, and you never knew what a ship could take until it took it and you saw the vicious and savage end.
He scrambled over to the fighter and climbed the ladder to the wing. The skelt had adjustable combat wings for the ordnance and cannons and then two shorter pylons on the rear, atmospheric stabilizers. He took the ladder two steps at a time and hauled himself up, the girl's blood now running down his arm and over his suit, to where the canopy still stood open.
That's when the grav system finally went out.
He felt it going and threw himself forward, grasping the edge of the open canopy with his gloved hand. Feeling his feet coming up into the air. They always said it was like floating but it wasn't. It was like nothing at all was up or down. The whole world torn off its bearings, stripped of this one constant he'd known his entire life.
Because, of course, he wasn't on a world at all. Here where Man was never meant to exist.
He pulled himself forward and twisted and jammed his legs into the cockpit. Kiena still yelling and the ship shaking all around him like some forged tectonic plates within it were chewing themselves apart, riding this wall of magma and pressure and death.
He got his legs around and pulled the harness down over his flight suit. It was hard with the helmet, something meant to be done on a landing pad or in artificial atmosphere, the helmet put on and sealed to the vacsuit afterward. But it wasn't impossible and he cursed and yanked the canvas straps down and jammed the buckle into its housing and then the girl's hand slipped out of his grip.
He swore again and looked up as it floated and lunged at it. Too far, held back by his harness. Reached again and put one hand on the buckle's clasp and then looked out the bay door.
They were almost on her. He could see the mountains in the ice now, could make out individual peaks. Frozen black rivers winding in the snow plains. A dark blot that had to be a frozen lake a thousand feet deep. The weight of all that ice. Everything so close, about to fall into the atmosphere and the veil of fire that would eat the ship alive.
“Reid,” Kiena said. Quiet now, but something deep and breaking in her voice. “Reid.”
“I'm all right,” he said. Reaching down to power up the skelt, the canopy still open. A jolt as he disengaged the deck locks and pushed the ship up and around on the maglifts alone. Spinning it deftly two meters off the decking. The engines purring behind him as they came to life and sat in standby, a gentle thrum running through the whole ship.
The bay began to tear itself apart. A piece of the interior wall plating went first, the fuel lines exploding at last behind it in soundless wrath, the plating twisting and ripping as the metal superheated and tore and then froze as the oxygen from within the wall burned away and the fire died. Beams coming out one by one as the plate fell away. The far side of the ceiling collapsing as the structural integrity was compromised, the huge girders from the warship's skeleton exposed. Wires trailing and sparking. There was no atmosphere in the bay anymore, so the debris didn't vent under explosive decompression, but slowly drifted out to trail behind the writhing ship.
Colson looked up, saw the dead girl's hand. Floating away like all that debris, drifting toward hard vacuum where he'd never find it again. Where it too would drawn all too quickly into the atmosphere and burned in the span of a breath, a brief flare as the flesh burned from bones, peeled back, and then the bones themselves melted away.
He pushed the stick gently, brought the nose up, again fighting the urge to go too quickly. Remaining clam and controlled even though every fiber in his body was screaming to hurry.
If he went atmo with the canopy open, there'd by nothing left of him, either. The vacsuit was tough, but it'd burn in a split second on reentry. He didn't know if he'd have time to feel his eyes boiling or if he'd just be dead before the pain receptors in his brain could translate his agony into anything real.
“I'm all right,” he said again. Even though Kiena wasn't saying anything. “I'm all right.”
Pushing the fighter up. Such a short distance, but this craft that usually felt so tiny and nimble feeling enormous and ponderous in the bay. Where you usually just lifted up on the maglifts, spun, cut them, and shot out on the jet engines. You didn't try to maneuver, and you damned sure didn't do it with the canopy open.
The hand turning, fli
pping end over end in empty air. Those long pale fingers slightly curled. The blood so dark now, the white of bone.
He stared at it, nudged the stick again, and then he had it. His gloved hand closing around the fingers like pulling someone from a hole in the ice and the freezing water beyond. Wrapping his fingers around hers
(claws)
and reaching to key the skelt's canopy with the other hand at the same time. The black glass coming down with a whine over his head, clicking as it locked itself into place and sealed the fighter.
The destroyer started to burn. Flames streaking back along her hull, flashing over the forward edge of the bay opening, sheets of fire. With the shields offline and the armor plating torn all to hell, no heat shield to protect her. The fire cooking the outer skin, instantly burning away the layer of deep space frost, superheating the metal until it glowed red and orange and white. A shooting star from the surface, a burning meteor falling like some elemental beast come to unleash its wrath upon the world.
In the time it took him to recheck the canopy seal, the warship plunged fully into Riccana's atmosphere. Those sheets of flame coming over the edge of the bay door turning solid, some raging and endless firestorm, black pieces of the hull stripping off and flying by in the maelstrom. When they'd done the initial flyover he'd seen a body tangled in wires and dragging, one that must of have fallen out right when the ship dropped out of FTL in the system. Now it had to be lost, consumed entirely by the burning atmosphere.
That man gone as if he'd never been at all. No grave marker. His ashes lost in the highest reaches of the upper atmosphere. Even if they did eventually find their way into the endless planetary cycle, his matter absorbed and transformed, Riccana herself was coming apart just like the ship. When she did, he'd just be gone, first to the fire and then even that lost to the vast blackness of space.
The Dead Ship (Firehawk Squadron Book 1) Page 3
