by K. Gorman
“I'll re-magnetize us,” she said. “Put the first blast in the doors, and we'll wait for full vacuum before we go for any others.”
“I can't shoot when parked. Not there, anyway.”
“I know. It's going to be tricky. Shoot once, and I'll take over.” Louder, she called back. “All right. Extreme flying coming up.”
A hush of swearing came up the hall in answer. By the rushed pounding of shoes on metal, she guessed they hadn't followed her previous suggestion.
As Marc pulled out the secondary dash, displacing a set of wrappers with a sweep of his fingers, she swayed the ship back and forth, wings tipping.
“Anything sharp in here I need to know about?” she asked, thinking about the bedding.
“Just straws.”
“I can live with that.”
She glanced to his screen. Her flight training had covered precisely nothing on weapons programs, but his dashboard didn't take much to recognize. Even with her unfamiliarity, and the variations between Alliance and Fallon systems, enough televisions and movies referenced the programs so as to create a degree of reality within their narratives.
A bump below her that sounded like landing gear dropped the hidden weapon below their underbelly, and a laser-target system pulled across most of the screen, giving it a green wash as it overlaid the view. The hangar door skewed in her mind, coming from a different angle to the image she had in front of her.
Marc picked a spot close to the seams near the bottom. The white cross-hair tightened and locked on. He glanced to her, waiting.
“All settled?” she called back.
“Yeah, go for it.” Soo-jin's answer floated up the hall, muffled by the bend. “I want to see this creative flying of yours.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” she murmured, then gave a curt nod to Marc. “You heard the lady.”
He nodded. Releasing a safety on the thumb trigger, he flicked its cap back, double-checked the dashboard, and pushed the button.
The cannon thundered below them. Karin wrestled the flight controls as they jerked back from the recoil. The entire screen lit up in red as the laser ripped into the structure. The shriek of breaking and bending metal dulled less than a breath later.
Then, they were falling.
Gravity flipped. Karin dragged the controls up, thrusters raging against the pull. The Nemina tipped and turned. As the light diminished, the entirety of the hangar twisted around them, rotating as they fell toward the rush of air in a slow spin. G-forces threw into her. She fought against them, pushing the controls. Warnings flared on her screen. A bright flash of light cracked overhead as they hit something and scraped down.
Then, she got the spin right.
Like a cat, the Nemina seemed to right itself—just in time to land at the top of the doors.
Karin flicked the magnetic locks on as the hangar roared around her. Looking outside, she fought a sudden drop in her stomach.
The Nemina had its own gravity. The floor sat below them, perpendicular. While her instincts screamed she should be pulled forward to the floor, their own gravity generator held strong. Craning her neck, she allowed herself to rise up in her seat to look down at the doors.
“You know, that hole could be bigger.”
Marc grunted. “Your landing could be better.”
“Let's give us both a second chance, then.”
A notification at the bottom corner of her screen told her the air had depressurized from the hangar. She watched a piece of paper, somehow left over from the time Marc had come in, float out, its straight-edges indicative that it moved more on inertia rather than any acting force. When she lifted the magnetic locks, the Nemina pulled free with no resistance.
She twirled them overhead, then righted themselves as the doors came back in line.
This time when Marc fired, it made no sound at all. Only a quiet, steady rumble under her feet.
Stifling a yawn, she held the ship steady as the red beam shot out from underneath them, darting to different parts of the door. The light pressure from earlier pushed closer to her mind, bearing down on her, but she fought it back.
No rest now.
They had to get out.
A white-hot glow seared the edges of his firing. As he worked, she realized he was going for a Nemina-shaped rectangle. She'd have to tip them to the side to make it work, but they could fit through.
The last shot, a sustained blast, burned into the center of his work. A second later, the piece of door kicked out, flipping with inertia. Blackness replaced it, for a second looking like a square piece of Shadow—but as she tipped the ship forward and moved closer, the blue light of Lokabrenna slipped into view.
Space.
Freedom.
She pushed the thrusters, tipped the wings, and aimed for the hole. The proximity alert shrieked as they flew close to the sides of the hole, but cut off almost immediately.
A wide grin spread across her face, and she gunned them out, racing them under the Ozark's bulky, planed underbelly and out on the other side, skipping away. More and more of Caishen appeared, the Nemina dwarfed in its bulk. She flicked on the side cameras to get screengrabs of the ships docked there. Maybe one of them had sent the metal balls.
But, as they cleared the ends of two ships, and more of open space grew visible, her grin faltered.
The warships had arrived.
Chapter 28
“Oh, holy mother of—Shit.” She veered, ducking back under the Ozark's underbelly.
As if that would help. With the scanners those ships had, they could probably see right inside the room and judge them by the amount of trash on the floor. The star field swept to the side as they glided up into a nook next to an embedded communication array and nestled their shield boundary close to the Ozark's outer hull.
“Well, I told you there were ships out there.”
Marc's arms folded across his chest. He had a relaxed look, back and shoulders curved into a partial slump in the chair, eyes steady on the screen. The green light from his weapons program washed over half of his body, contrasting with the blue from her bigger, brighter screen. The view on his screen swayed as they drifted, mirroring hers.
“Have you stopped with the crazy flying yet?” Soo-jin's voice drifted up the hall. “'Cause I kinda have to pee.”
“Yeah, go for it,” Karin called back. “But if they shoot, don't hold me responsible for evading.”
“I'll be quick.”
The Ozark's communication link still sat active in the corner. It caught her eye when she glanced over to it. Nick's face had appeared, gesturing toward the camera.
She swiped it into a one-quarter view on her screen. “Nick, what's the word?”
“Alliance called in, and Hopper left. Did you really blast the door?”
“Only half of it.”
“Sol.”
“I already apologized. I'm not going to do it again. What did Alliance say? Has Fallon called?”
“No. No word.”
She touched the controls and edged the Nemina forward, taking another peek at the two ships. Massive. Old Earth had entire countries smaller than the vessels on the screen in front of her. She'd read once that, kitted up and on full alert, an Alliance cruiser could hold up to eighty-thousand personnel. This one, she suspected, didn't. If it had, they would have sent more fighters after the Nemina. Her entire plan had been stupid to begin with—ill-thought out and flawed down to its very principle. There was no way Marc should have been able to outwit the cruiser by running.
Except that he had. And her math had held true. And here they were, on the flip side of it, and the Enmerkar had caught up to them.
Maybe they had Lost on board. Enough to cripple the crew down to its skeleton.
And maybe Fallon did, too. With a tap of a key, the ship's idents checked into the Nemina's dashboard, and she got a name. Agni. God of fire, in one of Fallon's more popular pantheons.
And Enmerkar is a Mesopotamian hero. Sol, I'm in
the middle of a mythic battle.
Realizing the two of them were waiting on her, she glanced up to the screen and shook her head. “I've got no idea. Marc? Any idea on Fallon?”
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“Haven't been back in two years.”
Behind him, Cookie poked his head around the corner of the threshold. “Is it talk time?”
“I guess.”
She squinted. The light from the screen was beginning to glare at her eyes. The pressure hadn't let up, either, instead settling into a constant throbbing that pulsed into her temple. A few wrappers on the floor crackled as Cookie passed the back of her chair and settled into the navigation next to her. The tape had held well. All three laptops remained on the console.
She rubbed a hand to her forehead, eyeing his hands as he reactivated his dolphin laptop. “Don't suppose you can put another virus up their butt?”
“Karin?” The tiny voice, the strain in it amplified by the warble of the speakers, snapped her attention back to the screen.
Ethan.
He didn't quite fit the desk. Instead, he'd crawled into Nick's lap for the camera to see, looking small against his height and frame. The purple Starcats T-shirt, looking more worn than when she'd last seen it a few days ago, made a sharp contrast to the gray of his background and the paleness of Nick's arms. Even in the washed out camera feed, it brought out the green in his eyes.
“Hey.” She straightened in her chair. “Hey, long time no see.”
“I saw you yesterday.”
“Yeah, well...” Okay, maybe it hadn't been that long. “I didn't see you,” she finished, sounding lame.
“Are you going to get shot?” he asked.
“I hope not,” she said. “I don't like getting shot.”
“I don't like you getting shot, either.”
Well, she thought, letting out a slow breath as the earlier dizziness returned, not a whole lot to say to that. The conversation hit an awkward pause. They stared at each other through the feed, neither moving. By the way his jaw worked, and the tremble in his throat, he looked on the verge of tears.
“Don't worry,” she said. “They want me alive.”
Movement tracked onto her screen. One of the shuttles from Caishen looped under a ship at the far end of the docking platform and started toward them. She stiffened. “I have to go.”
“Bye.”
“Take care, Ethan. Keep using that netlink.”
She cut the transmission and swept the feed away. Gods, that had to be one of the most awkward goodbyes she'd had—but what more could she say to the kid? They'd delivered him back in his proper place. Christops would look after him, come what may. Wasn't anything else she could do for him.
And she had her own problems.
With a light touch of the controls, she swiveled them around to face the oncoming shuttle. Marc leaned forward, once again engaging the weapons panel.
“That one's got no guns, right?” Cookie eyed her screen. Rough stubble covered his chin and neck, and a few spots of acne had risen on his face. “It can't shoot us?”
“Sure,” Marc said. “And I can't hide a gun under my ship.”
“Point taken,” Cookie said. “You gonna shoot it?”
The sudden comms tone cut off Marc's reply, and the edges of Karin's screen flashed. She glanced at the address—the Enmerkar—and swiped it off.
“Soo-jin?” she called back. “Where you at?”
A shadow moved at the door, and Soo-jin clasped her hand to Karin's shoulder as she walked past. “We back to creative flying?”
“Yep. I think these guys are just here to stall us.” She jerked her head to indicate the oncoming shuttle. “Why else come? We got no people to transfer.”
“Maybe it was part of whatever the Alliance wanted to talk about,” Marc said. “Caishen'll have to be talking to them by now.”
“More reason I don't want to wait around.”
Another comms tone came again. The flashing red outlined Soo-jin as she settled into the sensor station, the stone-serious mask of her face directed to the screen. The shuttle paused ahead of them, as if waiting. Karin watched her put the seat restraints on.
She swiped the comms screen away again and touched the controls. The Nemina shifted under her hand, her view pulling back toward the star field and the two ships.
“That's where I want to go. Right through. We can hit the belt past Clemens if we get lucky and hide in one of the thicker asteroids. Harder to detect.”
“But not impossible,” Marc said.
“No, not impossible. But by then, I think you'll have told me whatever it is you found out about my sister that has to do with Belenus, and maybe the asteroid will have orbited us a little bit closer.” She caught Marc's eye. “Failing that—Cookie, could you change idents again?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
“Then maybe we can pull into Eris or something or—No. I dunno. I'm thinking too far ahead.” She slapped the comms tone away when it beeped again. “Let's just get through this and see where we land, eh?”
More movement shifted on the screen. A second shuttle, this one the same as they'd used to transport the Lost onto the Ozark, glided into view.
She frowned. What are they doing?
The comms tone sounded again.
“Fine!” She slapped at it. With the navigation active, it expanded into a corner of her screen. “What?”
She almost regretted her tone when she saw the Alliance officer's uniform. Almost. Dark blue, it cut sharp against the light-toned walls of the Alliance bridge behind him. He must have been near the back, but away from the manual overrides. She'd been on a ship like his before—BL-023, the Sirona—back during her university days on Belenus. They'd built half the fleet at their oceanic headquarters in Sainte-Sabine, under the Belenar flag.
“Ms. Makos,” he started. “Thank you for answering. We just want to talk—”
“And I just wanted to help. And you guys fucking trapped me.” She made a wide gesture to encompass the space station. “I worked my ass off to help.”
Marc's eyebrow lifted, but he made no comment. She assumed he meant it more for her manner than the words themselves. Christops would have filled him in on the whole situation when he’d sent that update.
“Ms. Makos,” the Alliance officer began again. “I am Captain Ellion Briggs. I've been instructed to hold you in trust. No harm will come to you. Neither will you be... worked. This, I promise you.” His mouth twitched. “If, however, you don't comply, your ship has already been regarded as hostile. We will proceed with full arms.”
At that, she snorted.
“Full arms? Are you going to blow us out of space with your lancer cannon? Good luck picking us up after that. Any chance of your getting my healing will fucking freeze away into the vastness of space.”
She rubbed her eye again. The pressure had increased, this time accompanied by a swirl in her head that she had trouble fighting off. Taking a calming breath, she forced herself to relax.
“No, if you want my help, you'll let me fly away and send a message through the next relay. I've got a sister to find, and a corporation to annihilate.”
Captain Brigg's face tightened. “I'm afraid I can't do that, Ms. Makos.”
“Then fuck you.” She swiped the call off and turned back to her controls.
The Nemina pushed farther away from the Ozark, dipping below where the two Caishen shuttles now waited. In her upper camera, one of their noses pulled down with her, looking like it might follow, but someone must have stayed the pilot's hand.
Below, the star field opened up again, along with the draggled bottom of the station which extended down like long, squarish stalactites. The vibration from the engine increased as she readied for full burn, reverberating straight into her bones.
A good feeling.
“Well, that's that,” Marc said.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just don't see how it could help.
It's not like they offered anything.”
“Just safe passage and a promise.”
“A useless promise, considering why they want me. Gods.”
Her stomach did a flip as she jetted out from under the last bit of cover and the Enmerkar appeared uninterrupted on her right. She felt naked, with only empty space between them. If she could have taken the Ozark with her and used it as a shield, she would have.
Of course, they would have shot right through it. With that cruiser's capabilities, a transport like the Ozark would be little more than scrap pieces of dust by the time it was through.
At least the Nemina was harder to aim at.
The G-forces pulled at her as she ramped up the acceleration. Gravity shifted, compensated. As she gripped the controls, her stomach turned into a hard, stony lump. Her breath came short, heart roaring in her ears.
“Karin? You okay?”
“Yeah, just compression.” She swallowed, ignoring the stiffness in her neck. “I'll be fine.”
In her peripheral vision, Soo-jin had laid a suspicious gaze on her.
“Keep an eye on her. She's been ill.”
She ignored her, instead turning her attention to the Agni. So far, it hadn't tried to hail them—and it had slowed, swinging its broadside out to face perpendicular as the Enmerkar had closed in. It reminded her of the old, tall-masted ships. Turning broadside made it look like an animal showing its belly, but the connection was false. Right now, every weapon on that side had a clear, free shot at the cruiser.
And, of course, into the gap of space she was currently flying into.
Sol.
But the first shot came from the Alliance. A simple laser-bolt, small, thin, and used largely to make a point as it shot past the space in front of her, making the Nemina's sensors ring and washing a red glow through the windows. The comms tone rang again.
She clutched the controls steady, eyeing the dashboard. After a few seconds, Marc reached forward and switched the tone off.
By the next shot, they'd finished being polite.
The sensors screamed. Soo-jin shouted a warning.
The lasers slammed into their front shields. The Nemina shuddered and screeched, back end tipping up from impact. Karin crashed hard against her seat restraints, and all the breath blew out of her as the G-forces snapped her head forward and crushed the seat restraints into her chest and collarbone, cutting into her skin. The controls bucked in her hands. Part of the blanket behind her flapped onto her shoulder, throwing one wrapper up onto the dashboard in front of her.
