by Justin Sloan
“If you’re talking about them,” Valerie said to the female Skulla between cheers, leaning close to her ear, “I don’t think you’re reading the situation right.”
“Anyone who shows a lack of excitement is assumed to be a dissenter and…removed.”
“Removed,” Valerie repeated the word, hating what it meant.
It was clear this planet wouldn’t be an optimal Federation ally, at least not as it currently stood.
As of that moment, this fight was no longer about simply earning favor to get intel. It became about making a difference. Overthrowing the system, if possible. And she was sick of watching and listening.
Pushing past the guards, she strode into the fighting pit. The guards followed her, but there in the seat of honor, high above the arena, was the female with the gems in her hair, her attendants nearby. At a wave from the female, the guards stopped pursuing.
“I want the best,” Valerie shouted. “Give me your champion and I’ll give you a show!”
The crowd was silent for a moment from pure shock. Then like thunder breaking they cheered, many pounding their feet.
Another wave from the female shut them up, and she stood. “That is not how things are done here, Wandrei.”
Complete silence again.
“These fine Skulla came for a show. They want blood? Well, what better way to give it to them than from the lips of a vampire?”
With that Valerie ran forward and leaped from one of the weapon stands. She hit the rail of the stands and ran along it, pushing fear and letting her eyes glow red as she went. When she was at the seat of honor she froze, snarling so that her fangs showed.
It was a gamble—a show of force and power—and she had no idea how it would be received.
“If you won’t give it to me, I’ll take it,” she said and smiled, pulling one of the guards with her as she jumped back into the pit. It was a long drop, but one she was ready for.
As she hit she pushed off from the guard, letting him take the majority of the impact as she rolled aside.
When she’d recovered she turned to see him struggling to stand, but then he collapsed.
“Your champion is defeated,” Valerie proclaimed. “I’ll be back tomorrow for a real fight.”
Before they could respond or try to do anything that might actually threaten her, Valerie darted at vampire speed into the stands, making it out through the windows and clawing her way down.
She could only hope Robin and the others would have the wisdom to head back and not get trapped themselves. To be sure, she lingered right outside the main part of the city until she saw movement.
It wasn’t them, though, but one of the city’s small fighters. She started running, debating whether she could take it down or not, and was just about to speed up when the door opened and Robin’s face poked out.
“Get in, you idiot,” she shouted, and the fighter dropped.
“You took one of their fighters?” Valerie asked. She jumped for it, landing inside as the ramp raised. “What if they have a tracker? Won’t that lead them to us?”
“That was the plan, actually,” Garcia said, pointing to Flynn. “We fly it out a ways, then double back to the Grandeur. Lead them off our path.”
“Not bad, actually,” Valerie said, catching her breath.
“Sure, not bad if we stick to the plan,” Robin shouted. “Some of us are capable of that, but others are…less so!”
Valerie glanced at them, furious that they should second-guess her, but then her head started to clear. Damn! Maybe she had made a mistake?
Had she acted rashly? Clearly Robin felt she had.
“It… It’ll work out,” Valerie said, moving to the wall. She plopped down and rested her head against it, and closed her eyes.
Fuck, she hoped it really would work out and she hadn’t just screwed up her very first mission for Bad Company and the Etheric Federation. If she’d ruined it, she would have come here for nothing. Robin would have left her parents behind for nothing.
And whatever existed of this rebellion? Nothing would come of it, most likely.
“Hell, no,” she said, eyes popping open. She stood again, determined. “I made the right call, dammit, and tomorrow I’m going to prove it to you.”
The others stared at her in shock, then Robin nodded. The fighter swerved as Garcia looked back and Flynn shrugged.
“Good! I hope so,” Flynn shrugged, “because honestly, that was awesome!”
Valerie smiled, and the rest started laughing and agreeing, telling her where they had been at the time, the feelings of shock and awe that had hit them as they saw what she was doing, and how they had gotten out of there by tackling a couple guards who were trying to intercept her.
Even Robin was into it now that her initial bout of anger had passed.
Sure, it was going to be insane from here out, but that only made it more fun. And tomorrow they were going to fucking bring it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Swarthian Extended Detention Environment (SEDE)
As they approached the Nim hangar, Kalan leaned over to Bob. “I need Wearl. Tell me when she’s close enough to hear me whisper.”
A moment later something brushed his nose.
“She’s pretty damn close,” Bob said.
“Yeah. Wearl, listen. As soon as we step into the hangar, I want you to watch the door. As soon as the first Shimmer crosses the threshold I’m going to drop him. Got it?”
“She does,” Bob whispered.
Kalan took a deep breath. They were almost there. Almost to freedom, but this last step was going to be the most difficult. So far it had all been bluster and bravado, but now it would require real combat.
And the thing about real fights was that they were impossible to predict. Being right didn’t mean you were going to win.
He approached the narrow doorway that led to the hangar, his arm still tight around Sslake’s neck. Through the entry he caught his first glimpse of one of the Nim-class fighters and a wave of nostalgia rolled over him.
Once upon a time these ugly long-nosed vessels had been his oasis. When he was piloting one of these babies, even though it was in defense of his captors, he hadn’t felt like a prisoner. He’d felt free.
“Okay, here we go,” he muttered, and he maneuvered Sslake through the door into the hangar.
As soon as they crossed the threshold Bob spoke, panic in his voice.
“Um, the Shimmers are yelling, telling us to release Minister Sslake. They’ve kept up their end of the deal, and they expect us to do the same.”
“Wearl, where we at?” Kalan muttered.
Bob listened for a moment. “Wearl says now!”
Kalan released Sslake just as the guards had demanded, but then he levelled his pistol at the entryway and fired. He couldn’t see his enemy, but according to Wearl they were standing there. He’d have to trust her.
He squeezed the trigger, firing round after round through the open doorway. He couldn’t see if he was hitting anything or not, but he wasn’t about to stop firing.
“Stop!” Bob yelled. “Wearl says to stop and take cover.”
Kalan hesitated, but only for a moment. He had to trust his teammates—there was no other choice if he was going to get through this. He lowered his weapon and ran for a nearby stack of crates. If he could reach them, they would provide the ideal cover.
A strange boom split the air. Kalan had heard it before, but only rarely. It was the sound of the Shimmers’ weapons. He didn’t know what material the weapons were composed of that made them as invisible to the human eye as their users, but he did know they were effective. When he was nine he’d seen a prisoner torn to shreds by those weapons.
Kalan reached the crates and crouched behind them, his pistol at the ready.
The strange, muted booming sounds continued in the passageway. He didn’t understand why the Shimmers weren’t moving into the hangar since they had every advantage here. Kalan was the only one on his side w
ho was armed, and the Shimmers were invisible.
After a few moments the gunfire ceased, leaving only a low hum in Kalan’s ears.
To his surprise, Bob spoke. “Guys? Wearl says it’s over.”
Kalan blinked hard, confused. “What’s over? How can it be over?”
“Well, according to her, she grabbed a gun from the one you shot in the doorway and mowed down the rest of them.”
“Holy shit,” Kalan said. “Seriously?”
Bob was silent for a moment. “Wearl, I didn’t mean anything by ‘according to her.’ It’s a turn of phrase, or whatever. I mean, thanks for saving our lives and all, but you don’t have to be so sensitive.”
Kalan stood up from behind the crates, marveling that they’d made it so far, but there was no time to dwell on it. They had to get going. He gestured to the two dozen Nim fighters parked in the hangar. “Minister Sslake, care to select our ride?”
The minister smiled. “I guess you owe me that much, since you punched me in the face. That one.” He pointed to the ship directly in front of him.
Kalan eyed the call number on the tail. “Ah, Nim 47. A solid choice.” In reality the ships were identical, but there was no need to go into that now. “Wearl, it’s going to take me a minute to prep the ship. Would you take out any Shimmers who try to get through that door?”
“She says she will,” Bob reported.
“Good.” Kalan imagined it wouldn’t be long before the guards arrived in full force.
Bob cast a wary eye toward the ship. “Are all of us going to fit on that thing?”
Kalan opened Nim 47’s hatch and pulled down the ladder. “They’re designed to seat four. A pilot, a gunner, and a navigator. They are also forced to take a Shimmer along to babysit.”
“Gunner,” Bob muttered. “That sounds promising.”
Kalan nodded. “It has railguns, sort of.”
With that, he climbed aboard.
“Sort of?” Bob called after him. “What’s he mean by that?” he asked no one in particular.
Kalan maneuvered to the cockpit and reached under the seat, his hand immediately settling on a small plastic box. The survival kit.
He hurriedly pulled it out and set it on the seat, then flipped it open and pulled out the knife.
Back when he’d flown for SEDE, they’d been strictly prohibited from touching the survival kit and checked when they exited the vessel to make sure they hadn’t taken the knife or anything else from the ship.
But no one was watching him now.
Outside the ship, a Shimmer gun blasted a series of shots off.
“Everything all right?” he called.
“Yeah,” Bob answered. “Three guards showed up, but our girl took care of them.”
“Thank fortune for that Shimmer,” he called as he touched the control panel and initiated the startup sequence.
He touched his right palm, searching for the hard spot. When he’d found it, he took a deep breath and pressed the tip of the knife into the flesh of his hand.
The Shimmers had proven they could track him via the chip. He had no idea if it could track him outside SEDE, but he wasn’t going to take the chance. He gritted his teeth and kept cutting until he was able to pull the chip loose.
Then he grabbed a bandage from the survival kit and did his best to stop the bleeding.
“Okay, everybody but Wearl get up here,” Kalan yelled. “Wearl, we need you to cover the door for another minute.”
He then slid under the console and checked the weapons array, confirming the design was still the same as it had been back when he’d flown these ships.
Bob and Minister Sslake climbed aboard and settled into their seats, Bob taking the co-pilot’s chair. Both of them eyed Kalan’s bandaged hand as he emerged from under the console.
Sslake held out his hand. “I guess you’d better hand me that knife. I’ve got a chip too.”
Kalan nodded and wordlessly handed over the blade.
The minister immediately went to work, stifling his grunts of pain as he removed the chip.
Kalan glanced at the console and saw that the startup sequence was complete. He hurried to the hatch and tossed out both bloody chips. “Wearl, let’s go! Time to head out.”
A moment later he felt something brush past him.
“Welcome aboard,” he said with a grin. Then he pulled the door shut and latched it, creating an airtight seal.
“So we’re ready then?” Sslake asked.
Kalan nodded. “Bob, slide under that console for me.”
To his credit, the human did so without question.
“You see that green circuit?” Kalan asked. “When I tell you, pull it out of its slot.”
Bob nodded. “Not a problem. Gonna tell me why?”
Kalan grabbed the controls and began taxiing toward the hangar door as he spoke. “These things were designed to be flown by prisoners in defense of SEDE, so they built in a failsafe. If this ship gets too far away from SEDE, the proximity meter knows it and it engages a kill-switch. Cuts power to the whole damn ship.”
Sslake leaned forward in his seat. “That sounds like it’s going to be a problem.”
“It would, but I figured out a workaround. I was never able to use it, though, because I always had a Shimmer guard on board. Plus, the workaround has a nasty side effect.”
“What’s that?” Bob asked warily.
“The proximity meter is hardwired into the weapons array. To disable it I have to remove the whole damn thing.”
“Wait. That means we can’t use the railguns.”
“Exactly.” He punched a code into the console and the door at the end of the hangar slid open, exposing a massive airlock. Then he maneuvered the ship around so it faced the other ships. “I want to do one thing first, though.”
He sprayed the other Nim fighters with a relentless barrage of ammunition.
After a few long moments he was satisfied. He may not have disabled every ship, but it would take them a while to figure out which ones were still operational. That should give them enough time to get clear.
As they taxied toward the airlock Bob said, “Geez, you’re lucky you didn’t put a hole in the prison.”
Kalan chuckled. “Nah. Our railguns are nice, but SEDE is a tough old bird. I doubt we could breach her hull. Pull that green circuit, would you?”
Bob did as asked.
Kalan brought them to a stop inside the airlock and punched another code into his display. The door to the hangar closed and sealed, and the one to space beyond the ship opened.
Kalan touched the controls and a moment later they were cruising away from SEDE.
He turned to his shipmates and smiled. “That, my friends, is how you break out of a prison.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Planet Tol: Outlands
The fighter had taken them far enough, Valerie reasoned. Nothing but desert stretched before them, and they had lost sight of the city long ago.
“On the count of three,” Valerie shouted as Garcia prepared to angle the fighter up. He hadn’t figured out if there was an automatic pilot feature on this alien craft, so their best bet was to set it on a straight and slightly upward trajectory, then leap before it got too high.
“Three!” she shouted, and they all leaped, rolling across the sand.
It hurt, but they would heal.
The story of her life.
As they recovered they watched the fighter disappear, and then Valerie told them to hurry so they ran back toward the stashed Grandeur. With all this desert around and the measures they had taken to conceal it, they didn’t expect the enemy would have found the ship.
As they were cresting a sand dune, Robin grabbed Valerie and Flynn and hissed for Garcia to get down.
“What is it?” he asked, taking a knee and glancing around.
“Five fighters, that way,” Robin replied, pointing back the way they had come.
Garcia edged toward the peak, risking a subtle glance o
ver. “They’re pursuing the one we sent off, so that plan worked.”
“At least one plan—” Robin started, but Valerie cut her off with a glare.
“No more of that,” Valerie demanded. “It’s over. What they were doing…it’s barbaric. Humans aren’t any better, I know that firsthand, but when a human does it? At least now in North America, or whatever they’re calling it these days, we have systems in place to stop those kinds of crazies. These people need to be stopped too.”
“I thought we came here to collect intel?” Flynn asked.
“And we will,” Garcia said. “No more deviating from the plan. Right, Val?”
“You two clearly don’t know her like I do,” Robin said, shaking her head.
“From what I hear, no,” Garcia replied, earning a glare from Robin and a simple clenched-jaw stare from Valerie.
“What I meant was, once Valerie sees injustice like this—people being treated unfairly, the innocent being hurt, whatever—she doesn’t let it go. She’ll do whatever it takes to see this end, if I’m right about her.”
“Her? Really?” Valerie motioned and they started moving again, slower though, cautious of letting themselves be seen by the pursuing fighters. “I’m right here. You don’t need to speak about me like I’m on some other planet. And why would we let it stand?”
“Because it’s not our job?” Flynn replied. “Because it would probably be impossible to make a difference here? But not only that, what does it mean for the rest of the universe? Do you have any idea how many problem areas there are? How many planets have injustice going on as we speak? You won’t live long enough to see them all, let alone fix them.”
“Didn’t you hear?” she replied, careful not to stumble over a ridge in the sand. “Vampires live a damn long time.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re not really a vampire. Now that we’re upgraded too, you’re basically just a more badass version of me and Garcia here.”
“One with fangs and red glowing eyes, thank you very much.” She glanced back and figured they were probably in the clear, so they picked up the pace.
