by K. Gorman
“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 staggered 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 flopped onto her shoulder, throwing one wrapper up onto the dashboard in front of her.
She eased them through the slide, tripped one of the engines to compensate, and pulled them back onto their path. They’d tipped onto their side during the hit, rolling their belly toward the Enmerkar—but things like that didn’t matter so much in space when each ship had its own gravity generator.
As she ripped through space, pushing the Nemina’s acceleration hard, their sensors lit up once again.
“Agni’s responding.”
Blue light flared to her left. Her eyes widened as the warship opened up like a festival tree.
Holy fucking shit.
The Nemina rocked as the lasers shot past, barely a meter above them. Her eyes widened further when it kept going, straight into the cruiser.
The Enmerkar’s shields flared to life, rippling from impact.
Not a warning shot.
And, in that moment, the entire momentum of the situation shifted.
“Oh, saints.” Soo-jin sat up in her chair, eyes on the sensor station. “Fighters scrambling. Karin—go!”
“Going!”
She dipped as a blue laser shot slashed the air above them. The dashboard rang with warnings, and the ship shuddered as another laser shot—also blue, but this time from the Enmerkar—glanced off their upper shield. The impact rang through her wrists.
Righting them onto a path, she blasted the Nemina into an arc below the firefight. Another laser smashed into their shields. Metal groaned above her head, and her heart leapt as she shot a wide-eyed look to the ceiling. It hadn’t hit, but the impact lurched them down a meter all the same.
Beams came from all directions now. Body tense, she clutched the controls in a death grip and shoved them forward.
Beside her, Cookie had a death grip on the armrests.
“Oh, Clio. Oh, Clio. Oh, Clio. Oh, Clio.” He sucked in a breath as they rocked from a hit.
She spun them as another blast jetted their way, picked up by the sens
ors. The direct hit made only a slight rock as it pinged off their backend.
A Fallon fighter slid into sight ahead of them. She pulled down, smacking into another shot—a rail-gun, this time. As she used the momentum to spiral away, the G-forces tugged at her head. Black spots appeared in her vision. She sucked in a breath and fought against it. Another laser slammed onto their side. The entire ship jerked left. The controls bucked out of her hands and cracked against the dashboard.
The ship lurched down.
“Karin!”
A hand on her arm, fingers tightening on her bicep. She coughed, forced herself up. Something oozed from her mouth. As she grabbed for the controls again, a warm, wet feeling pressed into her knee. Her throat burned.
Shit.
She’d lost time. The stars were in a different position, same with the dashboard and the ships on screen. Only a few seconds or so, but… She righted their drift. Fortunately, they’d managed to not get hit while she’d been gone.
“You okay?”
She shook her head, not wanting to speak. Her throat scraped raw at the back of her mouth, hot with acid. As she pulled them back up, her jaw tightened at the swarm of ships that came into view. Fighters, both Fallon and Alliance, swirled around each other, firing shots.
Clio, how are we going to get out of this?
A blue bolt lit up the sky, thick, like the thumb of god, over half a kilometer wide. The Enmerkar absorbed the hit with its shields. Now broadside, it returned fire with a bevy of laser cannons, all of which seemed like flies on the Agni’s side.
“Christ,” she said.
At least, no one seemed to be firing at them anymore.
The black spots returned to her vision, but she blinked them back and swallowed a hard lump of acid down her throat. Taking slow, shallow breaths, she forced her shaking hands to guide them back on course, then reached for the dashboard over the controls. The Nemina’s map-window flashed open, overlaying the battle notifications. Step by step, line by guided line, the heady, breathless feeling rising with each stroke she added to the map, she pushed through a basic course and registered it with the computer.
A fighter appeared at their side—Fallon, with an angular, pointed nose and its shield glowing a faint blue around it. For a second, she could see the outline of its pilot on the camera screen, then the Fallon cannon screamed a blue streak over the battlefield and it instantly silhouetted against the stark backlight. The pressure mounted in her head.
After the shot passed, she watched it tip its wings and fly away. Her legs slid down the chair.
The last thing she remembered before she passed out was the flare of the fighter’s engine, burning against the Black, the scramble of ships dancing in the backdrop, and, beyond them, the stars, calling to her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sunset bathed the ruins again, as it had for the last three dreams she’d seen them. The golden-pink light washed over each stone face, making their lines even less decipherable than normal. Summer had left the slope. Even without turning to look, she could tell. The grass under her feet felt more like sticks, and the ground jarred hard and cold against her skin.
They were bare again.
For a few seconds, she looked around. The air had an edge that cut at her throat when she breathed, but it didn’t strike her as cold, per se. Not the cold she’d felt in space, anyway—nor on Belenus or Mayari. She remembered those places now. Before, in her dreams, she hadn’t, but now, she did. Parts of it, anyway.
She shouldn’t be here—that, she knew. They’d escaped this place long ago. Killed their way out.
Or had they?
They’re taking our memories, Rin.
She frowned as Nomiki’s voice flowed through her mind, then shifted her gaze uphill where the ruins stood waiting, mere meters away. She’d been fighting, before this, but it didn’t feel important anymore.
She walked up to one and put a hand to its gritty surface, dragging it down. Then she turned and took in the rest of the slope. A deep, burned orange flecked the scene. Most of the hillside had turned brown with dirt, but, here and there, a tuft emerged, or one of the small, sturdy bushes that could make it through the drought, marking the scene like divots of darker color. At the bottom, the western forest turned the base into shadows, their tops tinged with the setting sun’s light fire. From this far away, and at this time of day, she couldn’t see the details of the tress, only their darkness.
She shivered, then turned. A sound had caught her attention, coming up behind her. Her gaze went into the stone circle.
Nomiki stood in its center, as she’d known she would.
“You’re remembering,” her sister said.
She didn’t wear a dress today. Like Karin, hers was a more modern version of herself. Post-escape, from the Sirius site of the gate. She remembered the loose-fitting clothes from Belenus, where they’d settled for a while—some mix of Old Earth Bohemia and Nova’s techno-fashion.
“Remembering what?”
Nomiki made a small gesture, a half shrug that she turned into a step forward. The shadows of the stones gave her a sharp look, only accentuated by her dark features.
“Remembering this,” she said, sweeping her hand in an arc to indicate the stones and the slope below them. “Remembering us. What we used to be.”
She gave another small shrug, then met Karin’s eyes. “They took it away from us. You remember that, right?”
“Our memories?”
“Yes, those, too. But so much more.”
Beside them, the sun dipped farther down on the horizon, marking the movement of the dream-time. Karin frowned. “What more is there?”
Her words were starting to slip. She fought, feeling the sudden turn of the dream, feeling its end almost upon them. “What do you mean? So much more what?”
But the scene was already fading. Nomiki’s gaze, still in the stone’s shadow, followed her out.
Her lips moved, but Karin did not hear what she said.
The sounds of the ship returned slow and low, pounding in her head like rotors on a giant boat. She recognized the vibration first. The rumble of metal that put a subsonic hum against her skin. Her fingers twitched against it, feeling metal, feeling the soft, thin threads of her old blanket.
For a second, scenes from Enlil flashed through her mind, then the Ozark. She’d given it to Ethan, seen him wearing it.
But that had been long ago.
She wasn’t on the Ozark. She wasn’t on Enlil, either.
As she rolled over, wincing as the movement pulled at a thread of dizziness in her frontal lobe, the familiar beveled walls of her cabin came into view. The system clock on her locker read 07:25.
She had no idea what that meant. Time blurred together in her mind.
Blinking back the grogginess from her vision, and trying to put the pieces back together, it took her a few seconds to notice Marc standing in the doorway, his form nearly silhouetted against the light outside.
“Karin? You awake?”
“Guess so.” Her mouth had a dry, chapped taste to it. She licked her lips and cleared her throat. “How long have I been out?”
“About a cycle. You spent most of it sleeping.”
She squinted. “Since neither of us are in a jail cell, and you aren’t panicking and racing for your guns, I’m assuming we got out okay.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
His head tilted—that much she could see in the light—and the hall’s outer light washed over the planes of his face. “Mind if I sit?”
“Sure.”
She’d expected him to head for the bunk across from her. It was still pulled out and piled with bedding.
But at the last minute, she realized his permission had been for her bunk. She swung her legs back, wincing at a stiff bruise that announced itself along her hip, and made room.
The mattress dipped down with his weight. Immediately, a flush of heat rushed through her blood as she remembered the other t
ime he’d sat on her bunk.
She’d never been truly intimate with anyone. With the few boyfriends she’d had in university, she’d cuddled only as a matter of principle, a behavior she’d seen and heard done but had never really done herself. She’d had sex, but the closeness… she’d done the deed but kept them at arm’s length.
Except now, here she was, and here he was, and it felt right somehow.
Or maybe she just needed to get laid a bit more. The man had made zero passes at her. And she was thinking way too much about the way he was sitting. Doctors did this sort of thing all the time. Or at least they had, back…
She frowned. Wait. Had they?
It felt like they had, but when she tried to think about it, the memory evaded her.
Nomiki’s voice slipped through the front of her mind.
Don’t you remember what we used to be?
“Soo-jin’s been keeping an eye on you,” he said. “Said you were out of the danger zone.”
“Yeah?”
“We put you through two I.V.s. Your levels went up after a few hours, whatever that means.” He shifted, the movement making her knee and ankle dip. “She said you’d overworked yourself.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
A pain crimped her shoulder, and she eased herself back down onto the pillow. Why. She was asking herself that a lot.
“Thought I could help,” she said.
“You almost got us killed.”
“I know.” A tight knot of emotion closed up her throat. She swallowed it back, forcing herself to blink past the tears. Her upper lip curled back from her teeth. “You can bet I’m not doing that again. Ungrateful fucking jerks.”
He snorted. “I’ll say.”
“What happened with Fallon? I seem to recall them not shooting at us.”
“Well…” he hesitated. “They were still fighting when we left. We’re too far out to really pick up the battle—we think they’ve stopped now, but…”
She lifted her head. “But?”
“We’ve got a ship on our tail. Fallon scout. Same as Nemina, but newer, with no storage on the back.”
