by R. M. Olson
Masha smiled broadly. She tossed the dummy gun to Ysbel, who caught it expertly in one hand, her other still holding firm to Olya.
“Now,” Masha called up to the guards on the wall. “It looks like we need to sit down and have a talk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
YSBEL, DAY 12
Ysbel looked around the courtyard, smiling broadly, then glanced down at the little eight-year-old who’s hand was still clasped in hers. Olya was grinning as well.
Somehow, they’d pulled it off.
Somehow, impossibly, they’d pulled this ridiculous suicide plan off.
Tanya met her eye, and for a moment, Ysbel thought her chest might break open from the happiness flooding through her.
“We’ll need you to drop your guns,” Masha called. “I’d hate for something to happen to these guards.”
Ysbel glanced around again, impressed despite herself by Radic and Ivan. They’d managed to gather the groups of prisoners into two loose knots. In the front were the hostages, and behind them, shielded by the hostages from the long-range guns of the guards and out of reach of the wall cannons, they were impossible to hit.
Tanya came close, and Ysbel leaned in and gave her a lingering kiss, blinking back tears.
They’d done it.
It was the noise that alerted her. For a moment, between the noise of the prisoners and the noise of the guards, it hardly registered in her brain, the metallic scraping, grinding sound from the walls.
Then she looked up. Her whole body went cold with horror.
Tanya followed her gaze, and drew in a quick breath.
“Masha,” said Ysbel, just loud enough to be heard. “Lev. Tae. I think we miscalculated.”
Masha glanced over at her with just a hint of irritation, then followed her gaze.
Lev was already staring, grim-faced, and Tae looked like someone had punched him in the stomach.
On the walls, the towers were pushing apart as the guns rolled forward, creaking on the thick rails.
“Manual,” Tae whispered. “No wonder I couldn’t hack them. They’re manually-operated.” He swore bitterly. “I should have guessed. I should have thought of that.”
The warden strode out onto the walls.
“Stand down, prisoners.” Her voice was tight. “Release the guards, or so help me, I’ll have those who are left of you cleaning up bits of your friends off the grounds for the next week.”
The cannons, on their new trajectory, were pointed directly at the mass of prisoners.
Ysbel’s whole body felt sluggish with a sort of sick horror, the blood thick in her veins, her heart struggling to pump, her muscles struggling to react.
She swallowed down the bitter despair coating her throat, forced her lungs to breathe in.
“Masha. We’d best stand down,” she said quietly.
Masha glanced behind her at where Lev and Tae were supporting the bloodied Jez, then over at Tanya and the children. Her gaze lingered on Misko for a moment, and Ysbel was surprised at the softness in her face.
She turned to Radic, who had come up beside them.
“Ysbel says stand down,” she said quietly. Radic nodded. His face was pale. He turned to the prisoners behind them.
“Go ahead,” he said, just loudly enough to be heard in the now-silent crowd. “Let them go.”
Slowly, the prisoners stepped back from the guards. The guards, hands still cuffed, gathered in a small knot.
“Stay back,” the warden called. “If anyone comes within three metres of them, I’ll order the gunners to fire.”
No one moved as the stairs were let down again, and a group of grim-faced guards came down. A handful of them held their weapons on the crowd as the others pulled the handcuffed guards back to safety.
They didn’t retreat up the ladder with the others. Instead, more guards came down to join them. The expressions on their faces told Ysbel that whatever was going to happen next, it wasn’t going to be good.
“Olya,” she whispered. “I need you to do something for Mama, OK? I need you to stand behind me. I need you to keep your eyes closed, OK sweetheart? I don’t want you to look.” She bent down and looked into the girl’s small, stubborn face, pale with fear.
“Olya. Mama and Mamochka will try to keep you safe. Do you understand me?”
Olya nodded, her face still pale.
“I love you, Olya.”
“I love you, Mama.” Her voice was almost inaudible.
Tanya had come to stand beside them. She lifted Misko down off her hip. “Olya, my sweet. You need to watch your brother. Can you do that for me? Just like we do on work shift?”
Olya looked between Ysbel and Tanya and nodded solemnly.
“And Misko, you listen to your sister. Alright? Just like in work shift.”
Misko nodded, clutching his sister’s hand.
Tanya kissed them both on the forehead. Ysbel did the same, running her hand over Misko’s soft hair, something thick in her throat.
Her children.
She blinked back tears as she turned back.
She was side by side with Tanya, their bodies shielding the children. Tanya slipped her hand into Ysbel’s and Ysbel squeezed it tightly.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too,” Tanya whispered back. “I have always loved you.”
She glanced up. Masha had moved closer as well, adding her body to theirs. It wouldn’t do much, not if the guards started shooting. But still, the sight of it made a lump rise in her throat.
Lev had moved closer too, with Jez leaned awkwardly against his shoulder.
She frowned. Where was Tae?
Then she saw him, a few meters away. He had his com up, and was typing into it frantically. She shook her head fondly.
He wouldn’t give up. He wouldn’t ever give up. Two weeks of trying to hack into the wall cannons with no success, but he wasn’t going to let them die without trying one more time.
“Well,” she said softly. “I suppose that we have lost for good this time. We don’t even have our crazy pilot to break out and save us anymore.” She paused. “I am sorry. I’m sorry I brought you into this. But—” she swallowed back tears. “But I will die here, with my wife and my children, and—and with my friends. For that, I thank you.”
“Sorry we didn’t do a better job at all this,” said Lev quietly, giving her a wry smile.
Masha said nothing. But there was a look on her face that told Ysbel more than Masha probably wanted her to know.
She looked up again. The guards were starting towards them.
She squeezed Tanya’s hand one last time. At least this time, they’d die together.
She supposed, in the end, that was all she could ask.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
JEZ, DAY 12
Jez looked around her with bleary eyes.
Apparently, they were all going to die.
Nothing new there, really.
It was hard to care too much at the moment. Whatever had been in the white pill that Masha had given her had granted her a sort of serenity. It still hurt—everything still hurt. She wasn’t actually sure that there was a muscle in her body that didn’t hurt. On the other hand, she cared a lot less, which was probably a good thing. Considering.
Behind her, Tanya and Ysbel stood side by side. She smiled fondly.
If they were all going to die, it was kind of nice that at least those two’d get to die together. Ysbel would probably appreciate that.
She was upright, somehow, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. By rights, she should be on the ground. If her injuries hadn’t done it, whatever Masha had given her sure as hell would have. But she was standing.
Oh. She glanced over. Lev stood beside her, looking ahead at the approaching guards, grim-faced. His arm was around her loosely, and she was leaned up against his shoulder.
It was kind of nice, actually. If she was going to die with somebody, she was suddenly glad that it was going to
be with this soft scholar-boy. There was something about him.
And, the nice thing was, she didn’t have to think too hard about it, because they were, in fact, both going to die.
Although, she thought vaguely, if they didn’t die, it might be nice to be leaned up against him one day when she wasn’t either beat up or completely smashed. Or, in this case, both.
She’d have to think about that, if they survived this.
The guards stalked towards them, faces grim, weapons drawn. The other prisoners had mostly drawn back, but, to her gratification, Radic stood alongside them. So did Tae’s buddy, Ivan.
Although, come to think of it, she couldn’t remember seeing Tae lately. She was pretty sure that at some point he’d been helping Lev hold her upright, since her legs didn’t appear to be functioning anymore, but he wasn’t there now.
She glanced over just to make certain.
And then, pushing through the guards, came a figure that was far too familiar. Even in her state, something cold and sick grabbed her chest when she saw him, and beside her she felt Lev stiffen.
Zhurov grinned at her with his little, beady, brush-pig eyes. There was something savage and triumphant in his expression.
“Hey there,” she said, her words slurring with a mixture of split lip and Masha’s painkiller. “Glad you came. I didn’t have enough ugly in my morning yet.”
He scowled. Beside her, Lev gave an exasperated sigh. “Do you have to?” he whispered.
“Yep.” She tried to grin, but it was harder than it looked, since her lips seemed to have swollen to at least twice their normal size, and there was something wrong with her jaw.
She shrugged philosophically.
Hardly mattered now.
The dull ‘boom’ from outside the walls hardly even caught her attention.
The same couldn’t be said for the guards. The stopped, their postures tense.
There was another ‘boom.”
This time she glanced over, faintly interested.
If the guards were so curious, maybe it was worth taking a look.
Another boom, and the ground of the courtyard shook slightly. Beside her, Lev stiffened.
“What—” he whispered.
The courtyard shook again, and the guards on top of the wall staggered. A few chunks of broken prefab blocks tumbled to the ground.
This was actually quite interesting. More interesting than watching the guards come to kill them.
On top of the wall, the warden was shouting frantically. Guards ran towards the wall cannons, shoving frantically in an attempt to turn them to face something outside the walls.
Another explosion shook the grounds, and one of the guards toppled off the outside of the wall.
And then a shape rose above the prison walls. For half a second she stared at it blankly. And then, for the first time since she’d woken up in her prison cell after the beating, her mind snapped back into laser focus.
“Tae!” she screamed, ignoring pain in her jaw. “You bastard! What the hell are you doing with my ship!”
“Jez!” Lev grunted as she tried to push herself upright and almost toppled over.
“He’s got my ship! He’s controlling my damn ship! Tae! You dirty bastard! Let go of my ship!”
Tae glanced up at her and gave a tight grin. “Give me a minute, Jez,” he called. “I’m in the middle of saving your life right now.”
“Forget about my damn life, worry about my ship!”
The guards were frozen, staring around them.
“Go!” Lev hissed to Radic.
“Come on!” Radic shouted over his shoulder, and the other prisoners started forward after him, just a handful at first, then a trickle, then a flood. The guards turned to run, but it was far too late.
Ysbel grabbed the nearest guard by the collar, brought him close, and dropped him with a head-butt to the bridge of his nose. Tanya grabbed another, and did something quick and graceful that Jez’s eyes couldn’t quite follow, and the guard she was holding dropped bonelessly to the ground. Jez raised an eyebrow. Maybe she needed to get to know this Tanya woman a little more. Masha, too, seemed to be using her fists in a way that was just as frighteningly competent as everything else about her.
“Lev,” she muttered. “Let go of me.”
“You’re going to fall over,” he said through his teeth.
“Might not.”
“You are going to stay out of this.” He dragged her over to a nearby wall, lowered her gently into a sitting position, and propped her up against it. “Stay there.”
On the one hand, she’d never liked doing what she was told. On the other, she probably couldn’t disobey if she wanted to.
He turned and snatched a shock-stick one of the guards had dropped, tested its weight, then swung it hard into the head of a guard who was running towards them. The man dropped, and Lev shuddered in distaste. She could almost picture the look on his face.
Outside the walls, her beautiful ship was firing at the walls, hovering above the ground. The sight of it still sent a jolt through her.
Damn that Tae.
Still, wasn’t much she could do about it, since he seemed determined to ignore her. And, he hadn’t crashed it yet, which was quite frankly more than she’d expected.
The all-out brawl in the courtyard was going in the direction of the prisoners by this point. And—
Another explosion, louder than the others. The force field above them seemed to shimmer and falter slightly, although that could have been either her swollen eyes, or Masha’s pill.
She glanced down at a sound on the courtyard in front of her.
It was Zhurov. But for once, he wasn’t looking at her. He seemed to have dropped his gun, but he’d managed to grab a chunk of pre-fab block, and was running at Lev. Lev hadn’t noticed him yet, still turned to face the guards in front of them.
“Lev!” She tried to shout, but her words came out as a garbled mess. Lev didn’t even look up.
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn.
Thank the Lady and all the saints for Masha and her pills, because she was pretty certain she was going to regret this. She shoved herself against the wall, and managed a few garbled swear words, even through her swollen lips.
Damn. Her head was spinning, and the whole world seemed to sway under her, but she was on her feet.
She was going to pass out. She was one hundred percent certain she was going to pass out.
“Lev,” she called again, and this time he heard her and started to turn.
Zhurov had almost reached him. But he hadn’t noticed Jez.
He’d broken her arm. She was pretty certain she remembered that, and probably wouldn’t forget it any time soon. But he hadn’t broken her leg.
She took a shallow breath, braced herself against the wall with her good arm, and swung her knee up, just as he passed her.
She felt it connect solidly with the portion of the guard’s anatomy she’d been aiming for.
His shout rose by three octaves, and he folded in on himself, clutching at his groin.
“Bastard,” she muttered, collapsing back against the wall. Her head was still spinning, blackness encroaching on her vision. But she could see well enough to see the look in Lev’s face as he turned and saw the guard.
“Right kind of crotch,” she whispered. “Told you.”
Lev smiled, ever so slightly, then turned to Zhurov.
She felt very, very glad for a moment that she was not in Zhurov’s shoes.
Lev raised his shock stick.
“You, my friend,” he said, his voice low and almost friendly, “deserve something much, much worse than this. And believe me, you’ll get it. But right now, I’m busy.”
He swung the stick. Jez winced, but when she looked back, Lev was standing over the fallen guard, calmly handcuffing him.
She noticed, absently, that Lev was cuffing him at the elbows, instead of at the wrists.
She’d had that done before. Hurt. A
lot.
Lev didn’t look at all sorry. His face showed nothing but a sort of interested calculation.
She raised an eyebrow at him.
Maybe not such a soft boy after all.
Then there was another boom, this one loud enough that it was impossible to ignore. She looked up.
The force field was gone, and in place of the nearest wall cannon, there was a thick cloud of fine dust, glittering in the morning sunlight.
CHAPTER THIRTY
TAE, DAY 12
Tae barely glanced up at the noise of the explosion. He didn’t have to.
He’d done it.
The relief that flooded over him was so strong his hands were trembling.
He clenched his teeth and took a steadying breath. He couldn’t afford to mess up. Even one of the wall cannons would cause unimaginable casualties among the prisoners, and if he scratched Jez’s ship, she would probably kill him, bring him back to life, and then kill him again.
He didn’t watch the ship—he couldn’t afford the distraction. Instead, he stared at the blip on his screen that showed him where it was.
There. Fire.
Behind him, another section of the wall vaporized.
Whatever you said about Ysbel, the woman knew how to make good weapons.
“Tae!”
He didn’t look up. He didn’t have the time or the energy to spare.
There were five more cannons on this wall, and they were already pointing towards the ship.
Jez was going to kill him. If he managed to keep her alive, she was definitely going to kill him.
He’d been working on controlling the wall cannons for two weeks. Two plaguing weeks.
And it wasn’t until the wall cannons moved that he realized two things: first, he’d never have been able to hook into the wall cannons because they were manual. He should have figured that out a long time ago, and he’d probably be cursing his own stupidity for at least a month over it. But, second, in an attempt to get into the wall cannons—he’d hacked into the Ungovernable. One of the few ships he knew of with the firepower to take out a prison-level shield and wall cannons.
