My initial instinct was to tell Resan that of course he would make it. However, I knew better. I would not throw empty words around in the hopes of temporary comfort. We could die at any moment. There was no point in pretending otherwise.
“Sure. I’ll do that,” I said.
“You may record on my device too, if you wish. If you are killed and I am not, I’ll see to it your loved ones receive your final communication.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
I couldn’t speak for Resan, but the idea of being the last link to those he might leave behind gave me a boost in courage. We talked about the chances of our end, but far from being a gesture of throwing in the towel, it bolstered my resolve to survive. Delivering Resan’s final words to grieving loved ones felt like an important mission. I certainly could not fail his esteemed grandmother, whom he threw in my face so often – may the great lady live forever.
While Resan recorded, speaking in Kalquorian too rapid for me to follow, I sorted out who I would leave my final words to. My mother, of course. My dads. Oses. Betra. Most important of all, Anrel.
It hurt to envision my little girl growing up with no memory of me, no good remembrances to reflect on. I hated the idea of being a short series of pictures and vids for her. Of being a story others would share. Of being a voice from the long-lost past.
I considered all I needed to tell her, of my life on Earth before her, of Armageddon, of all that had happened after. I debated sharing our dramatic start together, each of us fighting to escape the It. And then the wonderful moments of watching her grow, of every little miracle of progress that she accomplished.
I could have written volumes of books to tell Anrel half of what I wished her to know. How was I supposed to share all that needed to be said? How would I reach across time to allow her a connection to a woman she wouldn’t remember?
When Resan gave me the handheld, I had no idea of how to express a universe of experiences. So I kept it to the matters I wanted Anrel to hear most of all.
“Hello, Anrel. This is your mother, Shalia Monroe. I am recording this for you, for later, because I’m in a bad situation that may mean I won’t live to see you again.
“I love you. In the short space I’ve been blessed with your existence, I have been the luckiest woman alive. Just seeing you fills my heart. You are the greatest gift I could have ever asked for. Thank you for that.
“Anrel, never give up on any goal that you feel is worthwhile. Never give up on yourself. If you would do anything to make me proud, do that.
“Be strong. Keep getting up when you don’t believe you have the strength to do so anymore.
“Be brave. Do what’s right even when fear is choking you. Never let fear stop you from pushing forward, because fear is only a feeling.
“Reach for success. Do your best even when you can’t win, because trying is its own success.
“Don’t forget to stop and appreciate the goodness in life. The people who love you. A beautiful day. The talents you’ll develop. It’s easy to take everyday wonders for granted. Try to remember every now and then to count your blessings, because that’s what makes life worthwhile. More than success and money and all the rest, I want you to be happy. Do that for me, Anrel. Above all else, be happy.
“I love you, my warrior girl. Forever and always.”
I clicked to end the recording. I sat for a moment, wondering if I had said the right things. I hadn’t told Anrel about myself. I hadn’t given her a hint of the woman who’d carried her. My message had been all about a mother’s hopes and wishes for her child, a desperate attempt at all the guidance I might not be able to give in person.
I couldn’t think straight though. When I searched for what else I should say, all I could come up with was the hope that Anrel would be okay. That she wouldn’t make bad choices, that she would be safe, that she would be strong enough to force others to fuck off when they tried to harm her.
As I tried to sort through the onslaught of feelings and worries, my gaze fell on Resan. He regarded me with interest. His expression was impossible to read otherwise. His brows pulled together. There was a hint of a smile on his lips.
Before I could ask him what the fuck he was looking at, he gave me a slow nod. He spoke to me in a tone filled with respect. “A good message for your daughter to hear in the years to come. Well done.”
Prophets help us. Hell just froze over.
I finished recording all my goodbyes. Another long period of inactivity followed. I couldn’t find a comfortable means to sit or lie down. I played a game with myself to pass through the endless hours stretching into forever. I promised my back I would take my half-tab of painkiller in five minutes. Then I counted the seconds off, concentrating on my breathing as I did so. When the period passed, I told myself I could handle another five. I’d learned this trick with Oses when we’d been imprisoned by the Little Creep. Meditation became my refuge, my only means of escape. I noted Resan doing similar exercises.
I jumped out of my skin when my com went off. “Hello?” I nearly screamed, both from being startled and hope. Resan was at my side in an instant.
“Good. You’re alive,” came Oses’s relieved voice. “Anrel is fine too.”
I whooshed a relieved breath. “I’m okay in that I’m no worse than the last time we talked. Dramok Resan too. What’s happening?”
“I’ll make this quick because I have to return to the bridge. We had to go to full engagement because one of the destroyers lost weapons.”
I felt ill. “Are we down to one destroyer?”
“No, they restored their systems, thank the ancestors. We were pounded though. The damage is significant. Some of your section has fallen to pieces. The end opposite the direction you’d go to reach Medical is impassable.”
I glanced up at the big crack in the ceiling. “Yeah, we have structural issues in here too. Another hit and Resan and I’ll become pancakes.”
Oses cursed once then recovered. “Shalia, reinforcements from the empire are coming at full speed, but they’re hours away. Every man I have is needed for defense. All rescue efforts have been halted.”
I exchanged a glance with Resan. Help was not coming in the near future. We would survive or we would not. It was that simple.
I told Oses, “We’ll hold out as best we can. Give ‘em hell, big guy. Keep those other women and Anrel safe.”
We signed off, and I put my com on my belt. I’d barely finished that when the air boomed and the room rocked. Fighting was on again. I hunkered down low to the floor, next to Resan. We stared at each other, our gazes grim as we bumped into each other over and over.
Another sound filled the air, louder than all that had come before. It sounded as if the heavens themselves were splintering apart, a series of earsplitting cracks. Resan glanced up.
“The ceiling’s coming down!”
He suddenly leapt upward, a strange frog-hop that ended with him landing on top of me. My back shrieked with momentous agony as his weight came down. The lights went out, and all was black and heaviness and thunder. Then a split second of pain shot lightning through my skull. A deeper black descended, along with blessed silence.
I have no idea how long I was out. When I woke, I was on my stomach, face to the floor. I blinked at the debris lying around me, pieces of gray stuff not made of lighting panel. Computer segments. Conduits vomiting wiring.
The lights were on again, but dimmer than before. My head pounded, and I dizzily wondered how many knocks on the skull I could endure before my head caved in.
That reminded me of the ceiling. The rubble I stared at was obviously the fragmented remains. I shifted to the side to look up.
Sure enough, the ceiling was missing. Heavy metallic ducts hung down, industrial party streamers from a sheet of steel, which I assumed was all that separated this room from the level above. The sky had fallen.
I had suffered another hit on the noggin, but otherwise I was no worse off than I had been before. Re
san had jumped on me, shielding me from the crashing ceiling.
I rolled over to check my opposite side. Once the world stopped rocking, I saw that Resan lay there, staring at me. His face was masked with blood. For that matter, most of him was covered in blood.
He scowled at me. “Of all the last views of this life I could have had, your face was at the bottom of the list.”
“You’re a hell of a beauty yourself,” I tossed in return, but I wasn’t feeling the usual rancor. Resan was hurt bad. Really bad. “What’s the story?”
“I can’t feel my legs.” Stated in a flat, uncaring tone.
“Fuck.” I checked him over. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig too. Let me see if Oses is still in range.”
I yanked my com off my belt, where it had mercifully remained during this latest onslaught. I clicked the frequency. “Come on, Oses. Talk to me,” I muttered.
“You heard what he said. He couldn’t spare anyone to rescue us before. He sure as hell can’t now. Do you hear that alarm going off?”
I did hear it, a distant claxon repeating a pattern I’d heard once before. “We’ve been boarded.”
Resan sighed. “No one is coming. I’m going into shock.”
I gazed into his eyes. They were dilated, and his breathing was rapid and irregular. “Shit. What can I do?” I asked.
“Be quiet so I don’t have to listen to you whine for a change. Let me die in peace.” He blinked and shook his head, as if clearing cobwebs from his brain. “Find the first aid kit. There is stimulant in it that’ll help ward off shock.”
He was right. I’d noted it when we’d inventoried our supplies. Since I felt dizzy, I elected to crawl to the survival case’s last known location. It was there, buried under a bunch of trash. I hurried to uncover it and dragged it over to Resan.
He snatched the first aid kit out of my hands and pawed through the contents. He took a couple of the stim tabs. I shook out the blanket and covered him with it. I made a mental note that if I got out of this mess alive, I needed emergency medical training added to my repertoire.
“What else?” I asked.
“Shut up and leave me alone.”
I stood up, ignoring the wave of faintness that darkened my sight for a moment. I looked around the heaped rubble for some safe item to elevate his head, to do whatever to keep alive the sorry son of a bitch who’d saved my life. “Even on the way out, you are such a—”
I broke off, seeing the door. I hadn’t been able to view it while on my hands and knees, but now I was on my feet, able to search over mounds of rubble. The doorframe remained in the shape of an hourglass, but it had shifted, widening at the bottom. Better yet, the door itself had slid over halfway into the wall. It would be an awful squeeze, but I thought I might be able to get out.
“Don’t pack it in quite yet. I can escape. The door is partially open.”
“You can get out, even with the frame bent so badly?”
“It shifted too.” I started to pick toward it and reconsidered. I hurt like hell, full blown pain. It left me awkward since no part of me wanted to move as it should. I stooped down to the first aid kit again and grabbed some pain tabs. I dissolved two on my tongue. Resan watched, but he didn’t say a word.
I stood again, not waiting for the meds to go into effect. I’d be good to run a marathon in a couple of minutes, but Resan might not have an extra couple of minutes. It was time to move.
I stepped through the wreckage as carefully as I could. It wasn’t easy since my balance kept shifting on me. Fortunately, the ceiling parts weren’t as sharp as the lighting panel fragments. Nonetheless, it was a dangerous proposition to get to the door. Worse yet, the lighting panel pieces were uncovered in places, and I had to watch my step to avoid accidentally slicing my feet open.
I made it to the door. Yes, I was sure I could get through if I moved some newly fallen debris aside. I worked to do that.
“Still awake?” I called to Resan.
“Yes. How does it appear for your escape?”
“It’ll be tight, but I’ll fit. I’m going to sure as hell try. Want me to pick you up any snacks while I’m out?”
His tone was forbidding at my brief attempt at humor. So terribly Resan. “You’re not funny. If you can leave, then do so.”
I tossed the final bit of rubbish out of the way. “Try not to die. No one will believe I didn’t kill you.”
“The day you can take me out, even with my legs not working, I deserve to die.”
“That’s a goal you should have given me at the start of my training. I’m going.”
“Good. Do you have your knife, stupid girl? It would be typical of you to go out unarmed and immediately run into whatever has boarded the ship.”
I knew I had my blade because I’d already checked. Since Resan was a master of shattering my confidence, I checked my belt anyhow. “Thanks for wishing me luck, dickhead.”
With that, I dropped to my knees. The pain relief tabs had worked their magic, leaving me with only a twinge or two as I snuggled my belly to the floor. Pushing with my toes and pulling with my fingertips, I crept through the small opening to the corridor beyond.
As I had my first look at the world beyond the training room, I bit my lips together. The corridor wasn’t quite as shattered as where I’d been trapped for so long, but it was a mess. Lighting panels and bits of the ceiling had fallen here and there, making it as hazardous a place as where I’d come from. I was damned lucky the area around the door was intact. I ignored the obstacle course I’d have to navigate for the moment, concentrating on squeezing through.
I was in trouble when my ass proved to be bigger than I thought it was. With visions of being found later by rescuers, ignominiously pinned in place because of my tuckus and Resan dead because of my rump, I dug my elbows into the floor and heaved mightily to shove through. I lost my shorts and panties, but I got out. Hooray.
As I grabbed my clothes, I took the opportunity to yell to Resan. “I’m out.”
“Can you reach another part of the transport?”
“I’m not sure. It’s a mess out here, but I’ll do my best.”
I didn’t wait for a reply. It was best not to chatter, not if Resan were to live to make me miserable again. I pulled my panties and shorts on, glad there was no one around to spot me with my stuff out and about.
Butt covered, I stood up. I had to wait again for my surroundings to stop swaying before I was able to have a good look around. The alarms were louder out here. They sounded in the direction I would go to get to Medical. Last I had heard, that area continued to function. The claxons gave me hope it had come through this last attack more or less intact. Resan’s life depended on that being true. I set off.
It was slow going. The section where training and practice studios were located was wrecked. There were stretches where the lights were completely out, leaving me in dim pools where I could barely see my hands in front of my face. This was a serious problem as I had to navigate around, through, and over heaps of debris, some of it as dangerous as what I’d dealt with in the training room. I was forced to crawl in tight places. Shards of wreckage snagged at my shorts, nearly stripping them of me a second time. I ended up with plenty of scratches, some of which bled quite a bit. My balance did not want to straighten out. I had no choice but to keep pushing on.
The armory office was the signal that I’d reached the end of this particular section. Up ahead was the physical rehab section. The passage between the areas was nearly blocked off, but I had plenty of space to walk through. I’d be able to keep my shorts on. Yippee.
I stepped into the armory. Almost every section has one, a measure for such a situation as what the transport found itself in now. If the ship was boarded by an enemy, the crew and any soldiers they were transporting would be able to grab plenty of firepower and ammo no matter where they were. I was amazed the armory had escaped most of the damage prevalent in the rest of the section.
Between my jaunt in physic
al rehab and then training with Oses, Resan and Idow, I was familiar with the armory officers who worked this particular station. I knew the guys’ shifts almost as well as Oses’s by now. My best guess at how much time had elapsed made me think it was either morning or afternoon shift. As I walked into the front part known as Acquisition and Surrender, I called out, “Second Subcommander Amot?”
I wasn’t surprised that there was no answer. No doubt Nobek Amot was off fighting whoever or whatever had boarded us. The training section had been deserted as far as I had been able to note. I wondered how many trapped people I’d passed in closed-off rooms as I’d navigated through the maze of wreckage. I wondered how many were dead. The thought occurred to me that some of the piles of debris I’d climbed over might have lay on top of people I called friends. The thought was chilling.
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