Killing Gravity

by Corey J. White

  I find the vertilator after a few more minutes of quiet stalking through the ship’s corridors, and there’s a cab waiting for me when I hit the CALL button.

  The ascending metal cube moves so fast I feel inertia even through the artificial gravity. The ship is gargantuan, and all I can do while I wait is stare at its designation written in relief on the doors—MEPHISTO FLAGSHIP RAMPART, MASTODON-CLASS—and try to tamp down the anxiety that’s telling me the vert has stopped, that I’m trapped and they’re coming for me.

  “Am I still moving, Waren?”

  “Yes. Soon you will disembark onto the central concourse. From there, proceed to an upper-level vertilator to either your left or right.”

  Seven climbs out from the hood of my cloak and takes up a position on my shoulder. I don’t know what she’s expecting, but she perches, oddly heavy in that way experimental-cat-things are when they put all their weight on their tiny paws. I pull the hood up over my head, taking momentary refuge beneath it.

  I feel the deceleration in the soles of my feet. I breathe in and hold a hand out, ready.

  The vertilator dings cheerily and the doors slide apart.

  The ambush I’ve been expecting is here. The first trooper must be hungry for promotion, because she’s standing right in front of the doors with some sort of hovering weapon platform, shaped like an armor-plated pram. Behind her are a hundred troopers in maroon, with more weapon platforms, shocksticks, and other nonlethal deterrents.

  Seven reacts before I can, leaping off my shoulder and straight onto the trooper’s face. The woman screams and twitches, and I’m flung backward into the vertilator wall with a thud.

  I slide to the ground and reach out, grab the weapon platform, and crush it, then fling it into the woman’s chest as Seven bails. The woman is pinned to the ball, and both go backward at high speed. While other troopers watch the carnage tear through their ranks, I get up and run out of the vertilator screaming.

  Seven’s moving too. I hear her yowling off to my right, and a tiny part inside me feels fondness for that crazy animal; the rest of me is pure hatred and fury.

  More of those weapon platforms fire at me, and I hold up my arms to block the force. As I neutralize the blasts or deflect them back, it feels like Sera’s shield on Ergot. I barely have time to think about what that could mean—artificial psychic abilities?—before I crush the platforms and bring them to orbit around me like a shield.

  With their main weapons out of action, the troopers start rushing me, yelling war cries and epithets like “voidwitch” and others far worse. I push the balls out to a wider arc and turn in circles as I walk forward to keep every angle in view, remembering the dances they taught us and improvising as I go. This is stand-up tragedy; this is the free jazz of destruction; this is interpretive death.

  Minutes later, any troopers that haven’t fled are on the ground, either unconscious or groaning feebly—all but one. He’s on his ass, scooting back as quickly as he can, as Seven prowls forward, hissing at him.

  I make a kissing sound at her, and after hesitating she comes back to my side, climbs up my body, and perches on my shoulder.

  “I . . . ah . . .” the guy on the floor stammers. I just laugh, then pick him up and toss him over my shoulder.

  I walk to the other set of vertilators; the floor is sticky beneath my feet: more blood than I expected, especially since I didn’t go full-murderous on them.

  I’m holding back, because after destroying five ships and an untold number of fightercraft, maybe I’ve killed enough people today. The sad truth is, it’s too easy to take a life. You get caught up in the moment, you feel angry or threatened, and all you need to do is reach out and they’re dead. Later on it can be hard. MEPHISTO taught us all kinds of tricks to minimize the guilt, to keep us soldiering on without too many emotional issues, but that’s not who I want to be if I can help it, if it isn’t already too late.

  I turn around inside the vert, hit the button for the prison level, and look down at my footsteps, printed in blood.

  The doors close. We’re going up.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I track blood through the upper level for a few meters until my soles dry. This part of the ship is quiet, and as I listen to my heart thumping loudly in my chest I can’t decide which I prefer: the eerie silence or the exploding carnage of a one-sided melee.

  It takes Waren a few minutes to reroute me past a wall that isn’t on the schematics, bisecting what should be a huge, cavernous room. Seven and I are forced into some tight corridors that zig and zag. I’m sure that without Waren I’d never find my way out.

  Going through these corridors, I feel like a rat in a maze. I feel like I’m a kid again and I’m being told to find some white mice, except this time I’m not trying to kill them.

  When I reach the brig, the door slides open silently on an unseen apparatus. I creep through the door. The guard post is on the lower level, a box about two meters per side, with waist-high counters topped with vidscreens and security consoles. Past the post is a stairwell up to the gangplank that provides access to the cells. I crouch-walk into the guard post and sneak up behind the trooper sitting there, nervously tapping the counter while she reports to her superior via comms.

  “The prisoners are secure; no movement on this level. Yes, sir, I’ll keep you apprised of any developments.”

  If she weren’t distracted, she’d see me creeping up behind her on the vid feeds. I tap her on the shoulder and she spins around, but shock keeps her from reacting. I grip her around the throat and her eyes go wide. She thinks I’m killing her, but really I’m just putting her to sleep.

  She collapses to the floor and the sound brings out another guard. He bellows and charges me. I grab him by the throat, too, but harder this time, and I pick him up off the ground.

  The amount of force it takes to lift someone off the ground is also enough to crush their windpipe or snap their neck if you don’t use finesse. What I like to do is hold them around the waist at the same time; you get the full terrorizing effect for anyone else who happens to be watching, with less chance of accidental death.

  I drop the guy aside once he stops squirming and walk up the stairs. I find Squid first, and they smile, like they’ve been waiting patiently for me to turn up.

  “You took your time,” they say, words distorted and crackling behind the shimmering powershield.

  “I thought you could do with some more time to meditate.”

  On hearing Squid’s voice, Seven pops her head out of my cloak and maows.

  “Just wait a second, little one,” I say.

  I punch a button on the outside of the cell, and the powershield fades away. Squid has taken a minor beating in custody, and looking at the healing split on their lips I put a hand to my own eye, though the swelling has gone down since I left Ergot. There’s a split in my eyebrow that’s still healing, but I kind of hope it scars, just so I’ve got something from Sera to carry around with me—something to go along with the cloak and bracelet she gifted me all those years ago.

  “I have some bad news,” Squid says. They offer a hand to Seven and she sniffs it, then rubs her chin along Squid’s fingers. After a few soft purrs, she goes back in my hood. “They took Mookie away a few hours ago.”

  “What? Where to?”

  “I heard them mention a military tribunal.”

  “How long ago? Could he still be on the ship?”

  “I don’t know,” Squid says, and suddenly I’m worried that Mookie might have been caught up in my tide of carnage. I deliberately avoided the prison level, but if he was elsewhere on the ship . . .

  “Waren?”

  “I’ve been listening. Already checking transfer manifests.” There’s a pause and Squid looks at me expectantly.

  I hear metal hammering from the next cell and walk a couple of steps to see Trix pounding on the wall with her prosthetic fist. “Let me out!” The guards let her keep her arm this time—probably because the ship walls ar
e tougher to punch through than a portable prison.

  “Apologies,” Squid says, then strides over and hits the button to open her cell.

  “Trix, just calm down,” Squid says.

  Trix doesn’t listen. She crosses the distance between us, and I let her grab me by the throat. She pulls back her prosthetic hand, clenched in a glossy fist.

  “This is your fault!” she yells. I can feel her whole body trembling, muscles oscillating at the frequency of rage.

  “A personnel shuttle departed the flagship approximately two hours before we arrived. I didn’t track any Ethric-class vessels in the system when we arrived, so I infer that Mookie was not caught up in the fight.”

  “You killed him with your voidwitch bullshit just getting here, didn’t you?”

  “He’s alive,” I croak, “they took him before I got here.”

  Trix scowls at me, but she loosens her grip. “Good.”

  It’s not good that Mookie is on the way to some military prison fuck-knows-where, but I didn’t kill him, and for now that’s enough.

  “Where is he?” Trix asks, the venom in her voice suggesting it’s my fault Mookie’s gone, and I guess it is.

  “I don’t know. First things first: we’ve got to get you out of here, then we worry about Mookie,” I say, not mentioning the part of my plan where I’m going to stay behind and kill Briggs.

  “You—” Trix starts, but Squid puts a hand on her shoulder.

  “She’s right. We can’t find Mookie if we’re dead.”

  “Let’s get out of here, then,” Trix says. She bashes my shoulder as she pushes past, and under her breath she says, “Always said she was bad news.”

  I don’t argue. Squid and I follow her down the stairwell.

  “Would you like me to fly the Mouse a little closer?” Waren asks in my earpiece while I watch Trix strip a laser pistol off one of the unconscious guards.

  “No, stay where you are, Waren; we need you where leeching will do the most damage. I’ll get us all there, just give me a nav line back.”

  “You’ll be going back the way you came; I don’t see any faster routes.”

  Trix takes the second guard’s pistol and gives it to Squid, but they look at the weapon like they’d rather hold lava.

  “I know you want to charge ahead and get revenge, Trix,” I say, “but it’ll be better if I lead the way.”

  Trix stops and waves me forward.

  I guide us through the tight corridors, pausing to peer around each corner. We make it to the huge room, and I’m halfway across when I hear an electronic hum to my right. I stop and turn to look. The wall Waren didn’t have on his schematics is sliding down, revealing the shimmering whitish glow of a powershield just behind it.

  “Quick, go go go!” I yell-whisper to the others. Squid rushes across to take cover in the far corridor, but Trix stops behind a steel column and preps her weapon.

  “Mariam,” Briggs says, loudly enough to be heard over the shifting barrier, “on behalf of MEPHISTO, I am delighted to welcome you home.”

  The wall has come down far enough to show Briggs behind the powershield, flanked by a cadre of elite soldiers. Most of them are armed with laser rifles, but a couple have their hands resting on the same weapon platforms as they had on the central concourse. There are four women standing by Briggs, unarmed, body language taut and ready, like they’re about to rip us apart with their hands . . . or maybe their minds? I see something of myself in them, but that can’t be: all those girls are dead. Sera was sure of it.

  The wall settles with an echoing thud.

  “This was never my home,” I say loudly, my voice rebounding off the high ceiling.

  “But we understand you here, Mariam, better than anyone else could.”

  I take a step toward the shield wall. “I doubt it, Briggs; I’m only just starting to understand myself. You saw what I did out there, right?”

  “Very impressive, Mariam, very impressive indeed. We have never seen anything like that before. My AI is near useless at the moment with all its processors busily calculating your destructive force. Tell me, Mariam, how did you do it?”

  Got seriously fucked up on encephallucinogens and watched my life and the life and death of the entire universe unfold behind my eyes? Saw what your training did to my brain and broke it apart, put it back together as it needed to be? Used a thousand years of thought to mold my brain into something better? Fuck, I’m not even sure.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  He chuckled. “True, which is why we’ll have to run the tests, Mariam. Now, if you’d be so kind as to get down on your knees and place your hands behind your head with your fingers interlocked?”

  I’m standing right in front of the powershield now. Behind my back, I’ve got my thumb and finger wrapped around the bracelet from Sera. I cock my head to the side and smirk at Briggs.

  “You saw that carnage and you still think I’m going to come along quietly? You must be dumber than that suit makes you look.”

  His face stays mostly pleasant, the stab at his appearance only registering as a brief tug on the corner of his mouth. Still, he can’t stop his hand from running down the front of his gray dress jacket, paneled with MEPHISTO maroon and adorned with medals of his own design.

  “If you don’t comply,” he says, “I’ll lower the shields and kill your friends.” He points over my shoulder, and the troops with the guns point their weapons as if they’re all puppets on Briggs’s strings.

  I inch my foot forward and it slides through the powershield, that familiar sensation tingling up my leg.

  I reach behind my head like I’m going to do what I’m told, but instead I flip Seven out of my hood and she lands on the floor and starts hissing—whether at the shimmering powershield or at me for being so rude, I’m not sure. It’s enough of a distraction to drag the eyes of the troopers and Briggs’s women away from me, giving me a brief window to get past the shield. Briggs is the only one who sees me step through, the smile dropping away as his face turns to horror.

  I reach out to grab Briggs, but something blocks me.

  “Kill the others!” he yells, pushing backward through his honor guard.

  I hear the shield behind me go silent, and the troopers with the laser rifles open fire. The hall lights up with white beams flashing past me, the air awash with heat. The guns sound like banshees humming, but once I start yelling I can’t hear them. I focus on the soldiers, their faces frozen in grim resolve as they take aim at the people behind me. Then there are no faces, no soldiers, just clouds of blood and gore that seem to hang in the air before artificial gravity takes hold and they fall and puddle on the ground.

  Of the dozen soldiers who opened fire, there are only two left. One of them is quick enough to swivel his hovering weapon to face me. He fires, and I knock the psychic blast aside, then fling his machine and him and his buddy into the wall, where the two men break wetly against the steel. They fall lifeless to the floor, right beside the dented and smoking wreck of the weapon platform.

  I turn around to check that Squid and Trix are okay. Trix’s prosthetic arm is a hanging mess of melted plastic and steel, but otherwise they’re both intact—physically at least. On Squid’s face is the look of someone who just watched a squad of soldiers get turned into puree by a howling spacewitch monster.

  “This isn’t going to pan out the way you want, Briggs,” I say to the man now cowering behind his assistants.

  Seven makes a bizarre yowling noise, and I glance at her, but she seems fine; probably the smell of all the blood has gotten to her. Then I hear something else. A high-pitched keening coming from the weapon platform—the one I didn’t toss into the wall.

  I take a step toward it and Briggs steps backward, shadowed by his women.

  “What is this thing?” I ask.

  “We make them here on my ship.”

  I’m standing beside the machine. There’s no mistaking the sound now: it’s a child.

/>   “The boys were always too volatile,” Briggs says. “This way we can have them produce a psychic blast on demand.”

  There’s a lip running around the top of the machine, so I stick my fingers into the gap and feel along until I find a release. The rubber seals crack apart, and I’m hit by the condensed smell of humanity, that cooked-meat smell of hot sweat.

  The boy looks maybe nine years old. He has wires running into his skull, a breathing tube in his nostrils, feeding tube in his mouth, and an IV in his arm.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks; they want for nothing in there,” Briggs says. I turn on him so fast my cloak whips through the air. Briggs just says, “Girls,” and I’m suddenly stopped.

  The four of them fan out around me, their hands reaching forward, fingers twitching as they clutch me with their minds. I feel the ground move from beneath my feet as they lift me into the air.

  Trix must fire a shot, because a flash of laser barely misses Briggs. One of the spacewitches flings an arm out, and I hear Trix yelp, then a thud.

  “They’re women, you asshole, not girls,” I say. “And they’re too fucking old.”

  “Whatever do you mean, my dear?” Briggs says.

  “The facility was destroyed. All those girls are dead.”

  “Ah,” Briggs says, sounding happy now that I’m subdued. “Sera told you about that before you killed her, did she?”

  “You killed her, not me. If you’d left me alone, she’d still be alive, she’d be happy.”

  “Would she? I gather she felt extremely guilty over the deaths of all those promising children. But perhaps her guilt was well earned. Even though we managed to evacuate the command staff, the researchers, and most of the girls, many still died—soldiers, support staff, maintenance workers.”

  “You talk about Sera’s guilt, but I bet you’ve never lost sleep over what you did to us.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m going to enjoy killing you, once I’m done with these four,” I say, motioning to the women.