Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  “It’s in my pocket,” she said. Keeping one hand up and out, she pulled a capsule about the size of her thumbnail out of her belt pocket and smashed it against Kapa’s trapped hand. A sharp ammoniac scent burst from it followed by a soft hiss, and the epoxy turned to a clear jelly and sloughed off down the wall.

  “Now him.”

  Siri performed the operation on the other pirate’s boots. His foot lashed out and caught her right on the temple, snapping her head back and sending her sprawling onto her back.

  “Siri!” Terese was beside her in an instant. Coordinator Baijahn blinked unsteadily at the ceiling.

  “None of that,” said Kapa mildly to his man. “No unnecessary waste.” He tapped on the intercom. “Open it up. We’re in control here.”

  The warning light blinked over to green and the air lock whooshed open again. Kapa’s remaining crew member—a squat, scarred man with a bird icon tattooed on his temple—came out, pellet gun pointed at us. I looked toward Terese, but she was helping Siri sit up. Siri blinked unsteadily at her surroundings. Blood trickled down her cheek.

  “What the hell?” she said. “What the hell?”

  Kapa paid no attention. He was busy taking charge. “All right, Gull, search the passenger pod. Make sure they haven’t stowed any other little surprises in there.” Gull was the new arrival. He worked the action on his own weapon by way of response.

  “Then we stow these three in there,” Kapa went on, nodding toward the passenger cabin. He cradled his broken hand in the good one. Pain turned his face grey, and his forehead was slick with sweat. “After pickup comes, we can strip the rest of the shuttle.” His gaze wandered over his prisoners and lingered on Siri Baijahn where she sat beside her commander. “And maybe now you’ve learned a little lesson?” He smiled at Terese where she crouched next to Siri, who still blinked dazedly around at all of us.

  Terese’s smile was sharp and dangerous. “And here’s one for you. Touch one of my people again, and I will cut your balls off.”

  Kapa flashed his amethyst tooth at her. “No good. I know you can’t kill me.”

  Terese’s smile did not waver. “So you’ll be alive, and without your balls. Think about it.”

  Kapa narrowed his eyes, turning his face genuinely ugly. He leaned in close to Terese, trying to make her shrink back. “You’re so lucky I need you.”

  “Thanks for letting me know,” she answered evenly. “Gives me a whole world of latitude, that little factoid does.”

  “I need you alive, but you don’t have to be in one piece,” Kapa said quietly, seriously. “Think about that little factoid while deciding how much latitude you really have.”

  Siri finally seemed able to focus again on what was happening. She and Terese both watched Kapa as he straightened, their expressions hard and cold. I wondered how many things you could do to a man before he died, and how many of them the saints knew.

  Gull was in the passenger compartment now, gun ready, eyes sharp, the pirates backing him up. The obvious place to hide was in the bunks. But Emiliya was a tunnel runner. She knew how to hide. She wouldn’t be waiting in the most obvious spot.

  The pirate opened the first bunk.

  Nothing.

  He opened the second, the third…nothing.

  He moved to the lockers, and opened the first, the second, the third.

  Still nothing.

  I was beginning to wonder if I had dreamed Emiliya’s presence. I stared straight ahead. I could not betray the possible hiding places with my glance.

  Then I noticed Terese Drajeske’s mouth moving. None of Kapa’s crew was looking at her. They were all watching Gull. Terese Drajeske was watching the passenger compartment, and slowly, softly, counting down.

  Four…

  Gull bent down and hauled up the floor plates with one hand.

  Three…

  Two…

  He slammed them shut and straightened up.

  One…

  A white blur dropped from the ceiling. Gull gave a strangled shout and toppled over. Emiliya rolled to her knees, his gun in her hand. Gull was flat on the deck with a needle in his throat.

  Terese dove across the deck, grabbed the pirate nearest her by the ankle, and twisted hard. I heard the snap and he screamed, and Kapa swung his gun around at me, but I launched myself forward and tackled him. The firing crack sounded and metal snapped. I rolled him over, twisting his broken wrist and making him scream high and sharp. Around me they were shouting and another shot whizzed overhead. Siri hauled herself to her feet and lurched forward. Terese swore and Emiliya shouted a warning, and I shoved Kapa against the wall. When he slammed his good fist into my gut, I saw stars and barely managed to hang on. I smashed the heel of my hand against his nose. I felt the bone break and he screamed and gurgled, but I had the gun, and somehow found my feet.

  And Emiliya was on her knees, staring at Kapa.

  And Kapa was staring at Emiliya.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his voice harsh with pain. Blood dripped from his mouth. “I swear, Emiliya, they didn’t tell me you’d be here!”

  “Move!” bellowed Terese Drajeske, snatching up the epoxy guns where they’d been dropped on the deck. “Into the other ship! Go, go, go!”

  I was still half in a daze, but I obeyed, stumbling across the threshold with Siri Baijahn. A strained heartbeat later, Emiliya shoved her way in. Terese leapt in after us, and I leaned hard on the active pad by the door, and to my relief, the air lock ground shut.

  “We’ve got the door,” Terese said. “Better find out if you can fly this thing.”

  Kapa’s tanker had been made out of standard shuttle modules, and the ladder to the cockpit was right where it was supposed to be. We had two chances, and which one would work all depended on how overconfident Kapa was.

  I swung myself up into the cockpit, adrenaline singing through my blood and my mind racing. I’d known already it would be empty. You couldn’t cram more than six people into a ship this size. Kapa had brought over his whole crew in the boarding action. That boded well for our chances. If he’d been careless enough to empty his ship…

  I dropped into the pilot’s chair and laid my hands on the keys, hitting the commands for the clamps and the air locks.

  And nothing happened.

  I tried again, and still nothing happened.

  So Kapa wasn’t that overconfident. He’d locked down the system.

  And probably had a backdoor command so that he could open the air lock from the other side, just in case anybody tried to shut him out of his own ship. Which was why he had been willing to empty it out in order to board us.

  “Engine compartment!” I leapt out of my chair and dove for the ladder. “Engine! Now!”

  None of them hesitated. Emiliya led the way, bouncing off the floor and caroming off the walls in the way tunnel runners knew best, not quite running, not quite flying. I watched Siri Baijahn’s jaw drop as she and her commander followed, more slowly and much more clumsily. Siri was starting to sag, and her face had taken on a nasty grey color. Concussion, I thought. Maybe a bad one.

  I shoved Siri ahead of me into Terese Drajeske’s arms. I dove headfirst toward the door behind them, rolled over the threshold, bouncing to my feet in a way I’d forgotten I knew. I spun around in time to see the main air lock creak open.

  Kapa, covered in his own blood, staggered inside.

  We hadn’t gotten all the weapons. He aimed his gun at me. I darted behind the bulkhead and slammed both hands against the active panel.

  Luck was with me this time. The air lock groaned and hissed, but it closed, putting a heavy metal door between us and Kapa.

  Cutting us off from the cockpit, where Kapa could open the door with a single command.

  Terese was beside me. “I got this,” she said. “You activate the lifeboat.”

  I stepped back, and she aimed her epoxy gun at the door seams and shot, and shot again, gluing the door shut. Then, for good measure, she brought
her gun butt down on the access panel, lifting herself off the deck with the force of the blow. But it did the job with a shower of sparks and a flash of red lights.

  I left her to it and turned to the internal drive. It was an absurdly small thing, an irregular metal housing, all knobs and tubes and bulges. Metal pipes branched out and embedded themselves into the ceiling and the decking.

  Every ID ship had a lifeboat function, and an access pad to allow you to activate and fine-tune it. If something went wrong with the ship—say, if she got hulled somehow—the engine compartment acted as the lifeboat. The engine would jump that module back to its previous location.

  I punched in the standard emergency codes on the pad as fast as I could, and as the readout came back, I swore.

  “Problem?” asked Terese calmly.

  “They’ve gutted the programming. I’m not sure they’ve left the lifeboat functions.”

  There were crash alcoves in the walls and Emiliya was already swaddled in. Siri Baijahn had her feet in the ankle straps, but hadn’t pulled down the mask or the webbing yet. She had her epoxy gun pointed at the door, but her face had gone green, and the muzzle dipped and wavered.

  The door creaked, hydraulics straining against the epoxy seal. I made my fingers move across the keys, frantically working to match up the fragmented code.

  The door creaked again.

  “Well. This is going to be interesting.” Terese stationed herself right in front of the door, raising her gun. She could not kill, even to save her own life, but was going to put herself between us and whatever came through that door.

  I looked back down at the internal drive’s screen. I could not think about what she was doing, nor about the creaking door or Emiliya in her cradle. I had to find the fragments and crumbs of functionality Kapa had left behind. I had to knit them back together with language half-remembered from the few short years I was an ID pilot.

  And I had to do it now.

  The door buckled. A crack appeared in the epoxy. Terese stood there, gun up and ready.

  I beat in a final connector, forcing two commands together. “Done!”

  Terese spun and kicked off the deck, leaping into the center of the chamber. I bolted after her, hitting the seal on the inner door. Terese slammed into her cradle, and only then did her hands begin to shake so badly she couldn’t work the buckles. I dodged over, slapped the clasps together, and dropped the pressure cap. Our eyes met for an instant before I swung into my cradle, slammed my buckles shut. I grabbed my mask, hauled down the cap, and pressed the red button.

  The world lurched and dropped and rose again, and gravity was gone and I was falling…falling.

  Falling.

  I wasn’t falling.

  I was floating.

  I tumbled, over and over. There, turning over me, visible through the one window, was the orange-and-red curve of the Reesethree gas giant. Then it was gone, replaced by blackness. Then it was back again.

  We were out of the trap, and into the pit.

  Because we were a completely unauthorized object tumbling through the Erasmus System.

  “Please, let that intercom work,” I murmured.

  A split second later, the warning voice came. “This is Erasmus Flight Control to unidentified ship. You will identify yourself and all members of your crew and state your purpose, or you will be tagged as unauthorized.”

  “Captain Amerand Jireu of the Erasmus Security.” I reeled off my ID code, praying I was giving them this month’s. If it was last month’s, they might just…no, we hadn’t escaped from those idiots to be shot down by Flight.

  Those idiots. Kapa. Set up and waiting to kidnap the new saints, now out in the middle of nowhere in a standard old hyperwired shuttle, and with Ceshame and Leda lying dead on the deck.

  “Jireu? What happened?” said the voice on the other end. My blood roared so loud in my ears, I could barely recognize it.

  “Caulder?” I said, praying I had it right. Caulder was okay. Another one who kept his head down, just like me. “Is that you?”

  But it wasn’t Caulder who answered. It was a stranger’s voice, hard and clipped, almost mechanical. “You have been identified, Captain Jireu. I require identification for your crew and ship.”

  “I don’t have ID for my ship! We’re a peeled core! We need emergency assistance!”

  “I require identification,” replied the voice without any inflection whatsoever.

  “Doctor Emiliya Varus of Moontwo,” Emiliya called out and reeled off her ID.

  There was a pause, then the voice reported. “I have confirmation. Is that all your crew?”

  “We also have Field Commander Terese Drajeske of the Solaris Guardians, and Field Coordinator Siri Baijahn, who is injured. We need a rescue ship now!”

  “I need their ID numbers, Captain.”

  I shot Terese a pleading look. We turned over again, and my stomach lurched and she slowly shook her head.

  “Get the cameras on, Caulder!” I called, hoping he was still in earshot. “You can do a visual ID.”

  Another sickening pause. “You’ve got no cameras I can hook into, Jireu. You’ve got thirty before I have to log an unauthorized. You’ve got to give me something.” He was pleading. That clipped voice must have been his Clerk. I could picture Caulder standing back of the controls at Flight, unable to shove the black-coated, hard-eyed stranger aside.

  “Contact Grand Sentinel Torian Erasmus,” said Emiliya abruptly, and she reeled off a code. “He will pass emergency authorization.”

  I stared at her. She did not look at me. She looked at Captain Baijahn hanging in her straps. Our spinning and weightlessness were not doing her injured head any good. She looked like she was a few seconds from vomiting.

  “On it.” Underneath I thought I heard Caulder whisper, “Come on, come on, don’t make me do this, don’t make me do this…”

  Seconds crawled. How many had it been? I lost track. I didn’t dare make a move to stabilize us while we were unauthorized. We turned and turned again, and my head was reeling, and in a moment I was going to heave up whatever I had in me.

  I knew Caulder, but I didn’t know who was with him or who was watching him. We continued our slow tumble. Captain Baijahn lurched and gagged.

  “Authorization complete,” said the clipped Clerk’s voice.

  It was Caulder who said, “We got you, Captain. You are authorized to stabilize your fall and wait to receive assistance.”

  Terese let out a long, wordless whoop of relief.

  “Thank you, Flight.” My fingers moved across the keypad beside the alcove. The code was still shredded, and the equipment still bad, but there was a little emergency ballast we could expel. It was enough to slow our tumble to a much more gentle rate, allowing nausea to fade.

  Emiliya hit the green switch on her cradle to open the pressure cap. She undid her straps, pushing herself over to Captain Baijahn. Terese also opened up, unbuckled and pushed off, catching up with Emiliya. Our eyes met, but Emiliya said nothing and I said nothing.

  Emiliya strapped herself into the alcove next to Siri Baijahn and opened her high-necked white jacket. The inside was lined with little pockets; the emergency medical kit all doctors carried when they were off Hospital. With competent fingers she touched the spreading bruise and the split skin on the Guardian’s temples. “That’s got to hurt.”

  Siri swallowed and coughed. “Yeah.”

  “I can tell you now, you’re concussed. I can’t do anything about that here, but I’ll give you something for the pain, then I can close up that cut.”

  Siri looked at Terese. Terese hesitated, and looked at me. I nodded to her, and she nodded to Emiliya. Emiliya reached into one pocket and brought out a sprayer, which she pressed against Baijahn’s neck. The Solaris captain grunted against the pressure, then let out a long sigh as the stabilizer hit her system.

  “Thanks. I thought I was going to…”

  “No need to go into details, Siri,” muttered Terese. />
  Emiliya didn’t answer. She just reached for a swab and got to work cleaning the wound. Little flakes of blood drifted about the chamber.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Terese asked.

  “No. Thanks. It’s done.” Emiliya lifted the swab away. It was probably coated with a glue or clotter, because instead of an open cut, there was a bright green smear on Siri Baijahn’s temple.

  “How are you feeling?” Terese asked Siri.

  “Like crap,” Siri answered. “But I’ll bet that pirate feels worse.”

  “Oh yeah.” Terese grinned and twisted toward Emiliya. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Glad I could,” murmured Emiliya, closing up her jacket.

  Now that we were safe, curiosity reared its head. “What was that thing…” I sputtered at Emiliya. “You fell off the ceiling.”

  But it was Terese who answered. “Cadet trick. If you do it just right, you can epoxy someone to the ceiling with a couple of release capsules under their waistband. The shot cracks the capsule, but it takes maybe two minutes for the release to leak through and drop you. No one ever remembers to look up.”

  I was staring. I couldn’t help it. Terese grinned at me and held out her hand. “Hello. I’m Terese Drajeske of the Pax Solaris Guardians. I don’t think we’ve met properly.”

  “Captain Amerand Jireu of the Erasmus Security.” I took her hand and shook it up and down. It was an antique gesture I’d only ever seen in the XPs. “No, I don’t think we have.”

  As I hung there, holding her hand, the thought shot through me: There is no camera here. There was no drone, no Clerk. The connection with Flight was faulty at best. Whatever I said next, no one beyond this fragile chamber could hear it. Whatever I did next, no one could see it.

  “I cannot say this again. There may not be anywhere else unwatched. If you need help, I will help you.”

  Terese was silent for a heartbeat, then another. Her eyes flickered toward her second, who just cocked her head.

  I looked at Emiliya and saw her devastation. The bottom dropped out from my heart, but I could not take what I had said back. I would not.

  Terese raised her eyebrows. “What if I’m here to shore up and support the Blood Family?” she asked.