by Nick Webb
“What about it?” McAllister asked now.
“You remember that chick Fisheye was with? I think it was before you took your flight suit off.” His voice took on a stoic edge. “Also before you kissed me.”
“I said I was sorry about that.”
“Yeah, well. Dude’s gotta do what a dude’s gotta do.”
McAllister tried to remember back through the blur of that night. “The girl Fish was all over? Brown hair? I thought it was Tocks for a bit.”
“So did I. I was pissed. Anyway, I haul him off her and go to punch him in the face, and the girl said to me, she says—”
McAllister started to laugh. He could remember it now: the smoke, the laughing, Princess going to beat the shit out of Fisheye and Tocks trying to hit Princess over the back of the head with a chair to slow him down. Turned out that maneuver doesn’t work so well in zero-g with two pilots drunk off their asses. “She says, oh hell no, that’s my sugar!” Princess descended into laughter after mimicking the woman’s heavily accented voice.
McAllister leaned back in his chair and laughed. He dimly heard Princess’s voice continue.
“And then the next morning, we tried to fly a patrol and you landed your damn fighter on an asteroid and broke the wing off, crashing it, trying to get it up again.”
There was a silence. McAllister’s laughter faded and he looked over. “What’s your point?”
“I’m saying if it was Fisheye sittin’ where you sittin’, and you’d scratched that maneuver back there, you know what he would’ve said.”
Because he had said it, two years ago: Che, boludo, McAllister. Let’s hope the Telestines fly like you do. Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee.
McAllister rubbed at his forehead. “Right.”
“The kid’s nervous,” Princess said quietly. He started his acceleration toward the ship and McAllister followed along. “Just give him some time to get up to speed.”
“Princess.”
“Yeah?”
“He doesn’t have time to get up to speed.” McAllister tightened his hands around the controls. “He pulls that shit when we’re in a battle, his wing-mates are going to die.”
“Yeah, well.” Princess watched with a critical eye. “Stuck his landing here, didn’t he? Anyway, how long were you really planning on living?”
He had a point.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Earth
Mountains Near Denver, North American Continent
“You done yet?” Pike pitched his voice to carry up the hill, between the thin trunks of the aspen, to where the shuttle sat. They’d removed the tarps and dead branches covering it, hiding it from casual view and from searching Telestine eyes overhead. The girl had disappeared inside more than an hour ago, fiddling with the computers as he made one last repair to one of the thrusters, and they were nearing the launch window now.
Every day, he hoped to hear her call back to him, but every day, he expected that a little bit less. He smiled when she stuck her head out of the shuttle and gave him a thumbs up—a gesture she’d learned from the inhabitants of the camp, along with an impish appreciation for foul language.
She looked so pleased with herself that Pike stepped up into the shuttle to see her handiwork. He remembered her helpless confusion in the Rebellion shuttle, but it was clear that she learned quickly.
He couldn’t for the life of him tell what she’d done, however. He gave an automatic smile and a silent prayer that whatever she’d done wasn’t going to drop them out of the sky as he ran through a few of the pre-flight checks quickly.
Everything seemed to be normal....
“Sit tight. I’ll be right back.” He jumped down and waved to Blake. The man was hauling supply packs through the woods toward them, and Pike hurried to help. “You didn’t have to do this on your own.”
“Young man, will you kindly stop insinuating that I have one foot in the grave?” Blake, Pike was beginning to suspect, was prickly out of habit, but the man had a tart humor that Pike hadn’t found anywhere since he left Earth.
He was going to miss this place.
“Don’t look like that, son.” Blake gave him a look. “You’ll be back.”
“I will?” Pike grinned as they reached the shuttle.
“We’re not exactly on all your fancy networks, now are we?” Blake began unloading the packs, handing provisions up to the girl. “So someone’s going to have to tell us when the Telestines are gone.”
“And here I thought you’d notice when they stopped wandering up and down the mountains.”
“Don’t be a smart-aleck.”
“Sorry, sir.” Pike gave a conspiratorial grin up at the girl, and was pleased to see her looking fondly at Blake.
She, like Pike, seemed at ease here. Whatever she’d hoped to find when she came south, she’d been pleased enough to wind up here, and she’d approved of their plan to take the shuttle up to the Rebellion fleet.
If it was still there. The odds were quite low, actually—Pike looked up at the twilight sky and felt uneasy, not for the first time today.
Blake saw the look.
“Don’t think about it,” he advised. “You’re a country boy at heart. You know there’s no point in worrying about things you can’t change, eh?”
“Then why am I worrying about it?”
“Because you’ve been up there so long that you don’t pay attention to what you learned down here anymore. You got all caught up in their plans. They’re not your kind of people.”
You can’t argue with that, Pike considered as he loaded the last of the rations. Plain potatoes and dried strips of meat weren’t much in the way of variety, and he was certain they didn’t have the perfect balance of chemicals Pike was used to in his food—but he was looking forward to them all the same. He missed having food that could be different day to day. Since he’d been back, he’d had fiddleheads and snake meat, beef, eggs—it seemed some chickens had been saved after all—and apples from a tiny orchard at the base of the camp. They even had cider that slid across the tongue with a fizz; the girl had looked very surprised at that.
He told himself that he was fixating on the food because he didn’t want to go, and knew it was true. He couldn’t shake the feeling that as soon as he saw Earth dwindle away in the shuttle’s windows, he would never see it again.
“All loaded up.” Blake nodded at him. “Best go now, boy. There’s not much of a window. The next Telestine satellite array flies by in another thirty minutes.”
The inhabitants of the camp, careful as any human settlement, had mapped the comings and goings of the different patrols. Every once in a while there was a dark space, and they’d found one now. As far up as the eye could see, there shouldn’t be anything in the sky for a few minutes. Once they got past that ... well, Pike would just have to trust the old claim that the Telestine defensive systems only shot things coming in, not things going out.
He’d also have to trust that the Exile Fleet was still there. That Laura hadn’t abandoned him.
One thing at a time. He took his helmet from the girl and strapped it onto the makeshift suit. Like the shuttle, the suits were old, but while metal could be fixed, there was no technology here to make the suits airtight again. He was only putting on the helmet to make Blake feel better.
“Thank you for everything.” He clasped Blake’s hand.
“Don’t get sentimental on me, now, boy.” Blake bobbed his head and stepped back. “But thank you for giving an old man hope.” He looked back to the camp, where his grandchildren were playing, oblivious to the grown-up drama playing out here. “Give those fuggers hell, eh?”
“I’ll do my best, sir.” Pike ducked into the shuttle and stood aside for the girl to wave as the shuttle door closed. He sighed when he flopped into the seat. “Well, let’s get this show on the road. The sooner we get going....”
The sooner we can die when this piece of shit blows up.
She laughed silently, shook her head at him. H
e knew she could hear the words he hadn’t said.
“Well, I’m glad you have a good feeling about this.”
She settled back in her seat, cross-legged, the very picture of contentment. She reached out for the dashboard, which lit up at her touch, and she pressed a few buttons only she could see. The lights flickered, she scowled, then thumped the console firmly with her fist. The lights steadied. She turned and grinned broadly at him.
“We’re … not going to die, are we?”
She shook her head cheerfully. Another touch, and a control stick extended out of the console in front of Pike. He shrugged, and after she ignited the engines, he grabbed a hold of the controls.
As he guided the shuttle up out of the trees and out of the sight lines, she took her helmet off. The sunburn on her nose was peeling, but she didn’t look troubled, even when she craned to look up at the sky.
Pike guided them as close to straight up as he dared. The air buffeted around the shuttle as currents pooled and shifted, but soon the shudders became smaller. The air was growing thinner, and soon it began to darken around them. His ears popped, one of the jarringly human aspects of leaving atmo and the shuttle’s life support not compensating quickly enough for the inevitable micro leaks in the hull seams.
They were close to the border of the atmosphere when the alarm systems blazed to life, beeping frantically. His head whipped around, searching for the source of the sound. No. They were in a dark spot.
But he could hear the drone starting—and here, he couldn’t exactly get out of the shuttle and beat the Telestines to death with his bare hands.
No.
The girl reached out to lay her hand over his. She gave a little half-smile.
“It’s not going to be okay,” Pike retorted. He reached for the controls—
Her grip was always stronger than he remembered. She dragged his hands away with a look and jabbed her finger at his chair.
“If they see us—” he began.
The finger jabbed again.
The Telestine ships shot overhead with an imagined burst of sound, black shapes that blotted out the stars they could see flickering above them. Their wings curved wickedly; the beauty of the ships seemed like an insult right now. The wedge passed narrowly overhead, three ships, five, eight.
They didn’t change course, didn’t even swerve. Their pace stayed constant as they shot away cross-ways, disappearing into the last wavers of the atmosphere, and Pike tried to remember how to move. He couldn’t breathe. He was still picturing their ship shot out of the air and tumbling, with the wedge accelerating behind to blow them to pieces.
In fact ... was this a dream? Was he dying right now, and his mind was just making up the idea that he was still alive and ascending?
How would he know?
He looked over to see the girl peering after the Telestines.
“Was that something you did?”
She nodded.
“You worked that into the computers?”
Another nod, this time with a shrug. Close enough, her expression said.
“Can you teach the fleet to do that?”
This time she shook her head emphatically. No.
He had the sense that Walker was not going to take that for an answer, but they’d deal with that problem when they got to it. He reached up to begin the scan, and paused.
“Think it’s safe to look for the fleet?”
She nodded.
“All right, then.” He sent out the first ping and settled back in his chair.
The time limit came, and he sent the second ping. They were still ascending, and he peered around as best he could. He couldn’t see any satellites. Then again, the thing about being on a planet was that you forgot just how big planets were, and how much larger a reach technology had. The satellites might be so far away that he couldn’t see them—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t see him.
He pressed his lips together as he sent the third ping. They wouldn’t have left entirely, would they? Abandoned the mission, gone back to Jupiter? But the thin hope that had held him together was fraying. How could the fleet stay here? Where would they hide? And why would they, if they’d thought the mission had been a failure?
His eyes drifted closed. What in the seven hells were they going to do now?
The shuttle, apparently, had thoughts on the matter. It shuddered, banked, and a course popped up on the screen. Pike stabbed at the course correction before shooting the girl a look.
“Want to tell me where we’re going?”
She shook her head, eyes worried. It hadn’t been her. She didn’t know where they were going.
That wasn’t reassuring.
And then the radios came on.
“Hello, Mr. Pike.” The voice was amused. “I’m glad to see you alive and well.”
“Who is this?”
“Did I not make an impression the last time we spoke?” The voice was a bored drawl, with all the elegant tones of the rich.
Pike froze. It couldn’t be. And yet, he remembered it very well now: that affected voice, guiding him through the labs. “You hijacked my shuttle?”
“Not at all, you still have complete control. However, I’ve taken the liberty of inputting the directions to a rendezvous point.”
“The Exile Fleet is there?”
“I....” There was regret there. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Pike. I’m afraid some of the Exile Fleet may have been lost in an attack on Jupiter. The rest seem to have fled. I’m still trying to determine where the survivors may be. We can ensure that you will be safe, however. I will see you soon.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
1 million kilometers sunward of L1 Lagrange point, Earth
Bridge, EFS Intrepid
“We’re going to have to be careful with this.” Delaney was chewing his lip as he stared down at the plans. “I don’t think it’s wise.”
“‘Wise,’” Walker pointed out, “would have been not joining the Rebellion.”
“Wise” would also cover not dropping Pike on Earth, not attacking the laboratory for the Dawning, and not preparing to go back in any capacity until their fleet at Mercury was done. Walker knew what she was supposed to be doing: abandoning the plan that had so clearly failed, and going back to the plan she’d spent years crafting. They’d have a fleet with a fighting chance soon. They should use that and go back to Earth with guns blazing.
Instead, they found themselves hovering in the nearest dark zone, hoping that no passing Telestine patrol would see them, and hoping against hope that some signal would come from Pike.
And they were making a new plan: take out the hubs of Telestine activity, hit them in their very centralized city centers. Telestines didn’t seem to have the urge to roam, to live alone. It was convenient—if the rest of the Rebellion was willing to sacrifice Earth’s cities, that was, and they were being far too stubborn about it.
“There’s a middle ground,” Delaney began.
“This is what we’re doing.” Walker did not look up. She had no time to indulge her officers’ worries these days. If they didn’t like the way things were headed, they could leave.
There was a long pause.
“I’d like to speak to the admiral alone,” Delaney said finally.
The rest of the officers filed out of the room. Delaney didn’t outrank all of them, but as one of Walker’s first recruits, and as the oldest by far, he had de facto seniority. When they were gone, he strode to the door and locked it for good measure before turning to stare at her.
She still did not look up. This had been coming for days, and she had waited with weary acceptance. There was no adrenaline in her, no fire. Her fingers found the chain under her uniform and pulled it out. Holding the cross in her hand offered her no comfort, and yet she could not seem to stop doing it.
Pike. Her heart squeezed and she looked up at last to meet Delaney’s eyes.
“What the hell is going on with you?” he asked her bluntly.
At least she didn’t have to sit through a pep talk. That was a relief.
“What do you think?” Once, she would have spat the words at him.
Once, she would have cared.
“I think we launched our first mission, without much chance of success, it failed, and it knocked everything out of you.” The words were brutal. He stalked back to the table. “Now you’re planning something that, frankly, should get you hauled up for mass-murder. I told you I thought it was unwise so the others wouldn’t think I was challenging you—that was more than you deserved. I’m not going to stand by and watch while you nuke our cities, and frankly, I think if one failure is all it’s going to take for you to get here, you can get out of the way and let someone else lead this thing.”
That got her back up at last. “The Rebellion is mine.”
“Then lead it! Because you’re not, and god knows humanity deserves better. You remember everything you threw in Essa’s face when you took the Rebellion from him? People dying in the halls of the stations? Remember that now. So a team died. Ships were lost. We knew that was coming. Not a person came here who didn’t see their death on the way. Did you think we are going to make it through the final battle?”
“Of course not.” Though she was fairly certain she was envisioning a different final battle than he was.
“So what is it?” He braced himself against the desk, arms crossed. “Because from where I’m standing, we never had a good shot at this. From the beginning.”
“And you didn’t think to say something?”
“As I recall, you knew. You knew when you got into this that it was a long shot we’d ever take Earth back. Frankly? We got further than I expected. I thought we’d be dust by now. I thought we’d be dead in orbit around Jupiter. When that attack came at New Beginnings….” He looked away.
“What? We don’t have all day.” She looked down at the map of the Telestine cities. We’ve got cities to nuke. I need to show humanity that Earth—
His voice dragged her back to reality. “That was the first time I thought we had a goddamned chance.”
