by Nick Webb
The girl was standing with her hand over her mouth.
Nhean looked, and froze. Howie’s body lay twisted on the floor behind them. Three wounds, or four, or—
A bullet hole square in the center of the tattoo of Earth on his temple. Blood oozed out like an ocean.
“Move.” Pike grabbed the two of them and shoved. “James! Gabi!” His shout echoed behind him. “Need you here!”
“Can’t—” James’s distant voice was cut off in a barrage of bullets.
“Come on.”
“He’s dead,” Nhean whispered.
“Better him than you,” Pike said brutally, but his face was white. “Tell me we’re close.”
The girl grabbed his hand and they ran, the pair of them. Nhean could almost see the rough ground of the Rockies under their feet. She was still wearing the clothes they had found her in, the clothes Tel’rabim had given her. Her hair rippled behind her like a lion’s mane.
Nhean followed. He didn’t need to be a soldier to know that the only thing behind them was death—and it was catching up fast.
They rounded a corner to find a lone Telestine guard. He was still raising a pistol when Pike slammed into him shoulder-first. They tumbled over on the ground and Pike yelled something indistinct. The girl sprang over their bodies with an almost inhuman grace, making for a broad door behind them.
Pike was smashing the butt of his rifle into the Telestine’s face, trying to hold him back as the guard fought to get to the girl. Blood spurted from the alien’s eyes and Nhean felt the uncomfortable rush of pure, visceral enjoyment.
They were here to kill his kind. And so they deserved everything they got.
The doors slid open silently at the girl’s touch, even as Pike slammed his rifle down one last time. The Telestine’s body lay silent and broken and Pike stood, air entering his lungs in a wheeze.
“I’ll hold them off.” He pried the Telestine’s fingers off the alien pistol. “Get in there. I’ll....”
He tried to smile at the girl and she tried to smile back. She beckoned Nhean into the control room, and her eyes never left Pike as the doors slid shut.
It was when she turned, tears in her eyes, that Nhean realized she knew. She knew the cost. He hadn’t told her, since he wasn’t even sure himself, but she knew anyway.
Guilt stabbed, deep in his chest.
“If there was any other way—” he began.
She cut him off with a single shake of her head, and held out the computer chip.
“I hope I’m wrong,” Nhean said awkwardly. He felt like a child, helpless. “I hope it doesn’t … I hope you’ll be fine.”
She only shook her head.
“You knew all along,” he said quietly.
A silent nod, and her fingers opened a port from the featureless wall of machinery. She pointed.
He swallowed. “If—”
A head shake. She jabbed her finger.
No more words.
He began.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Mercury, High Orbit
Telestine Flagship
Pike turned as the door closed. He couldn’t meet her eyes. Howie was dead. Either James or Gabriela was down—he could only hear one human weapon from the corridor.
He was going to die, too. And the old scar on the side of his head ached at the thought of leaving Dawn back there in that room. Out of his direct care. He’d just have to trust Nhean. Trust him to protect her at all costs.
Pike dragged the Telestine’s body behind makeshift cover—a metal chair, better than nothing but significantly worse than anything else he’d tried to take cover behind in his life—and readied his weapon. He must only shoot when he was sure it was a Telestine target. He could not afford to take down his one remaining ally if they somehow made it to him.
“Pike.” A familiar voice in his earpiece.
“Laura.” He breathed her name. His fingers trembled on the gun. He could hear the tramp of feet. Shock troops were approaching. His line fuzzed, and snatches of other voices came to him. A man was roaring orders, a woman was giving some crisply. “Walker, how is it—”
“Are you in?” Her voice was desperate. He could hear her teeth chattering.
“Walker—”
“I have to know.” Her voice was hoarse—he could hear the desperation there, and pain. For the first time since he’d known her, there was weakness there.
He swayed at the silence and readied his finger on the trigger. “We’re here. I’m holding the door for them.” He was miles from her through empty space and yet he could feel her wave of relief, almost crippling.
She gave what sounded very much like a sob. “Thank god for that.”
“You’re hurt.” It wasn’t a question; he knew without asking. He’d never heard her like this before.
She hesitated before answering. “My ship took a hit, early on. Pike—”
And then the first Telestines came around the corner and Pike could spare no thought for anything but them. Black uniforms, face guards—an echo of grotesque features.
They’d been trained to kill. They were here to exterminate an entire species and they didn’t have any goddamned right. A hollow roar burst from his chest and his gun slammed back against his shoulder as he squeezed the trigger.
“Eat shit!” God, he’d wanted to say that for ages. “Eat … shit … you … god … forsaken … sons … of … bitches! … Fuck … you!” Each word was punctuated by a burst of fire from his rifle. He ducked behind the chair as shots ricocheted overhead. Almost out of ammo.
Shit.
He could hear something that sounded half like a laugh, half like a sob. Had that come from him, or Walker? He didn’t know. He could hear her voice only faintly now. She was calling something to someone else on the bridge. Her voice was weak. He could hear the other voices fading in and out in response.
Walker shouted. “No!”
No time to ask what that meant. Pike reloaded and came back up—face to face with a Telestine shock trooper. Black eyes peered out from behind the mask, eerily similar to the girl’s. The words it spoke were smooth, utterly alien, and yet Pike had no doubt what they meant:
You die now.
At the age of seven, Pike had been checking on rabbit traps when he turned to see a bear behind him. It wasn’t one of the black bears that scampered near the camp looking for berries. It was a brown bear, and it was starving; he could see that in its eyes. It sized him up, and it knew him for prey.
His father had been there before Pike knew what was happening. The man had gone at the bear in dead silence, rifle at the ready, and the bear reared up, a giant in shaggy fur with its paws out while Pike screamed and screamed.
No hesitation, his father said later. The only way something knows you’re prey is if you tell it so by running.
The pistol was in his hand and at the Telestine soldier’s head before the soldier knew what was happening. It went off with a roar and the body flopped away.
The other soldiers fell back with a hiss and Pike brought the gun up to shoot again, again, again. His arm was on fire; recoil jerked his arm back in its socket and his fingers and palm were bruised with it.
But the pain was fading. He looked his enemies in the eyes and he smiled, and he knew he was laughing. In his earpiece he could hear the screams of his compatriots out in their ships—their metal coffins. There was the distant boom and shudder of cannons going off, the answering calls of the humans as they watched the rounds streak away into space.
And here, he reminded himself, he wasn’t trapped in a ship with the Telestines. They were trapped with him. He could hear them loading their guns, huddling behind the curved wall, and he took cover once again.
“You are going to regret the day,” he growled softly, fiercely, “that you let us live. Eat … shit.” He leaned out from he curve in the wall and sprayed the attackers—no, the prey—with fire.
They couldn’t speak English, but he knew they understood him.
Come on, come on, come on. Dawn, do your thing. Get it done.
“All ships hold formation!” Walker’s voice was in his ear. “The team is on the flagship, all exile ships hold formation!”
Just a little longer. He only had to survive a little longer.
He wished he had said goodbye.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Mercury, High Orbit
Bridge, Venus Fleet Ship Resurgence
“Eat shit!” The voice echoed in her earpiece. She listened to Pike’s vulgar battle cry with glee, in spite of her violent shaking from the deadly cold.
Walker tried to laugh around the tears in her throat. She was rocking back and forth in a desperate attempt at movement. The chills were shaking her whole body now, and her breath was clouding in front of her face. She had to stay conscious. She had to stay awake. The Telestine fleet had spread outward into a claw, trying to outflank her, and her fingers trembled as she tried to drag her ships to compensate. She had to stay in the shadow of one at all times, but which one? Her mind was beginning to feel sluggish.
An explosion of yelling, and her eyes focused on a strange swirl of activity in the Telestine fleet.
“Ma’am, they’re breaking off the attack on Delaney’s ships.” Larsen was shaking his head. “They’re ... retreating?”
“No.” Walker shook her head. She gave a hoarse laugh. “They can’t be, we aren’t winning.” Her fingers clenched and released and she squinted through the cloud of her own breath. “Where are they going, though?”
“Delaney reports that they’re making for the flagship, ma’am. Maybe to dock, or—”
Her heart seized.
“To take it down. They know what we’re doing.” She grabbed the comm unit and it nearly tumbled from her frozen fingers. “All ships, form up. We need to get between their carriers and the flagship, they’re trying to take it down.”
“They know,” Larsen whispered. His face was horrified. “They know what’s happening and—”
“And it’s working, or they wouldn’t be trying to take the flagship down.” Savage satisfaction kindled in her stomach. “They know if the signal gets transmitted, they’re dead in the water.” The comm unit dropped and she forced herself to move. Her fingers dragged her own fleet up and around in an arc. “We need to get there. Tell Delaney to mirror us.”
Larsen obeyed, but his face was white with fear. “We don’t have time—we aren’t going to be able to cut them off. We don’t have time.”
“Focus, Larsen!” We only have a few more minutes alive in this world, and that’s how you’re going to go out? She forced herself not to spit the words at him. Like hell she was going to die knowing her plan had been a failure. She snatched up the comm unit herself. “Delaney, do you read? Get between them and the ship.”
“Ma’am—” King’s voice cut in.
“King, you stay! Keep them away from the shipyards! Keep that Telestine back, don’t let them get around you! Delaney—”
“Yes, ma’am.” He had been the storm and fury for this fight, roaring orders to his ships, and now, at the last, he was composed. “We’re moving into position, ma’am. Nothing will get through us.”
She saw the Intrepid begin to climb toward the Telestine carriers that were now closing in on the Telestine flagship—the key to the whole operation was now itself the target of its own fleet.
“Good hunting, Commander Delaney.”
“And you, Walker.”
Walker set down the comm unit and surveyed the battle. At last, now, she was calm. Their death was coming quickly, and she cleared her mind to ready herself for it. Nhean’s carriers were climbing at full burn up toward the rounded bulk of the flagship. All batteries were firing.
Nothing to do but wait. She clasped her hands together and went to the window. The ship was falling down in her view, or they were rising toward it; her world tipped and tilted and she splayed one hand on the window to keep herself upright. Frost collected at the corners of the glass.
To go out fighting was a good death. She had always believed that.
But they weren’t going to make it in time. She could see that from here. She watched Nhean’s ships ahead of her pick up speed and, with the clarity of approaching death, she knew that even they were not going to succeed. The Telestine carriers would beat them there.
Delaney, his ships coming into view at the corner of her vision, would not even be close. The Exile Fleet had gone too high ... and the Telestines had sunk lower. They would batter the vulnerable control room at the top of the flagship, and they would destroy whatever chance humanity had had to disable them.
There were tears on her cheeks.
“Full burn, full burn!” She could hear Delaney’s words only distantly. “That carrier is picking up speed; get between it and the flagship!”
Harris called something back, indistinct. Walker could only hear the impression of the helmswoman’s voice through the comm.
They weren’t going to make it.
The ventral cannons on the spine of the flagship turned toward her ship like giant, unseeing eyes, and Walker stared back at them.
So this was how it ended.
This was how it ended.
The Telestine carrier nearest the flagship closed to weapon’s range and opened fire at the top of the ship. At the Dawning. At humanity’s only best and only chance.
It happened so quickly that she hardly saw it. The scream caught her unawares: Delaney crying out a single, hoarse word, and a human ship came out of nowhere. A gleaming new Mercury ship.
No.
It slammed into the Telestine carrier. Glass and metal exploded beneath her gaze. Both ships were carried sideways with the force of the collision: the Telestine carrier crumpled against the onslaught of the human ship even as it came apart at the seams. Both erupted in a series of muted explosions, which the vacuum quickly snuffed out.
“No!” Delaney’s yell. He was sobbing, she could hear it.
It didn’t make sense, the pieces weren’t connecting in her head. Someone had made it, to intercept the carrier, but who? None of the ships in the Venus fleet’s offensive group or the Exile Fleet had enough time to get into the right vector. No one should have been able to make it.
A piece of debris tore from the side of the ship and tumbled past her, black letters marred by twisted metal and scorch marks. But she could still read it, and the word was like a punch in the gut: Indomitable.
The new Mercury fleet. King. Arianna King.
She had forgotten them, ordered them to stay back, to protect the shipyards. But the shipyards were safe, she saw, and now, under King’s orders, they were intercepting the real threat. Another ship soared past, and another, each going unflinching to make the interceptions only they could. How many human lives?
Delaney’s cries were hoarse in her ear. If someone has to go into the breach, he’d said, let it be me.
There was only ever the best choice, and King had made it without blinking. She’d made her choice, and saved them all. Walker felt the tears take her.
The ventral cannons on the Telestine flagship were beginning to heat again, priming for fire, and she opened her eyes to stare them down. She would watch her death. She would not run from it.
Chapter Sixty
Mercury, High Orbit
Telestine Flagship
The screams were in his head and they wouldn’t stop. The pistol went off and Pike shrieked his fury at the soldiers that kept coming. He caught the latest assailant in the shoulder. The thing dropped its weapon with a cry of pain and staggered as Pike took aim, pulled the trigger….
Nothing. Shit. The thing was still coming toward him, and who knew when the next one would arrive? He ducked. His hands searched a dead soldier’s uniform desperately. There had to be more ammunition. There had to
be more.
The other soldier was fumbling for the gun with its other hand, and there was no time. Pike launched himself across the hallway; his knuckles cracked against the Telestine’s head and there was the sickening sound of a jaw splintering out of place. The thing screeched in pain. He ignored the searing pain from his own hand—he’d surely broken a bone or three.
“What … the … fuck … do … you … know … of … pain?” He pounded its face again and again and again, his fist bloodier with each blow. The Telestine blocked his blows, fighting back with its good arm, its speed and strength knocking Pike’s own attack aside. Pike didn’t care. He changed course abruptly. A kick. A brutal knee to the thing’s broken face. Another kick.
The glint of a pistol caught his eye—the bloodied soldier’s sidearm fallen to the ground. Pike stumbled down to retrieve it, and sent a bullet through its brain before lurching across the hallway to avoid another volley of shots from the arriving soldiers.
The ongoing clamor in his earpiece wouldn’t stop: the man yelling, Walker calling orders desperately before her voice fell away. There was a ship coming for them in the control room and there was not a goddamned thing Pike could do about.
It made him furious. As another soldier came around the corner, he grabbed the fallen soldier from the floor and threw the body with all his might. They were either lighter than he thought, or the adrenaline made him a super-human.
It wasn’t just humans who hated having their own dead near them. The Telestine flinched, and the pistol round tore through the body a moment later. Pike staggered forward. He’d caught a round at some point. His shoulder was bleeding. He couldn’t feel his legs at all, though maybe that was adrenaline too. He stumbled his way over the pile of bodies. He’d killed them all.
“Pike, listen. The Telestine carriers are closing in on the flagship. They’ve figured it out. They’re going to take it, and you, down,” said Walker in his earpiece.
