But there was nothing there but empty space.
Where should he go? Where would Eve have gone?
Hell, maybe she was still in her room? Of course she’d be there. He’d taken her there, right? He headed in that direction.
But when he got there and pressed the query on her door, a mechanical voice said, “This room is unoccupied.”
Swearing under his breath, he hurried back up the hallway. He needed to find Eve, blow the vidya away, and then get back to the ship and get the hell out of here. He wasn’t sure where they’d go next, and he had pretty much given up on any dream he’d once had of dropping her off somewhere. None of that mattered. Surviving did.
At the end of the hallway, he could go either left or right. Right took him further into the base. Left took him outside to the ship.
Which way?
Where was Eve?
There was no sign that the vidya had come to her room, so she probably hadn’t run from it. If she hadn’t run, then the only place it made sense for her to go was the ship.
He turned left.
And hesitated.
What if she’d gone for a walk, like he had earlier? What if she didn’t even know about the danger and was wandering around in the depths of the base somewhere?
He didn’t know what to do.
“Eve?” he called.
That was probably stupid. Tell the vidya right where you are, asshole, he thought to himself.
Oh, screw it. He kept going in the direction he’d been going. He ran for the door to the outside and he opened it.
The door groaned as it struggled to open.
And that was when he saw Calix.
He stumbled back, his hand going to his mouth.
Ah, no. Not Calix. Not like this.
He’d known it, because Saffron had told him, but he hadn’t allowed himself to process it, and now, there he was, and he was…
Hell. That was his closest friend in the world. He and Calix were supposed to be together forever. They were supposed to fly around the galaxy, evading the fucking aliens, and live as well as they could in this hell of a universe, whatever was left of it. And now…
Tears sprang to his eyes.
“Captain!”
He looked up.
Eve was running directly toward him, over the Rama terrain, her face red, her forehead sweating.
The vidya was right on her heels.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Eve, down,” yelled Gunner, raising the Thun-7 up and resting it on his shoulder. His fingers found the trigger.
Eve looked at him, confused.
“Get down!” he screamed.
She understood and dove face first for the ground.
Gunner pulled the trigger. A ball of bright blue plasma hurled out of the weapon’s barrel.
The vidya staggered as the blast from the Thun-7 hit it. The air was full of smoke.
“That’s my baby,” said Gunner, stroking it.
The vidya weaved and bobbed for a minute before righting itself.
Gunner pulled the trigger again. Another ball of plasma whipped out and struck true.
The vidya let out a high-pitched keening noise, and it wheeled backward scrambling for purchase with its long, long arms.
Gunner advanced on the thing. He moved forward, putting his body between Eve and the vidya.
“Hi,” he said to the vidya. “Have you met my friend the Thunder-7? Vidya trash meet the Thunder-7.” He pulled the trigger again.
And nothing happened.
He pulled the trigger again, on instinct, but nothing happened that time either. Because the battery was dead. Because it obviously hadn’t been a full charge to begin with, because it had been hanging in the stash for who-knows-how long, leaking charge with every passing week, and now it was a big, pointless—
The vidya was getting to its feet.
“Fucking battery,” said Gunner, tossing the Thun-7 to the ground. He got out his plaspistol. Oh, he couldn’t have loaded the damned thing with a spare cartridge while he had the chance? “Fuck,” he said again.
The vidya swiped him.
It caught his cheek. Blood welled up. He backed up, fumbling with a cartridge to load his pistol.
The vidya swiped again.
Gunner jumped back. He dropped the cartridge.
The vidya punched its claw at Gunner.
Gunner dropped to the ground, narrowly missing it. He scooped up the cartridge. He slammed it into his gun. He came up, the barrel of the gun right in the vidya’s face. And then he squeezed the trigger and didn’t let go.
The blast from the pistol hit the vidya full in the face. The vidya’s face turned bright red. It glowed. Smoke began to wisp out of its eye sockets. And then…
The vidya’s head exploded into chunks of flesh and brain. But in midair, they shifted into a jelly-like substance, and the rest of the vidya suddenly congealed into that jelly-like substance. The vidya had shifted back into the Xerkabah’s true form.
Gunner got to his feet, holding the gun out, waiting for the alien to suck itself back together, to come back to life.
But it lay there, in pieces, like exploded pudding.
Gunner gasped.
Eve gasped, pushing herself up to her feet. “Thank you,” she whispered.
In the distance, they heard the sounds of engines gearing up.
“What’s that?” said Gunner.
Eve pointed. “Is the Swallow… taking off?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Gunner gripped the edge of the table in the Comm Center, where a giant-sized cator was located. With his other hand, he held the handheld speaker. He’d run in here and contacted Saffron as soon as it was clear she had taken the ship and gone without them.
“I’m taking the ship and getting off planet,” said Saffron’s voice. “Pippa’s really badly injured and she needs immediate medical attention, so I’m taking her somewhere now. If I hurry, I can save her.”
“She’s alive?” said Eve from behind Gunner.
“Shut her up,” said Saffron in an ugly voice. “I don’t want to talk to Eve. This is all her fault.”
Eve sat down on the floor and put her head in her hands.
Gunner looked at her for a minute and then turned back to the cator. “You’re stealing my ship.”
“You made your choice.”
“The vidya is dead. Come back now.”
“I refuse to go anywhere with Eve. She’s walking, talking destruction. I won’t be around it.”
Gunner rubbed the back of his neck. “Stealing, do you understand that?”
“What are you going to do? Report me to the officials? Oh, I forgot, there aren’t any.”
“Listen to me, you need to turn that ship around right now—”
“No,” said Saffron, and terminated the transmission.
Gunner shut his eyes for a second.
It was quiet.
He hailed the Swallow again.
At first there was no answer.
Then, Saffron’s voice came back over the cator, low and even. “Listen, captain, we’ll work this out. I won’t keep the Star Swallow forever. Just take care of yourself and get yourself rid of that awful girl.” She terminated again.
That was it.
He couldn’t get her to answer again.
When he finally stopped trying, he turned to see Eve still sitting on the floor, head still buried in her hands.
Gunner opened his mouth to say something to her.
Nothing came out.
He stalked past her and out of the room.
* * *
Eve took some time to tend to her wounds. She had some deep gouges in her legs and hips from the vidya. She managed to find some synth skin and bandages by looking at a directory on a screen in the Comm Center. That done, she went looking for Gunner.
When she found him, he was outside of the base, a few yards in the distance, with his shirt off, dig
ging holes. He had pulled Calix’s and Atticus’s bodies over, both wrapped in sheets. He was burying them.
Eve asked if she could help.
He handed her the shovel.
She dug. She didn’t dare stop once she’d started, but it was awful, back-breaking work. It was incredibly hot outside, and the air was very, very humid. She dug and she dug, and her hands hurt and the skin on her palms started to break, and she kept going and—
“Here.” Gunner took the shovel back from her.
She surrendered it gladly.
“There’s water.” He pointed.
She collapsed on the ground and guzzled it.
Gunner finished digging the holes.
Eve expected that he would say something over the bodies, the way he had with Breccan. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything. She helped him get the bodies in, and then they took turns filling the holes.
And towards the end of it, she realized that Gunner was crying. He was standing over the mound that contained Calix’s body, and tears were streaming down his face.
Eve had been filling in Atticus’s hole, but she stopped. She put a hand on his shoulder.
He didn’t acknowledge that she had.
They stood that way for a few moments.
Then Gunner put his hand over hers.
* * *
Gunner shut the door to Atticus’s den in an attempt to keep the heat contained. “We’re stuck here,” he said quietly.
“But the vidya got here somehow,” she said. “Its ship must be close by.”
“It’s a Fabis 4,” said Gunner. “A one-person fighter. We wouldn’t both fit.”
“Oh,” she said.
He sucked in a breath. “And no, I’m not leaving you behind. Don’t worry.” He started down the hallway.
She followed him. “Well, maybe you want to.”
“Maybe I do,” he said, walking more quickly. “But I’m not going to do that. We’re in this together. That’s that. So, we’re stuck here, and the Xerkabah know we’re here, because they already sent a vidya after us.”
“So, they’ll send more.”
“Right,” he said. “And this place is not defensible. You can see how easy it was for the vidya to get inside. Peeled that door open like a tin can.”
Eve bit down on her lower lip. “So, what are we going to do?”
He half-wished he could lie to her and tell her he had some great idea up his sleeve. He didn’t. He had no plans other than to survive this, and then find Saffron Primo and… But he couldn’t even be that angry with Saffron. She was grieving, and he knew what it was like to be half-crazed in that kind of sadness.
Losing Calix was a whole other wave of badness that he was keeping out of his head. He didn’t think about it, because when he did, it was too much.
Instead, he needed to keep busy. “We’re going to repair the outer door,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “How?”
“We’ll need to go looking for supplies,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have to dismantle some things if we can’t find scrap. I don’t know. I do think I know where we can find some tools, though, so that’s a start.” And with that, he started down the hallway, into the depths of the station.
“So, if we repair the door, will we be able to make it strong enough to keep the vidya out?”
“Doubtful,” he threw over his shoulder.
“So…” She caught up with him so that they were walking next to each other. “Why do it? What’s the point?”
“Something to do,” he said, picking up the pace so that he moved ahead of her.
She was quiet for a moment. He could hear her footfalls behind him. Then she sped up and caught up to him again. “Are you saying it’s pointless? That we’re just going to die here? Because I am not dying out here.”
“I didn’t say anything about dying, princess.”
She sighed. “You know, I sort of wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
He chuckled. He walked faster to pull out in front of her again. But what she’d said did carry a bit of weight. They were in a bad situation, and he didn’t see a way out of it right at the moment, but he did want to find a way out. He wanted that more than anything. Maybe he didn’t want to play the hero, but he also wasn’t about to give up or give in. Life was a bitch, but he wanted as much of it as he could get.
He stopped short at the door to a storage closet. It was where he’d found the shovels to dig the graves.
A tremor went through him. Calix laughing and toasting him at the cantina in Belarix. They were young, maybe twenty-two.
“Captain?”
He looked at her. Opened his mouth to speak. Thought better of it. Then he turned back to the door and opened it. He began tucking screwdrivers and wrenches into holders on his belt. “We can take off a couple interior doors and put them both over the door the vidya broke down. It won’t stop one, but it’ll make it harder for one to get in.”
“I guess that’s something,” she said.
He nodded.
“What can I take?”
“Uh… it’s fine, I got it all.” He shut the door to the closet.
“Do you blame me?” she said.
“What?”
“Saffron said all of this was my fault and I know you wanted to drop me off somewhere and get rid of me—”
“I can’t figure why you’d choose to be chased by the vidya.”
“I didn’t choose that.”
“Well, then you can’t be to blame, can you?” He turned away from her and started down the hallway.
“But you’re angry at me?”
He was not answering this question. Women. They were stuck in this base on an abandoned planet with nowhere to run and she wanted to talk about emotions? Seriously. He rolled his eyes.
“You are, aren’t you?” She was behind him. He could hear her feet making contact with the floor.
“Actually, I’m not.”
“Is it because of what I did? When I came to your room before?”
“Let’s really not talk about that, okay?”
“I never meant to make you angry.”
“You know what’s making me angry right now? All the noise. Could we just have some quiet, please?”
She huffed. “Sometimes, you’re really awful, you know that?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said sarcastically. “Seriously, can you stop?”
Finally, she lapsed into silence.
They continued to walk. As they did, they left the parts of the base that were being cooled by the system. The air got hotter and thicker. Without windows, it was particularly oppressive.
Gunner didn’t feel like going searching in the belly of this place, so he started looking at the doors that they were passing. All of them were cheap metal sliding doors. They wouldn’t stop a plasma beam, let alone a vidya, even if he stacked four of them on top of each other. There had to be some better doors somewhere, he thought, but where?
“Captain?”
He turned on her, seething. “You’ve been silent for what? Two seconds? What is it with you?”
She gave him a withering look. “I was wondering how Atticus got to this planet in the first place?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Did he have a ship?” she said.
He pointed at her. “You know, you’ve maybe had a useful thought for once.”
“For once?” She folded her arms over her chest. “You are angry with me. I don’t see why. It’s not like I had a choice in the matter. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been barraged with visions of your naked chest against mine, and I was just a little girl. It’s amazing I’m not traumatized.”
His jaw worked. He didn’t even know what to do with that.
“When I was young, I used to think that maybe you’d be like a prince in a fairy tale, and that it would be true love. But you are just an ass.”
“Hey,” he said. “It’s been a bad day. I lost my best friend, another old friend, a
nd my ship in the span of minutes. And you tell me I’m supposed to spawn some champion, and I have had no chance to process that. On top of everything else, it’s really hot in here. So, yes, I’m maybe a little testy.”
“I-I’m sorry. I know that Calix—”
“Don’t.” He pointed at her. “I don’t need his name right now.” He sucked in a breath. “Maybe you leave me to do this on my own, huh? I can take down a door, and you can go hole up back in the section of the base where the coolant is running.” Sweat was forming in beads on his brow. He wiped it off.
“I could look for Atticus’s ship,” said Eve.
Right, he’d already forgotten about that. It was the heat or the talk about making babies with her. He was distracted.
“Tell me where to look,” she said. “Oh, and maybe you could give me a gun.”
“A gun?”
“In case the vidya shows up and—”
“Never mind. We’re not separating.” He sighed. “Look, the hangar bay is this way. Now that I think of it, that’s probably a better place to find a sturdy door. We’ll go there together.”
“Okay,” she said. “But I think I still might want a gun.”
“You know how to shoot one?”
“Yes,” she said. “Besides, you showed me how to shoot back in the Xerkabah base, remember?”
“That was a wall,” he said.
“You said I had good aim.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Okay, fine. But look, we’re past the weapons room. On our way back, we’ll swing through, find you something, okay?”
“I guess so,” she said.
He turned toward the hangar bay and continued walking.
She came behind him again.
He was sweating all over now, and he’d normally take his shirt off, but after that comment she’d made about having visions of him naked when she was a kid, he felt dirty. That wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t help her seeing the future. But now he felt like some kind of predator, and worse—he was disappointing her, because she’d built him up in her head all this time, and he wasn’t what she wanted.
Well, of course he wasn’t. He hadn’t been, you know, trying. To impress her or… or whatever. Because he wasn’t interested in her. She was pretty, and sure, the image of her perky little tits was engraved in his memory until the end of time, but he was not…
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