by C. Gockel
With a numb right hand, she flipped back the interface panel. This one had two sets of command pads. One was for the exterior hatch, where Jon and the remaining trapped inhabitants now waited. The other was the interior hatch, where the EE troopers were perched.
She input the first string of the code.
A lucky round struck the wall inches above her right shoulder. The angle would have been tight for the trooper to have pulled that off. Which meant he would have been exposed. There was an answering report from Jon’s side of the corridor, then a guttural cry.
That’s four left. We might actually get out of this.
“Ty! Come on!” Jon called. Something in his voice made her look up. His attention was on his side of the passage. Bright white flashes lit up the interior of the corridor from inside their barricade.
More EE troopers were heading at them from behind. Either Valen had left some of them alive, or there was another way around.
No time to wonder.
She input the rest of the code and pressed the activation key, wrist throbbing. There was an unhealthy whir as the pneumatics on the pressure door cycled to life. She stole a glance into the corridor and saw the doors begin to roll shut on their tracks. At that moment Jon focused his shots on the Ravstar troopers, keeping them on their side of the hatch.
Then Sela saw the dark figure move among them.
Tristic stood in the center of the corridor, fully exposed, framed by the shutting doors. When the half-breed saw Sela, her head lowered. Tristic’s expression seemed like an amused dare as if to say: this is not done .
Their gazes locked.
I can end this. I can end this right now. For Valen.
Sela brought the A2 up and stepped out into the passage. Her rounds struck center body mass until the rifle charge was dry. Tristic staggered back with each hit. Head still lowered. Her stare still fixed on Sela.
The body armor was strong enough to repel a scatter gun. Or an amped out A2.
She dropped the spent rifle. Striding toward the shutting doors, she drew her sidearm and fired, left handed. The move was clumsy. The rounds struck the shutting door just to Tristic’s right. Compensating for her non-dominant hand, Sela fired again. One struck on the shut hatch where Tristic’s hideous face would have been.
“Let’s move!” Jon grabbed her arm.
He tugged her along, and they ran with the flood of refugees for the docking bay.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You want to tell me what in Nyxa’s name that was about?” Jon demanded as they sprinted up the Cassandra’s ramp.
“I saw an opportunity, and I took it,” Sela snapped, triggering the manual override as she ran past. The ramp initiated the retraction sequence. The inner hatch sealed behind her.
“An opportunity to get killed? Who were you firing on?” Jon replied as he climbed up the ladder to the command loft. Sela followed close behind.
She slid beneath the railway and onto the grav bench beside him. “A Defensor. Calls herself Tristic. The bitch killed Valen,” she answered. “She’s the reason why Ravstar is hunting your sister.”
The Cass’s engines were already rumbling awake. Their uncertain, angry rattle told her Veradin wasn’t going about this gracefully. They needed to get gone soon.
“Where is Erelah? How did she get out?”
“Does it matter? She’s secured now,” he shot back, his attention split between the forward view and keying up the ‘pulsion controls.
That meant he had made it safely to the Cassandra but had elected to go back for her. Strategically unsound.
“You came back to find me. It was a dumb risk to take.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Hurriedly, he keyed the propulsion activation. The sudden acceleration thrust them back into the cushions. Veradin guided the Cass under and around the outstretched arms of the dying station’s docking rings. At least a dozen other ships, a motley mix of makes and models, fled en masse.
As they dodged a large, slow-moving cargo tug, Sela saw it: the Ravstar vessel. Phantom class. It was a thing of deadly beauty. It had positioned itself between the station and the flex point, like a funnel spider standing guard at its trap. The size was unimpressive, compared to the station. But she made up for that with armaments.
“Jon.”
“I see them, I see them,” Veradin growled.
She squirmed as they darted under the body of a floundering Panzer class transport.
He reached across her and set a new command on the enginesys.
Sela gaped. “That’s the maneuvering engine. We need that.”
“Wait. Just wait.”
She reached but was held back by the straps of the chair. He swatted her hand away and unclipped her safety harness.
“I have an idea,” Jon said.
He paused, ducking instinctively as a fat-bellied freighter zigged into their present course. At that moment she saw what he was doing: using the bulk of the larger craft to make it difficult for the Ravstar vessel to detect their position. The Cassandra was still transmitting a fraudulent ident, but her form and mass stood out in the sea of ancient transports and cargo skiffs.
“Go,” he said. “Find the cesium manifold.”
She climbed over the top of the seat and darted for the corridor, then turned. “Then what?”
“Just wait.” His attention was torn between the enginesys and the piloting controls.
“Wait. Be nice. Don’t kill anyone,” she mocked under her breath as she swung neatly down the ladder to the companionway.
She stalked in a hectic circle, peering through the grates of the decking underfoot. There! She spotted it, the curved shield that protected the pressurized cesium line. With a metal clatter, she flipped the deck panel out of the way and hopped down into the smaller space.
“Still waiting!”
“Good. Get ready to prime the feed. We have to try a cold spool-up.”
Sela ran a hand through her hair. Cold spool-up was a brief training from years ago. Even that technology had been with a far newer vessel, an SP9 Crossfire, not a piece of antiquity like the Cassandra. It was a chancy maneuver to demand speed before the engines were at full prime.
Sighing, she tipped the shield case open with the toe of her boot and was greeted with a specimen fit for a museum.
Sela bellowed up at the loft. “It’s ancient—”
“S’ok, Ty. Either way, we’re dead.”
“Well…that makes it easier.”
“Wait for my mark.”
She located the primer feed. Corrosion peppered the joint with green speckles. She reached for the valve and immediately drew her hand away, hissing. The bastard was hot!
The deck lurched beneath her. Metal groaned around her. She clenched her teeth. This might not be the best idea.
“Cap’n?”
“Okay, now!”
Wrapping her hand with her sleeve, she pulled. Nothing. The damned handle would not budge. Corrosion had sealed the joint.
“Now!” he bellowed. “Now would be good.”
Again, nothing. Sela braced against the deck and kicked at the handle. It swung open stubbornly. There was a shuddering pause. A horrifying metallic shriek issued from the Cass. She squeezed her eyes shut and flattened against the bulkhead.
Nothing.
Sela leaned forward to yell up at the command loft. “It didn’t—”
Suddenly, the vessel lurched forward like a startled animal. Sela crashed against the lip of the deck. Her head struck something and white flashed in her field of vision.
“Close it. Close it!”
She scrambled back to the line. This time the access valve moved smoothly. The seal clacked shut. The Cass gave another, less catastrophic lurch. Sela collapsed onto her back, nerves unbundling.
“Ty! You did it!” He released a jubilant shout from the loft. “We’re through the flex point!”
Sela lay that way for a long time as she entertained bodily harm to
the Last Daughter of Veradin.
Erelah woke to darkness. Panic instantly settled onto her chest. Since childhood, she had hated and feared the dark. Her time with Tristic had only worsened it.
Frantically, she reached out. Her hands met cold smooth shapes. Then, not far from that, a wall. She was in a tiny room, all metal. The sounds of her movements, her breathing, echoed flatly. She recognized the pungent smell of sanitation fluids. This was the wasterec on the Cassandra. Dimly she could make out a thin line of white light along the floor. The door. She rose, sliding along the wall and pawed at the door. The latch would not turn. Jon had locked her in. Why?
“Jon!” She pounded on the door.
The door lung open. Light flooded the room.
Tyron was upon her, thrusting her against the wall and compressing her windpipe with a forearm. Cesium fuel vapors clung to the soldier’s blood-stained clothing in a noxious cologne. She was a wild-eyed shield maiden of Nyxa, come to deliver her death.
“Why was Ravstar waiting for us?” Tyron demanded. “Who is Defensor Tristic? Why does she want you?”
Erelah was afraid of how it would feel to have that bare skin touch her own and connect that circuit of Tyron’s rage. She feared that more than the threatening words or the pain she could bring.
Erelah could only blink at her.
“Ty! Stop it!”
Jon inserted himself between them.
Tyron’s arm was pried away.
Erelah sank down the wall. And watched. It all seemed to happen in another room, far removed from this one. They were two familiar-looking people, pulling off a convincing play of anger.
Jon shoved Tyron back. Head lowered, she turned her anger on him.
“I deserve answers! Valen died for her!”
“Yes, but not like this!”
Jon stood between them. He was tensed, hands out at his sides, ready to repel Tyron’s next attack.
“Calm down. We’ll do this, but not with you like this. Get it under control, soldier.”
Erelah felt Tyron’s cool stare from over Jon’s shoulder. Forget shield maiden; she was Nyxa incarnate, ready to bring torturous death.
She leveled a finger at Erelah. “I never forget.”
Erelah shivered beneath the blanket Jon had wrapped over her shoulders. The galley was cold, the way Fleet kept their vessels. He always liked things that way, she recalled. His rooms back on Argos. Even arguing with Uncle about the size of the fire in the hearth.
How appropriate , she thought, feeling Tyron’s frigid stare from the doorway. She had changed from the bloody clothes but looked no less terrifying.
Beneath Erelah’s bare feet, the ship muttered on with its uneven hum, something else to gnaw on her nerves.
A fourteen percent imbalance between the cesium expellers. Nothing a simple recalibration wouldn’t fix. She doubted they were interested in her diagnosis right now.
Erelah wound pale hands around the steaming cup of insta-cal that Jon forced on her, and savored its warmth against the mysterious cuts on her fingertips. The thought of food made her want to retch. She took small sips of the bland stuff just to please him.
Jon sat on the bench opposite her. His hands on his knees. His back rigid. She could not stand the intense look on him as if she were a stranger, someone he’d never met.
He reached across the space between the two benches to place a hand on her knee. She shied away.
The intensity in his gaze was replaced by hurt. He drew back.
“Tell us, Erelah. All of it. We need to understand.”
/Yes. Tell him all, Veradin. Confirm their suspicions. Let them know the full danger you bring them./
Erelah drew in a quivering breath and pushed back against Tristic’s voice. Not now.
It was easier than before. She had a sense that something had happened to weaken the Defensor, if just temporarily. She still felt Tristic in there, trying to scratch her way through. It was like an itch at the back of the throat, a dull ache that lingered and would freshen if prodded.
Regardless of the reprieve from Tristic’s presence, it was still hard for her to recount time as an orderly set of events. Although the pharms were well gone from her body, she felt as if she were dissolving, barely able to hold her shape. She was a collection of pieces that belonged to now-Erelah and then-Erelah.
Jon cleared his throat. She realized she had started to go away again.
“There was a NeuTech installation. It was where I worked…with others. High clearance, very few of us. Adan. Tilley. Myrna…”
Those are names of dead people.
Tyron uttered an impatient sigh. Jon shifted.
“The ship we called Jocosta …for the project. Something new: a j-drive. It was meant to replace velo drives but on smaller ships. But special.”
“Special how?” Jon asked.
“Ships that can travel without mapped conduits…can make their own FPs.”
“Like the stryker in the bay? It can do that?”
Tyron growled. “This is inefficient. Ask her about Tristic. About Ravstar’s involvement.”
“Maintain, Tyron,” Jon said, his voice pitched with warning.
Erelah retracted further beneath the blankets, away from their raised voices.
Tryon resumed pacing.
Jon nodded for Erelah to continue.
She swallowed, granting Tyron a wary look.
“It worked,” Erelah said with a broken smile. Tears invaded her vision.
Jon leaned forward, expression carved with concern. His pity was suffocating. She gazed down at the cooling cup in her hands instead. “And then…then…Tristic learned about me. She decided I was so much more useful than the new j-drive tech.”
“What makes you so bloody important?” Tyron sneered. Jon turned stiffly, frowning at his woman. She glowered back at him.
“I used the Jocosta to get away. That’s not why she wants me. The stryker…the new drive…they’re toys to her. She can make a fleet of them if she wants. She has the plans. She wants me . I’m perfectly imperfect. She wants to use me.”
“Use you? How?” His stare was fierce. His jaw muscles clenched.
“She’s dying,” Erelah said. “She’s terrifyingly brilliant. She has eyes and ears everywhere. But she’s also dying.”
“But why does she want to use you? Help me understand,” he pressed.
“You’ll believe me?” Erelah looked up at him, feeling warm tears slip down her cheeks.
He nodded. “I promise.”
“She wants to be me…to wear me. I go away. And she becomes me, living in my body. She can do it now, bit by bit. But to do it for good and make it final, she needs me in the flesh.”
“Be you?” Tyron mocked. She looked her up and down, measuring. “If she could really inhabit another body, why not someone bigger, more powerful? More like me? Or Jon? Or Valen?”
“Because I was different than the others.” She sobbed. “Imperfectly perfect. Perfectly imperfect.”
Jon came to Erelah’s side of the bench. She allowed him to pull her close, careful not to touch his skin. She curled against him and listened to their tense buffet of words.
“The stryker, I can understand. But this. I don’t believe this. It doesn’t make sense.”
“And you know everything now?” Jon shot back. “Miri knows what Ravstar experiments on. Bioweapons. Psy-Ops. Is it that far-fetched?”
Tyron answered with a derisive grunt.
“The question is how we use this intel,” Jon said.
“I don’t know, sir. But we have an advantage, a slight one,” Tyron answered.
“Advantage?” Jon asked. “How?”
“Although I still question the reasons why Tristic wants her—”
“Why would my sister lie?”
Tyron continued, speaking over him. “Before his death, Sergeant Valen told me that Tristic was desperate to locate Erelah. That does corroborate her…version of events. The Defensor did appear physically ill.
If Tristic is dying, then we just wait her out. We withdraw to the Reaches to elude capture. We wait for Tristic to die.”
Jon was quiet. Then: “Withdraw. Shelter in place.”
“Exactly, sir. Modified attrition.” Tyron actually sounded eager. Erelah could nearly hear the click/whir of the rational motor in the soldier’s mind.
They didn’t understand. They didn’t get it. They’d never been unmade. But they did not live with this thing in their heads, curled in its inky den and feasting on everything that once made them whole. Scratching. Burrowing.
“It’s not that easy. It doesn’t work that way.” Erelah shoved away from Jon’s embrace. The mug tumbled to the floor. She climbed to her feet, backing away from both of them. “She’s still connected to me. That’s how she knew to find me at that station. She can sight-jack me, take me over, but not permanently. I can push her out, but I keep losing ground. I can’t wait her out. I can’t hide from her.”
The nerve-jangling rattle of the Cassandra’s engines filled the tense, measuring silence.
“Sight-jack? Really? You are obviously psych-damaged,” Tyron spat.
“Enough, Sela!”
She turned her anger onto him. “Your emotional connection to her is blinding you to some basic facts.”
“Ty, stop it!” Jon rose, stepping into Tyron’s way.
Fearful, Erelah recoiled, her feet tangling in the blanket. She fell back against the wall.
In one cat-like move, Tyron slipped around Jon and cornered her against the bulkhead. “You forget one thing. You’re Eugenes. A Sceeloid, not even something like Tristic, cannot sight-jack a Eugenes. That’s why we have Purity codes. That’s why we purge the non-reg races.”
At this, Erelah gave Jon a strained look. He was a bundle of guilt: head bowed, eyes shut. The muscle of his jaw compressed. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
Did he not tell Tyron about Helio’s message?
Their unspoken exchange did not go unnoticed.
“What?” Tyron glowered, straightening.
“You’ve not told her, have you?” asked Erelah, careful to use High Eugenes.
