by Greg Dragon
“Kareema, drop a shield,” Bassam ordered, and the Meluvian rolled forward and slammed her wrists together. A field formed around her like a translucent bubble, doing more harm than good as the bullets started ricocheting everywhere.
“Thype,” Quentin whispered as his radar showed incoming from deeper inside the hold. The bubble had eliminated their chance to suppress the lizards, and now they were about to be overrun. “Hey, Private, drop the shield and move. You’re going to get us killed,” he said, then turned and grabbed the lance corporal’s breastplate, pulling him so close that their faceplates touched. “Any other bright ideas, you stow that schtill or talk to me first, you hear?”
He threw the man off and reached down to his belt where three different bomblets hung on either side of his trusty sidearm. He unclipped one and armed it, tossing it over Kareema, who was having trouble deactivating her energy field. Quentin grabbed one of her arms, yanking it away from the other and disabling the field. Then he pushed her into one of the other men and out of the way of the volleying salvo.
They missed her but struck him, and he was forced to scramble for cover. Just then, the bomblet exploded into a light so intense that it stunned both the Geralos and the Marines that didn’t expect it. The PAS helmet shaded Quentin’s eyes and outlined the bogies all in red, so he stepped through the doorway like death seeking souls and sprayed the attackers liberally with fragmented kinetic rounds.
The Marines who got their bearings back joined in on the blitz, as they rushed in, killing anything that moved. When the light began to fade, they saw the result of what they had done. Sixteen Geralos lay strewn upon the deck, which had become a charnel house of bodies, crates, and organic gunk.
“Secure the far door,” Quentin shouted, and the men on the door took up the charge and rushed to the other end.
“Apologies, Sergeant Tutt,” said Bassam. “We were exposed, and I thought it would help.”
“That was a critical mistake and we have the maker to thank,” Quentin said. “If one of those lizards were using las-tech, Private Ang would not be alive. Those shields work well against low-impact kinetics, but a las-sword would have made it explode, killing anyone within its blast radius. Next time you storm a ship have her leave that thing at home. We’ve been fighting in space long enough to know what works, and that isn’t it.”
“Sarge,” came a deep voice from one of the others, and when Quentin turned, a man pointed up to where several bodies hung from hooks.
I’m really getting tired of seeing this, he thought, remembering the earlier dreadnought and the room with all the bodies. “Wicked thypes,” he whispered. “I bet they expected to fill this place with spacers from the Rendron. Hey, Marines, real quick lesson. You see that gunk growing out of the bulkhead? They do that to make our atmosphere easier to breathe. It won’t harm you to touch it, but you should expect to see more as we work our way through the ship.”
“I need to hurl,” said Kareema, and he turned to see her hunched over, with one arm resting on a crate.
“Get it together; the air is toxic. You pull off your mask and you’re finished.”
Quentin missed the Nighthawks even more, now that he saw just how many mistakes the Marines were making. Had he not been with them, they would have been captured, and made to join the poor souls on the hooks. “To me,” he said and walked to the far door, where the two Marines awaited his command.
“It’s time to get salty and pretend we’ve done this before,” he said. “Stay on me and fight the way you’ve been trained to fight.”
“Hold. Where’s Jasari?” Bassam said, rushing back to the ledge where they’d last seen the sniper. “Jasari, report.” Quentin heard him on the comms, and he knew from the lance corporal’s voice that there would be no response. He fell in with the other Marines, retreating to find their man, and that was when he saw the remains of what was Jasari Lace.
“Those are las-sword burns. Everybody spread out,” Quentin said. “A lizard is stalking us, and he’s skilled with that blade. We have to grab Lace later. Right now we’re all in danger of having the same thing happen to us.” But none of the Marines were moving. They all seemed stunned into stasis at the sight of their friend cut into pieces.
He was about to shout for them to move once again, when something above them shifted, and a shadow fell on Kareema. She died before she even knew what hit her, and another Marine panicked and fired at the assassin. The thing avoided his rifle by rolling off her body and springing up, taking off the shooter’s head before escaping through the door.
We’re going to be butchered, Quentin thought. None of them will stand a chance against the sword arm of a Craqtii. He had recognized the uniform that the killer was wearing. It was the Geralos equivalent of Special Forces, the lethally deadly Craqtii.
One of these assassins could decimate an entire squad, and in a place as crowded as the one they were in, he could have his way with them. Quentin wondered just how long he would have to stall for the others to escape to the ship. Then he heard the familiar humming of a las–sword coming alive.
Shoving the lance corporal out of the way as the Geralos dashed between them. Quentin spun and fired his pulse-rifle, aiming low to avoid hitting his men. The Craqtii feinted, then came in with a swipe intended to remove his arm, but Quentin saw it coming, and let it strike his rifle instead.
Bassam tried to shoot him, but the Craqtii’s shield absorbed the shot, and he countered with a swing that should have taken off his head. But the lance corporal was quick, hopping back before stepping in, swinging the butt of the rifle into the Geralos’s head. Quentin Tutt, seeing an opening, pulled his knife from his belt. He grabbed Bassam, saving his life from a counter so fast that a chunk of helmet flew from his head.
The Craqtii, seemingly frustrated, decided that Quentin was too much, so he performed a backflip over the ledge to a hidden platform above the generator.
“We’re leaving,” Quentin said, suddenly. “This salvage-op is a bust, and we’re not equipped to take on Craqtii operators. If he returns, light him up, but try your best not to hit the generator. Vor, you stay with me, and radio the Rendron to let them know our situation. The rest of you men, get your brothers and sister. I will—”
“Sergeant Tutt,” Bassam interrupted him. “If we leave now, we run the risk of him sneaking onboard to follow us back to mother. We should continue our mission, and when he comes again, we’ll hit him with everything we’ve got. If we can kill him, we can take the ship, and then Kareema and Loden wouldn’t have died for nothing.”
Quentin wanted to object, but the man was right, and every ounce of his being wanted nothing more than to drag his blade across that Craqtii’s face. “You’re right,” he said. “To retreat now would only expose us, but to stay could be suicide. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“What sort of life could we live after this?” Bassam said, before his eyes went black and blood filled his mask as the Craqtii ran him through. Quentin closed on him, but the remaining Marines had already started firing.
“What is this thing made of?” one of them said, as he fired recklessly, accidentally striking Quentin several times. The Craqtii turned on this shooter, and Quentin charged him with his knife arm raised. His rocket boots triggered, and he moved so fast that he caught the Geralos off guard. Even Quentin hadn’t expected it, and he slammed into the Craqtii, sending them both over the ledge.
He plunged his knife into the Craqtii’s neck, but the shield reflected it, sending it flying out of his hand. Together they toppled towards the generator as they fought to get the upper hand. They crashed into the deck several meters below, but the Geralos’s broken body helped to cushion Quentin’s fall.
Flashing readouts crowded his helmet as the internal computer screamed for him to move away from the generator. He still had the Craqtii restrained, but saw that his las-sword had become dislodged.
He straddled the assassin and delivered several stiff punches into his mask. His
shields were gone so the glass of his faceplate shattered from his onslaught, but Quentin kept on punching, thinking of the faces of the Marines whose lives had been lost. Punch after punch he rained down, like a greased piston, unobstructed.
Had it not been for the heat, the Nighthawk would have continued, but his suit was beginning to struggle to keep him cool. So, with one final punch he stood up, collected the las-sword, and looked around to see if he could locate his knife. It had been with him since childhood, a Genesian heirloom, gifted to him by an uncle who had fought in the Traxian wars. To lose it was to lose himself, so he ran around the generator trying to locate it.
He finally found it below one of the consoles near the bulkhead. Two swift kicks dented the metal and gave him enough purchase to grab the handle. Tired, hot, and barely alive, he executed a leap, focusing on his rockets the way Helga had taught him. The PAS suit reacted, and he flew out of the generator towards the high overhead.
He would have crashed had he not grabbed onto the ledge, swinging himself over to land clumsily on the deck. The five surviving Marines stared at him blankly as he slid the las-sword into his belt. He slipped the knife into his boot, then grabbed Kareema’s rifle from her hands. “Now, let’s finish this schtill,” he said, and stepped away from them with purpose towards the open cargo hold.
13
It was third shift—the Navy’s equivalent of night—and eight Vestalian days since the Marines took the dreadnought. Helga was on her way back to her compartment, where she was looking forward to some much-needed rest. It had been a long cycle, one of the longest she could recall, and it was all due to the unrest amongst the crew.
One officer had been arrested when it was found that he had ties to The Collective. He was discharged immediately and placed inside of a cell, where he would spend the remainder of his cycles until the return to Alliance space. It was a death sentence, but considering the loss of lives, Retzo Sho wasn’t hesitant about bringing down the hammer. Over fifteen rates and officers were implicated, and like rats they turned on one another, exposing the ring of dissidents.
Helga worried that the master-at-arms had given up on finding their Geralos. She felt that the enemy had gone into hiding, and it was only a matter of time before another explosion or worse. This bothered her more than she wanted to admit, mostly because of a deep-rooted fear that it was someone too high up the chain to be fingered.
She swung by the Nighthawk’s space on Aurora deck to grab a cup of milk tea, but decided instead to check in on Quentin, who had just been cleared to receive visitors.
“How are you feeling, big man?” she said, sitting on the edge of his bed.
“Tired, I guess. No. Fatigued? One of those things. I want to get up and walk to my own quarters, but my body is telling me to stay right here. Old is the word that I’m looking for, Ate. I feel like an old man.
“I barely survived that fight,” he said dismissively. “He caught me off guard. Craqtii are about as close as you can get to a lizard ESO. This one was worth every second of training that they spent giving him. He toyed with us in there as if he knew those Marines were rooks.”
“So, what happened?” she said, hoping he would talk. She could see the reservation in his eyes, and knew that the guilt he felt inside was much worse than his injuries. Quentin Tutt had seen a lot in his career, and was one of the sharpest men she knew. When he started telling her about the mission and the way it fell apart, she saw real pain reflected in his eyes.
He told her about the hanging bodies, the spores, and how impressed he was with the Marines. Then he told her about the Craqtii, and how it started killing them one after the other.
“I wouldn’t be so fast with making me into a hero,” he said. “I led those Marines into a blender, and was lucky to have that generator so that I could get him away from the rest of them. The rest was the maker choosing my life over his. We were evenly matched in skill, and he had nothing to lose. I sit here healing with access to holos and vids, but to tell the truth I’m ashamed. None of us should have died on that dreadnought.”
Helga stared absentmindedly at the screen embedded in the bulkhead near the door, showing what would be the starboard side of the Rendron. She had noticed that Quentin had finished his tale, but let the silence persist, since she needed the time to process everything she had just heard.
“You miss Meluvia, don’t you,” he said, catching her by surprise.
“No, not really,” she said.
“Ate, I can see it in your eyes. There’s no need to pretend that you’re happy being back here, doing the captain’s will. You were planet-born like me, though I’ve heard you refer to yourself as a boomer. Take it from someone who knows, you will never be the same after experiencing land. All our memories, the ones from childhood, are tied to planetary gravity, and a world so large we could never see the entirety of it all. When we jumped from the dropship, I saw your face, and it was the only time I’ve seen you happy since I joined the team.”
Helga sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if anything gets past you, Quentin,” she said. “You’re right, I do miss Meluvia. Not the violence and the chaos, but the people, and those beautiful children.” She smiled as she recalled their time together on the mission. “I miss the trees, birds, and those exotic animals.”
“I miss it too,” he said. “The people, the culture, the smell of wet leaves from the morning dew … all of it. When all of your best memories are from a planet, it can make the starship feel like a prison.”
“We do have the simulation arcade,” Helga said. “I’m more than sure they have a Genesian experience in there. You could get a little taste of home while you’re on the mend.”
“Most of those simulations are from a lifetime ago, when my ancestors believed that their children would leave Anstractor. There was a push to locate the Thaross wormhole, and leave this galaxy to the Geralos. They recorded the sims to archive the old world.”
“I didn’t realize that Genese was trying to flee the galaxy,” Helga said. “That part of our history didn’t make it into the Rendron’s library.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s one of our greatest shames. I learned about it from one of my COs. We were a desperate people, Ate, and our first instinct was to run. Genese was a planet of culture, just like your mother’s Casan. We weren’t prepared for the Geralos, which is why we tried to flee, and initially it was for the promise of a wormhole that would lead to a new, peaceful world.”
“Thype,” Helga whispered. It was so disappointing to hear that their ancestors had been so naïve.
“All that to say, I have done the simulations and they are not how I remember Genese,” Quentin said.
“I miss Meluvia, but it’s Casan that I want to visit. I do remember things, but it’s a child’s memory. What I can recall is the dress I wore, my mother, and my brother, Rolph, playing with his kite. I would love to remember the flora. I couldn’t tell you what the trees were like, or the flowers. The smells—you mentioned smells—I want to remember that as well, but there are no recordings of Casan.”
“Forget the sims, Ate, you will make your own memories when you get there. When that time comes, you should bring a flo-bot and create your own sim for the future Helgas with no recollection of home.”
“I like that thought,” she said. “Give something back to this old space boat.”
“How are you doing otherwise?” he said, and Helga turned and looked at him quizzically.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” she said, studying his stoic face.
“I’ve been better, but it will pass. It always seems to pass, though this time it’s taking its sweet time, and I feel like absolute schtill.”
It’s the guilt, she thought, not having to ask his meaning. Quentin had been deployed with young Marines, and probably saw it as an opportunity to be a big brother to the grunts. But he’d led them into a bloodbath, through no fault of his own. The guilt of surviving when so many were killed was eating him alive and she
knew it.
“You’re a giant, Tutt, but just because you’re big doesn’t mean that you have to carry us on your shoulders. You and I bleed the same way our Marines and cadets bleed, and while I know that words won’t ease your pain, I need you to know that you are not alone.”
“I know,” he said. “That has never been a question.”
Helga saw that her attempt to cheer him up was not really working so she decided to leave him alone. “I’m gonna let you get some rest,” she said. “I do hope you know that you mean more to me than just a fellow Nighthawk.”
“I get it,” he said, forcing a smile. “If I’m not back in three cycles, could you come back to check on me?”
“Of course,” she said, not sure how to take his question. She got up and played with the controls of his bed, adjusting the settings to what she thought would make him more comfortable.
This place is becoming a bit too familiar, she thought, thinking about all the times she’d visited medbay in the recent cycles. Before Tutt there was Cilas, and then her recovery after the psych. She hoped that Raileo wouldn’t complete the set. Three out of the four was enough.
“Oh,” she said, turning at the door. “What is it that you do for fun? I mean, when you’re not training or hanging out with us.”
“Are you serious?” he said, as if he suspected that there was something behind her question.
“Yeah, serious question, I really do want to know. I spacewalk, drink with friends, and explore the ship when I’m not staring out in space,” she said, laughing. “Raileo is a performer, from what I hear, and the commander, hmm … I guess he plays with Joy?” She laughed. “But I don’t know what you do, so help me out.”
“Knives,” he said, surprising her again. She had expected him to blow her off, citing the old faux humility of, “you don’t have to get me anything,” that people always did. “Anything with an edge, really. Swords, cutlasses, daggers. Took a las-sword off that animal. I plan to practice with it until I master it.”
