by M. G. Herron
Elya leaned on the brakes and pulled the skimmer up short. “No…” he said. All those poor, innocent people. “No!” He smashed a fist against the dashboard.
The woman grabbed the control wheel of the skimmer. “Go the other way! Head for the mountain range.”
Elya forced himself to take a deep breath. “What’s in the mountain range?”
“I don't know, but it’s got to be better than going down there.”
“The Kryl are going to invade this planet. They’re going to destroy this place. If you stay on Robichhar, you’re as good as dead.”
“Do you have a better idea? They just shot the shuttle out of the sky! I’d rather we take our chances in the mountains.”
Elya shook his head and pressed his tongue into the back of his teeth as he forced himself to think it through. She had a good point. And he still had the cube in his pack. “I have an Imperial tightbeam. The Fleet will find us wherever we are, once it connects. You know somewhere we can hide out? Somewhere safe from the groundlings?”
She thought about it. “Safer than here.”
“Tell me where to go.”
“That way.” The woman pointed at a place where the foothills of two soaring mountains met.
Glancing down at the dashboard of the skimmer he saw that the battery was close to empty. “We don't have much power left. Let’s hope we can make it.”
Pulling the skimmer around, Elya put the wreckage of the shuttle and the spaceport, with its pack of panicked refugees, at his back. Overhead, the Kryl drones continued to strafe across the sky, searching for new targets. He prayed they wouldn’t follow the skimmer as he found a trail that seemed to lead toward the foothills and guided it back into the forest. He didn't see any Imperial jets in the sky yet. While he drove, Elya used his free hand to take the cube, with its embedded tightbeam, out of his backpack. He spun it around until he found the light—still blinking. Not connected.
His heart sank into his stomach.
Seven
Nevers better survive that crash, Casey thought furiously. He better survive because when I see him, I’m going to kill him.
She bit the inside of her cheek and bowed her head, fighting back the tears of anger that threatened to overwhelm her, as they often did.
No, she corrected herself, as they often used to. She hadn’t angry-cried in years. And she wasn’t about to start now.
But damn it, it was her fault. She should have flown faster. She should have flown harder. If Nevers wasn’t such a damn good pilot, she would have caught him, but by the time he’d begun to chase that Kryl out toward the moon, he was already too far ahead of her.
She wanted that drone dead as badly as he did, but he never should have disobeyed orders. She was his flight lead and it was a stupid thing he did, a stupid brave stupid thing. But still. If she’d been more careful, if she’d trained a little harder, if she was paying better attention… she would have been there with him. Instead, as she emerged from the Mammoth fleet and spotted them ahead of her, twirling and swerving and spinning through space on the backdrop of Robichar’s green-blue surface, she tried to get a lock on the Kryl, but Nevers had been in the way. She couldn’t get a good angle—at least not fast enough to make a difference.
The Kryl had been in front of Nevers, then behind him, and then Nevers’ engines blew out in a bright flash. His smoking craft was pulled into the moon’s gravity well. She shot at the Kryl drone then, and even hit it, but it got clear and she chose to follow Nevers instead of giving pursuit.
If the crash didn’t kill him, that drone had a damn good chance. She could only hope Nevers was fast enough and smart enough to evade capture—or worse. This thought spurred her imagination to take several gruesome liberties that made her even more sad and angry.
Casey bashed her hands against the useless control column in her starfighter. Admiral Miyaru had taken over her craft and she’d been left to fume in silence, her comms cut off from the rest of her squad while autopilot carried her back into the destroyer.
Controlling jerk, Casey thought. All because she tried to save her own squadmate. Who punishes a pilot for trying to rescue one of her own? She forced herself to take several deep breaths, attempting to quell the fury that rose within her like a writhing snake in her gut.
The starfighters of the other pilots on her squad fell in behind and in front of her auto-piloted craft, and soon they were queuing up to dock in the hangar.
Park and Yorra went ahead, with Lieutenant Colonel Walcott and the rest of the squad bringing up the rear.
As she floated toward the open mouth of the hangar, tinged a soft blue from the energy shield containing the atmosphere, she wondered what kind of punishment Admiral Miyaru had in store for her, and if the admiral would let her lead a search and rescue mission to bring Nevers home.
No doubt Nevers would scuttle his Sabre like he was supposed to and activate the tightbeam with his location. They’d be able to find him in a matter of hours, assuming he’d…
She couldn’t finish the thought. Until today, she held great respect for Admiral Miyaru. Perhaps a search and rescue mission was already underway. Casey would have dispatched one already if she were in charge.
The nose of her Sabre passed through the energy shield. The artificial gravity pulled her down into her seat as her normal weight returned. She ripped off her oxygen mask and helmet and threw them to the floor.
A few seconds later, she had docked safely and Petty Officer Mick Perry was there to plug in her refueling and diagnostic cables. Once he was done, he popped the lid of her starfighter from the outside.
The aluminite canopy lifted up and Casey jumped out, not even bothering with the angled wing that doubled as a ramp. She landed in a crouch, then stood, the tight sleeves of her nanofiber suit flexing as she straightened her arms.
“You okay, Raptor?” Mick asked.
“Fine,” Casey said.
Mick sniffed, shook his head and then sneezed into the elbow of his grease-stained Imperial uniform.
“Hoo! Excuse me,” he said. “Well, you don’t sound fine.” He blinked several times. “Glad you’re okay, though. I heard Nevers…” He trailed off.
Casey gritted her teeth, squared her shoulders and marched by Mick before he could finish the sentence.
Park and Yorra knew better than to try to talk to her right now. They’d seen her angry before. She couldn’t talk to anybody when anger consumed her like this, as if the whole world was wrapped in red cellophane and her voice was bursting to be let out.
“Captain Osprey,” a familiar baritone voice called out from behind her. “Wait.”
She kept walking.
“Captain Osprey,” he said, more emphasis this time on her last name, as if it was a leash he could whip around her neck and use to haul her back to him. She ducked under the wing of a starfighter, snaked around a group of mechanics conferring over a shared tablet, and increased the length of her stride as she marched away.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll have you court-martialed.”
That put a stutter in her step.
What would her father think of his oldest daughter, the tomboy turned headstrong Sabre pilot, getting court-martialed?
Casey spun and glared daggers at Lieutenant Colonel Walcott. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wanna bet?”
Everyone around them froze and turned to watch the spectacle—the mechanics, the pilots… it seemed like the whole hangar hung their eyes on her flight suit. Lieutenant Colonel Walcott had moved faster than she thought he would. He was only a few feet away from her. Everybody else had fallen silent. The crowd watched with bated breath for the two tigers to attack each other.
Walcott was a head taller than her, and he outweighed her by fifty pounds, but she could take him. He may have been bigger than her, the more experienced commander, but he wasn’t a scrapper. She was. Casey balled her fists. If he took another step, he would regret it.
“You shouldn’t have gone
after him,” Walcott said.
“I had to.”
“You didn’t,” he said in a gentle voice. “You shouldn’t have. Now, whatever punishment the admiral metes out to him, it will be appropriate to give you as well.”
“And you would rather me have just let him go? Let the xenos have him?”
“He was gunned down by that drone anyway. He got outflown. But that’s beside the point. Admiral Miyaru wants to see you.”
The fire rushing through her veins went out in a gust of chill wind. The admiral wanted to see her? Right now?
“Colonel Volk told me to tell you to bring the black box from your starfighter, too. Go get it.”
Lieutenant Colonel Walcott pointed back toward her Sabre, which waited where she had left it, on the opposite side of the hangar from where they stood.
Though her fury mounted at being embarrassed by her superior officer in front of all these other people, Captain Osprey tossed back the blonde bangs that had fallen into her eyes, pulled her shoulders back like her father had taught her, and walked calmly back across the hangar to her starfighter.
As she approached, Petty Officer Perry was busy taking diagnostic readouts on his tab. Unaware of her approach, he tapped a few buttons on the screen, winced and put his head into both hands as he bit down on a surprised cry of pain, like a small animal being struck by a steel-toed boot.
“Perry,” Casey said, redirecting her path to check on the mechanic. “Are you okay?”
He gritted his teeth loud enough that she could hear his molars chipping as they ground together.
“Mick!” She reached down and when she brushed her fingers across his right shoulder he struck upward with a blocking forearm and backpedaled several paces.
Casey rocked back on her heels. That was strange. Mick was normally such a calm, even-keeled guy. Young, sure, and always chuckling with an amused, infectious laugh.
It seemed like every time Casey tried to help, her allies spit in her face. Casey felt her anger rise up again. “What’s your problem? I was just checking to see if you were okay.”
“Xeno!” Mick yelled. He pointed at her. “Xeno!” Mick raised his voice and bellowed, “There’s a Kryl in the hangar!”
“What—” she began to ask, but bit off the question. The sclera of his eyes had gone an orangish yellow color, and was shot through with red like fissures filled with lava. “Mick, what happened to your eyes?”
“Xeno!” he called. “Xeno, back!”
He fled, falling onto his hands and knees twice as he raced toward the closest wall of the hangar. Supplies the mechanics used to repair ships were stored along this wall, behind steel doors, on shelves and hanging from magnetic strips that would keep them battened down in case of an attack.
Mick knew these shelves very well.
Casey was surprised to see him reach not for a blaster, which she expected—after all, if she saw a killer “xeno” she’d want to shoot it in the face, too. Instead, he rushed to grip a plasma welding torch, the industrial strength kind that would be used to cut open the cockpit of a starfighter if it had been melted shut during a flawed atmospheric reentry.
With two quick motions, Mick sparked the torch to life and pointed it in her direction. Casey had been running after him, her body moving on instinct, but she stopped just short of the range of the flame, thinking that she might be able to talk him down off the ledge.
Instead, he took a swing at her, and she had to pivot her hips to avoid taking a blue flame to the neck. The torch passed within inches of her face, hissing hotly. As he stumbled past her, she kicked his right leg out from under him.
But he was fast. Mick got his leg back under him and twisted up, coming around and shoving her into the grate of one of the mechanic’s tool cages. A metal edge jabbed hard into her ribs and the wind gushed from her lungs.
Mick came at her again, this time pushing the torch in front of him instead of swinging it overhead. She leaned to the side. Sparks jumped as the flame skated across the metal grate by her left ear.
She popped him once in the nose and he reeled back as blood flowed down over his lips. She punched him a second time in the right temple. He staggered back and landed with his right hand braced on a metal canister.
Breathing hard, he closed his fist and lifted the canister, about the size of a small backpack, and turned to face her, holding both the torch and the canister up in front of him.
Park, Yorra, Lieutenant Colonel Walcott and several others had run over by this point. Mick must have realized he was surrounded.
“Cosmic hellspawn,” Mick cried, “from out of the darkest depths of space. If I can’t escape you, at least I’ll take you with me.”
He began to bring the flame to the canister. She gasped. In a moment of breathless, clawing panic, Casey realized that the canister was full of highly explosive, compressed gas.
The canister of gas was used to operate certain kinds of power tools; sometimes, on extended starfighter missions, they would carry these same canisters in the plane to use on the ground as fuel once they landed. It wasn’t as combustible as the type of solid-state fuel needed to power the antimatter engines on the Sabres and destroyers but it was, nonetheless, highly explosive.
The last time she had tried to talk him down, Mick had swung a torch at her. Casey looked around, meeting Walcott’s eyes and recognizing, even if she didn’t think these words consciously, that a calm personality like the commander’s might be better suited to negotiating with the panicked terrorist Mick had turned into.
“Now, Mick,” Walcott said, picking up Casey’s unspoken cue, “I understand you’re upset. I’d be upset, too, if I were in your shoes, but listen, man. It’s not worth it. This is all just a misunderstanding. You’re gonna be okay. Just put the torch down and let me take you to the sick bay. All right?”
Mick paused with the torch flame inches from the canister, but didn’t lower it.
“Yeah,” Yorra said. “See, Mick? We’re friends. It’s all good, man. Remember me? You helped me get into that Sabre earlier? You recognize me, don’t you?”
Mick contorted his face in a series of confused expressions, shaking his head as if to deny what his eyes were showing him.
Casey reached out, her fingers brushing the wall on her left, searching for a weapon without taking her eyes off the threat.
Her hands found a metal pry bar, a workbench… what might have been a toolbox… A couple extra tablets. Where was the case for those damned blasters? If she could get the gun, one quick shot at his knee would disarm Petty Officer Perry. He’d drop the torch, probably. If this negotiation failed, she couldn’t be sure there was another option.
“Mick,” Park said. “‘Member me? We had a couple drinks together last night. Come on, man. You rolled a straight in aleacc to win the last hand.”
“You’re… you’re lying,” Mick said.
“Come on, Perry,” Yorra said. “Put it down. Do it for Talia.”
Casey had seen the photo. Perry had been shoving it in anybody’s face who would look last night. His wife and little daughter, just three years old.
“Buddy,” Park said. ”Put the torch down, man.”
“We’re just trying to help,” Walcott said.
“No. You’re lying. You can’t make me.” Mick’s eyes widened. “For the Empire!” He shoved the flame into the side of the canister. A coin-sized circle of heat rapidly changed from silver to orange to red to white.
Park stepped forward and grabbed the canister, trying to yank it away. But Mick pulled and Park’s grip carried him onto Mick’s back. Together, they fell toward a group of spare gas canisters stacked together in the corner. There was a bright light and then a concussion. Captain Casey Osprey, and every person within a five meter radius, was flung backward. The back of her knees struck the wing of a starfighter and flipped her, heels over head. She landed beneath the plane as a second explosion erupted in a blinding flash, followed by another series of deafening concussions as se
veral more canisters were set off by the first one.
That parked starfighter saved Casey’s life. It was the last one that Mick had secured before losing his mind, the one that he’d been reading the diagnostics on his tab for. As explosions forced her back, she clung to the diagnostic cable. Desperately, Casey managed to grab onto one of the wheel wells as the explosions ruptured the force field separating the hangar from the dead vacuum of space. The pressure differential began to rip objects out of the hangar and cast them into the black void. Casey held on to the plane even while the physics of the rupture tried, with all its might, to space her.
She was certain that her fingers were going to give out when the ship’s automated defenses sealed the hangar once more. Atmospheric pressure and standard gravity returned in a rush. She gulped air as oxygen trickled back into the room.
With shaking arms and legs, she pressed herself to her feet and straightened, taking in the carnage. Several starfighters had been sucked out of the opening, hers included. There was debris and scattered flames for a hundred yards around the breach. Yorra bent over Park’s unconscious body. He had a deep gash in the side of his forehead that bled into his left ear. Yorra clutched her left arm.
Casey ran to them and helped Yorra haul the unconscious pilot away from the wreckage and the charred area where the explosion had been centered.
“You’re hurt,” Yorra said, eyes wide, as she reached up to touch the side of Casey’s face.
Casey twisted away from her. “Speak for yourself.” But she lifted a hand to her neck where Yorra had indicated. Her fingers came away red, wet and sticky. It seemed like a superficial cut for all that. Her back and torso hurt far more where they’d struck the wing of the starfighter.
“Where’s Walcott?” she asked, looking around.
Yorra swallowed and shook her head.
Casey covered her mouth with both hands as she swallowed a cry. The tears threatened again, but she refused to give them the satisfaction of flowing. She had to be strong—for Yorra, for Park, for Nevers.
