by David Ryker
She grumbled under her breath and then hung her head. She wasn’t please with that disappointing revelation.
Ward started walking forward, spreading his arms just enough to scoop her along like a snowplow might gather up the icy slush from a roadway.
They approached their ship at speed, Ward casting a quick glance over his shoulder. In the distance, Chandri was outside Fairbright talking on a communicator.
Ward had no way of telling what he was saying, but he knew what it was about. Chandri’s smirk, his narrowed eyes, the you-screwed-with-the-wrong-guy stance. He was calling it in. He was telling whoever was in charge exactly what had just happened. And worst of all, he was signing Ward and Arza’s death warrants. He’d seen that look too many times, and the cold sense of dread, the heavy feeling of that tombstone on a chain around his neck, had settled once more.
Ward squatted down and climbed into the dropship hurriedly, his internal clock ticking, counting down, eking into borrowed time. His heart had kicked into its higher gear, like a foot kept lightly on the throttle, the revs staying high ready for the next sprint.
On autopilot, he was in the seat and buckling in, flipping switches. Arza climbed in next to him and the rear ramp came up. She was still sullen, but Ward knew what was brewing. He’d expected resistance, being told to get out, or come back with a warrant. He’d just wanted to see. To gauge how quickly they’d get there. To see how complicit Fairbright was, how entrenched in the conspiracy they were. Whether Zenith had commandeered one of their labs or production lines, to outsource their sinister constructions or whether Fairbright was in on it, whether they were right there at the heart of it all.
Ward was inclined to think the latter as he took off, pulling them into the air with a whine of the engines that filled the cabin. The thrusters fought them off the ground, taking them up at an angle the wings could barely accommodate.
With each passing meter, they gained speed, Ward’s legs pumping on throttle to stop the engine from cutting out, his hands fighting the flaps to keep them level.
As they got to the airlock, he pulled them up sharply, nearly stalling, throwing off just enough speed to slip through the widening eye of the airlock.
The nose rose through the first, and dipped through the second, almost falling out of the air entirely.
Arza swore and put her hands against the top of the cockpit as their stomachs lurched and sank. Ward got the hammer down again as they levelled, pulling them in a wide circle around the side of the bio-dome to pick up speed before sweeping straight up off the planet’s surface in a sickening climb.
From the corner of his eye he watched Arza’s face drain of color, her mouth twisting into a nauseated grimace. She wasn’t used to flying. At least not like this.
The sky faded from jaundice yellow to purple, and then to black, and stars punctuated space above them. The hull stopped shaking and a sudden tranquillity took hold in the cabin. Arza’s hair flowed around her head like a golden halo.
Ward punched the return journey into the terminal and followed the path around the curve of Aeolus. No time for detours now.
Arza was breathing hard, trying to quell her sickness. “A little warning would have been nice,” she grumbled. “If you’re just trying to get back at me, or piss me off, or—”
“I’m not,” Ward said in a low voice, keeping the thrusters at full speed. They kept accelerating until the dwindling numbers displayed by on-screen telemetry became a blur.
The sun disappeared behind them and then crossed over to the night side of the planet.
The port rushed up quickly, rotating slowly, the sleeping ships all nestled on its arms like fruit ready to drop from the branches of a great steel tree.
Ward was good enough this time to give Arza some warning. “Hold on,” he said, not even reaching for the reverse thrusters.
Arza was spidered against the cockpit, eyes wide as the station grew at an alarming rate. “Ward, stop! You’re going to go right past it!”
“Just hold on, I’ve done this before,” he lied.
He’d been on a ship when it was done, but that time hadn’t gone so well. In fact, it had been one of the crashes he’d talked about earlier. Still, when it was happening then, he’d had the unmistakable feeling that the pilot was going to screw it up, and he remembered thinking, just before he was battered by flying debris being sucked through a hull breach and into space, that if he was at the controls he could have done a better job. Still, the guy had only been the co-pilot. The actual pilot had been sitting next to Ward in the cabin at the time of the maneuver, bleeding profusely from a gut-shot that he’d sustained covering them from the gangramp as Ward and Sadler had been making a run back to the ship.
It’d been a rough day up until then, but when the pilot, a guy called Hackwell, had suggested that they do a Marnikov maneuver, in order to dock with the OCA cargo vessel they were aiming for, Ward had known it was about to get a lot worse. The pilot had minutes to live, maybe less, and Sadler’s hands pressed to the wound were doing little to dissuade him from bleeding out.
Ward could see it now. A scarlet stream pumping through her fingers and twisting into the air like a double helix, floating through the cabin as they hurtled toward the ship far faster than they should have been.
A regular deceleration would have meant that the pilot would have died before receiving any care. Incidentally, he died anyway, slipping through his loosened harness, not fully secured so Sadler could try to staunch the bleeding, and flying into the cold embrace of space.
Ward had a long list of things not to do flying through his head as he planned his movements for the Marnikov — which was something they didn’t teach in any non-elite flight school due both to its difficulty and the likelihood that it would result in both the death of everyone onboard as well as the destruction of whatever craft was being flown.
Still, Ward’s fingers hovered over the switch to change the thrust from primary to directional and flexed his fingers around the joystick — the tiny lever that would decide their fates.
“Ready?” he asked, not waiting for an answer.
“For what—”
He flicked the switch and shoved his heels into the ground, throwing the joystick straight forward and then hard left.
The nose of the dropship sank downwards and the station flashed out of view above, the darkened curve of the planet to their right sailing up overhead.
They turned over in the air, tail forward, and then spun wing over wing to the side with enough force to wrap Arza’s hair around her head. They both slammed against the sides of their seats, then against the harnesses, and Ward clung onto the switch with his fingertips, spitting flecks of saliva between his teeth.
He jammed the switch back to primary thrust and double-pumped the throttles, feeling them flare and whimper behind him under the strain.
They were flying backward at thousands of meters per second, the station behind them, when the thrusters engaged, blasting out the back and kicking them in the ass, bringing their speed down so fast that Ward thought his chest might collapse into his spine.
He fought the stick, the thrusters moving around in their gyroscopic wells as the ship flew in the wrong direction, the space station suddenly streaking past overhead, Aeolus shrinking in front of them.
Ward wrestled them sideways as they shuddered to a halt, and then began to surge forward again toward the spinning dock, now just a few clicks away.
They covered the distance in seconds and Ward brought them into a normal stop against the jetty, albeit a little roughly.
The hulls clanged like bells as they engaged, doing in just a minute or so what would have taken the better part of half an hour with a normal maneuver.
Arza was breathing hard, rubbing her shoulders and chest where the straps had dug in, a nasty wheezing sound escaping her lips. But that didn’t matter now. She was conscious, which was the main thing, and they were low on time. Even in zero-g, the tombstone around his neck
was backbreaking.
He scrambled out of the seat and propelled himself back onto the gangway, turning to offer Arza his hand. She tried to bat it away, but he grabbed her anyway.
“Come on,” he demanded. “We have to hurry.”
“What’s going on? Is someone chasing us? Is it Chandri? What did you see?” She swung into the gangway and Ward threw her down the tunnel. She spun along, glaring back at him, kicking herself straight on the steel seams of the sections, grabbing at the light fixtures and metal railing that ran its length.
“There’ll be nothing to see until it’s too late.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, now moving alongside Ward as he made for the main section of the port, back toward the rotating, sloping floor with the microgravity. Despite not knowing what was going on, the stern panic in Ward’s voice was enough to tell her to keep up.
He pulled himself through the opening and into the ring, pausing for a second as a ladder swung round within reach. Ward took hold of it, grabbing Arza’s hand and swinging her up to the bridge.
Ward mantled it and felt the crush of gravity in his guts. But that wasn’t what made him stop dead in his tracks.
People milled around in front and above. The tops of their heads looked down at him, the chatter incessant as people stared sideways and around. Ward was frozen, barely feeling Arza’s hands clawing at his arm as she got to her feet next to him.
“Will you please tell me what’s… Jesus Christ.” She was gawking, like Ward, both of them staring all around. It didn’t matter where they looked, it was all the same.
He swallowed, almost buckling under the weight of the tombstone.
People began to part and lift their feet like rats were scurrying over the shoes. Ward let out a long breath and curled his fists, listening to the gasps of the crowd, the growing murmurs of uncertainty. He watched as people looked around, found Ward and Arza, and began to back up like the pair were radioactive. In that moment they might as well have been.
Under their boots, and under everyone’s, the floor, which had once been just flat, matte, non-slip polymer, had now turned transparent. And underneath it, screens had begun to show a repeating reel of footage.
Arranged in huge square tiles, stretching the entire length of the ship, jumping out at them from every angle imaginable — above, below, to the sides, ahead, behind — were Ward and Arza’s faces.
It was the magic eye footage from Fairbright Industries — the three seconds after they walked in, zoomed up on their faces, looking smugger than they should have considering the caption riding beneath.
WANTED BY THE OCA PEACEKEEPERS: ARMED AND HIGHLY DANGEROUS
!! DO NOT APPROACH !!
- MICHAEL MILLER, ERICA ARZA -
EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION AND REPORT ALL SIGHTINGS TO YOUR NEAREST OCA AUTHORITY, THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION
“Shit,” Arza breathed, her voice tiny and distant in Ward’s head.
He stammered for a second, his brain faltering. His heart was in his ears and then, on reflex, his animal brain kicked in — fight or flight engaged. Both engaged before he could consciously decide. He was already running.
He had one hand around Arza’s wrist, and with the other, he was bulldozing his way through the panicked crowd.
Screams and shouts of indignation rang out around them. Some leaped for safety, others grabbed at Ward and Arza’s sleeves, trying to be heroic.
He elbowed and punched forward, legs churning, knees hitting thighs and ribs. People puffed and groaned around them, falling and bouncing from their path.
Somewhere in the distance, Ward could hear a fierce buzzing. Hornets. He’d kicked the nest, and now they were swarming. Hundreds, thousands of them, all out for their blood.
Ward looked on ahead, searching for their exit, still fighting forward, spearing across bridges as the swarm gained ground on them.
Arza was shouting something but he couldn’t hear anything except the voice in his head telling him how stupid he’d been.
He let go of Arza’s wrist, aware of her running alongside him under her own steam now. That was good. He needed his hands free.
In one swift movement, he threw his forearm into the throat of some indistinct traveler in a long coat, ignoring the strangulated gurgle and weak fingers grasping at his shoulder as the guy tried to do something that he thought was noble. It didn’t matter now, Ward didn’t have time to think about the broken jaws or cracked ribs that traced their path.
With his right hand, he turned and reached under his jacket, his left shoving the guy with the coat into the duo of squawking Martians behind him.
Ward saw him fall out of the corner of his eye and spun the other way on his heel, bringing his M2.0 up in steady, reflexive hands, the breath escaping his lips as his diaphragm closed down, locking his hammering chest in place, shoulders tight and straight, eye down the barrel of his pistol, all done on muscle memory.
The hornets swirled over the heads of the people and Ward fired without hesitation.
23
They weren't hornets at all, but drones.
The OCA Peacekeepers were basically interplanetary beat-cops. Jumped up, taser-wielding, drone operating trigger-hounds.
They plunged forward in a V like honking geese, bubbled visors down over their faces, their eye movements flying the drones overhead. Their helmets were shining black, their chins naked over their high-collared jumpsuits; gray zip-up one-pieces with knee-high boots and the OCA symbol stitched onto the chest.
“Move, move!” they yelled, swimming through the crowd with black-gloved hands, pawing at the people clamoring in Ward and Arza’s wake. The passengers all snatched at them, pointing madly after Ward and Arza as they shoved their way toward the ship.
The drones zipped forward over their heads, giving their operators a bird’s eye view of the scene, their barrels raised beneath, tanks of non-lethal expanding foam hanging behind them. A good shot from their cannon would stop anyone dead in their tracks — stick arms to bodies, legs to floors, whatever it took.
Ward picked off two of the pursuing drones with ease. He took the front right rotor off the first and it swung sideways, clattering into the one next to it, sending them both spinning into the screaming bodies below.
The second he hit square in the body and it dropped like a stone.
He took a breath and watched as the remaining two scattered.
He had to be careful — people were overhead, upside down from his perspective, and pretty far away, but still more than close enough to get hit.
Ward made the call, tracing the movements as it swung back and forth, advancing in a basic figure of eight pattern — Peacekeeper drone tactics 101. He knew the move, he’d worked with enough Peacekeepers, done the training in their academies to make sure he was up to speed on everything OCA after the treaty came into effect. That had been a fun year for him.
He exhaled, led the drone with the sights and dropped the barrel a little, squeezing the trigger.
The muzzle flashed, the bang echoing down the cylinder with resonant claps. The bullet ripped through the foam tank on the bottom of the drone, drenching the crowd below.
They seethed and scrambled under the yellow blanket, their screams of shock dying under the foam as it closed over them, rising up and hardening in place, the color and stench of old cheese.
Arza was carving them a path ahead, waving her gun like a crazy person, and now, with just one drone left, Ward was starting to feel like they might just make it.
A second later the fourth drone dove at him — the pilot breaking protocol.
Ward smiled and watched it come, scouting a woman with a feathered hat on his right.
The drone pulled up sharply and stuck its barrel out.
He spun sideways, the eye on the drone chasing him behind the woman, the reactions of the pilot too slow to stop it firing.
She stood still, terrified, and caught a face full of foam.
It splattered over her sh
oulders and dripped onto Ward’s back. He knew to let it harden and not to touch it before it did. He could crack it later on and pick it off. For now, he needed to deal with the final hornet.
He kept strafing, getting clear of the splatter zone, and put two rounds square into it. The first obliterated the corner rotor and the second ripped the body in two, showering the people below in sparks. The stuck woman let out a muffled scream as they bounced off her solidifying shell.
Ward was on his feet and turning, heading after Arza, who was still hauling ass toward their ship, parting the sea of tourists for him.
She dropped her shoulder and barged through a wall of guys, diving over the rail and into the stationary ring housing the jetty that led to their ship, dropping out of the gravity churn and into zero-g.
Ward was hard on her tail.
The three guys that Arza had shoved were recovering, linking arms in some sort of attempt to block his path, their faces stern.
The second his muzzle swept across them they parted, unable to jump out of the way quick enough.
Ward’s boots skitted over a giant version of his own face as he measured his steps to the opening.
A dull clack rang out behind him and he felt the tug of a taser on his back. He twisted, leading with his elbow, the insulation in his jacket stopping the current dead. He made a mental note to tell Cootes that it had worked — he’d never tested it before and he never wholly trusted manufacturers’ promises. Not until they delivered in times like this, at least.
His arm hit the cable and he swung his fist in a circle, tangling it up around his wrist, pistol swinging in a wide arc.
The Peacekeeper rushing toward him stumbled, realizing Ward wasn’t down or even fazed by his shot.
His mouth opened behind his visor, his free hand rising, palm flat to Ward, ready to order him to “Halt,” or “Stop,” or something equally pointless.
Ward paused for a fraction of a second, scanning the officer’s uniform, making sure he was wearing the bullet-proof kind of jumpsuit — some station cops didn’t — and then put two square into his solar plexus, kicking the wind out of him so hard he folded up like a deck chair and sagged to the ground.
