by J. J. Green
“It’s not going to work,” Carina shouted. “We can’t retake the Bathsheba.”
“Right,” said Atoi, digesting the fact. “Got any other ideas?”
“Yep. Plan B.”
“You have a plan B?”
“I just thought of it. Hold the line as long as you can.”
“Sure,” Atoi replied, hefting her rifle to her shoulder and spraying out a long burst of pulse fire. “I was gonna send everyone on R&R, but we’ll stick around.”
Carina ran to Darius, who was kneeling next to a woman who had been so badly burned the white of her rib bones showed through the damaged flesh. Her little brother’s face was pale and wretched. He’d seen too much death and pain in his short life.
After she told him what she needed him to do, he nodded gravely and said, “I’ll fix this lady first, okay?”
“Okay, sweetheart,” Carina replied. Then she ran to speak to her other siblings and, lastly, to Jace.
The mages began work.
Groups of the worst-injured mercs disappeared first, followed by the walking wounded.
When the area behind the fighting men and women was empty, Carina told Ferne, Oriana, and Darius to Transport themselves and Nahla next.
“No!” Oriana protested. “I want to—”
“Leave!” Carina hollered.
Then she saw Parthenia giving her the stink eye.
“Go,” she said, more quietly. “Please.”
“Hmpf.” Oriana turned to her brothers. “Let’s get out of here.”
A few moments later, the four children disappeared.
With the younger ones out of the way, Carina could concentrate on Transporting the remaining mercs strategically to ensure the fewest casualties. Some of them were going to get hurt—it was unavoidable. As their numbers decreased the Regians would push forward, and the last remaining group would be overrun.
Scanning the battle scene, she pointed out sections of fighting men and women to Jace and Parthenia. She didn’t Transport any herself, wanting to concentrate on the firefight.
When the mercs she’d indicated had vanished, the Regians quickly moved in. The scrape and rattle of alien hides rubbing together and their murderous words in her comm grew louder.
“You two now,” she yelled to Parthenia and Jace.
Parthenia nodded gravely before taking a drink of elixir.
But Jace didn’t. He touched Carina’s arm. “Together,” he mouthed.
She had no time to argue.
The aliens were crushing inward. A long scream rent the air. A merc was down.
Carina lifted her canister of elixir to her lips and tipped it up.
A scant few drops dribbled into her mouth.
Empty!
She’d used it all.
Another cry of agony came from the remaining soldiers.
Blurring black shapes loomed large in her vision.
Then she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Arms gripped her tightly around her waist and a small head buried itself in her stomach.
“I thought you were gonna die!” Darius exclaimed, his voice muffled.
“No, I’m still here.” Carina put her hand on her brother’s head, her heart thumping wildly from her narrow escape. “Don’t worry, I’m still alive—just.” She turned to Jace, who stood nearby on Duchess’s bridge. If it hadn’t been for his decision to stay with her until the last moment, she and the last few mercs to be Transported would have died. “Thanks. I don’t know how I—”
He raised a hand to stop her. “A simple thanks is enough. But next time, remember what happened a moment ago. Accept the help that’s offered to you. If we all insisted on tackling our problems alone, none of us would succeed. We need each other.”
She nodded, took in a deep breath, and exhaled. “Okay, I hear you.” She scanned the bridge.
Parthenia and Ferne were Healing the recently arrived mercs, other soldiers were leaving, on their way to their stations. Bryce and Atoi were nowhere to be seen. Oriana was lifting Nahla into a seat. Hsiao was already at the flight controls.
“We need to get this ship moving,” Carina said.
“I’m detaching us from the Bathsheba,” said Hsiao. “Everyone, strap in.” The pilot sent the same message over the ship’s comm.
Carina picked up Darius and thrust him into a seat, then took the next nearest empty seat.
“Where’s Bryce?” she asked generally as her seat’s safety harness slid out and over her before automatically snapping closed.
“He’s okay,” said Parthenia. “I Healed him. But I’m all out of elixir. I need to make some more.”
“No time,” said Carina.
“Everyone strap in,” Hsiao repeated, louder.
The pilot didn’t need telling that they had to make a quick getaway before the Regians realized where they’d gone. The Bathsheba was too large and cumbersome to catch the Duchess, and her weaponry was mostly defensive, but the aliens must have arrived in another ship of their own. That vessel was an unknown quantity.
A jerk signaled the decoupling of the Duchess from the colony ship.
Hsiao began to bring her about.
Carina hoped the Regians had already discovered Mezban, Lomang, and the rest of the people in the refectory, and so they wouldn’t bother coming after the mercs. She felt bad about consigning Mezban’s troops a nasty fate, but she couldn’t save everyone. As for Mezban, Lomang, and Pappu, she didn’t spare them a second thought.
“Brace for acceleration,” Hsiao warned.
The Duchess slammed forward.
Carina grasped the arms of her seat as the Gs hit, focusing on keeping her breathing shallow and fast.
The interface screen to her left displayed a scanner-derived image of the surrounding space. On it, she saw the asymmetrical bulk of the Bathsheba, and, protruding from one of the colony ship’s sides, the much smaller Peregrine.
She cursed, realizing her mistake.
The Duchess had seemed the obvious vessel to take. She’d been a home to Carina for a long time, even before she’d found her family, and when she’d returned to her to retrieve the bomb, she been fairly certain no Regians were aboard. But the Peregrine was equipped with a particle beam and she was faster than the mercs’ ship.
No point in wasting time on regrets. They’d taken the lesser ship, and that was that.
The Regians’ vessel wasn’t visible, probably due to being obscured by the vast Bathsheba. She hoped the Duchess was a match for the aliens’ ship.
Hsiao was pulling them away at an almost-unendurable speed. Carina struggled to remain conscious. All the kids, including Parthenia, were out already, their heads lolling.
A minute passed, then two. She imagined the situation aboard the Bathsheba. The Regians would have registered the departure of the Duchess immediately. How would they react? Would they launch their own vessel? It would take them time to crew her and move her from the lee of the colony ship.
Carina reached out to the interface screen, fighting the acceleration force trying to pin her arm to her seat, and searched for nearby star systems. If the worse came to the worst and the Regians seemed about to recapture them, they might be able to escape to a planet.
A star system appeared, containing one habitable planet! The world’s gravity was zero point five Standard, but that would only make things easier if they ended up in a survival situation.
Then she remembered an important point: the Bathsheba had nearly arrived at the Regians’ intended destination.
Damn!
The planet she was looking at was one of their worlds, and going there would be a death sentence.
Something else caught her attention. Beyond the Regians’ system an area of dark gray cloud hung in the void. The conglomeration of gases resembled a nebula, but it didn’t look like any nebula she’d ever seen.
She switched the display to purely scan data, and blinked. The figures were going haywire. Some movement was to be expect
ed due to the Duchess’s increasing velocity, but the movement should have been steady and predictable. The data she was seeing was changing in a chaotic fashion. She couldn’t make any sense of it, and realized the gray cloud shown on the interface display wasn’t a representation of a known object, but an attempt to show something unknown.
In all the time she’d spent aboard starships, she’d never encountered something the computers couldn’t identify.
But the strange phenomenon that lay outside the Regians’ star system was the least of her worries. They might need a planetary escape route and none lay nearby. On the other hand, perhaps they wouldn’t need a sanctuary. Several minutes had passed and there was no sign of pursuit. Were the Regians content with the humans still in their possession? She hardly dared hope it was true.
The colony ship was a lost cause, and without the Deep Sleep capsules the voyage to Earth would have to be postponed or even abandoned, but at least they would be safe.
“Fuck!” Hsiao exclaimed.
Carina took a moment to see what had alarmed the pilot, but when she did, her heart sank into her boots.
The Peregrine was pulling away from the Bathsheba. Who was flying her? It seemed weird the Regians would use an unfamiliar ship to try to catch them. Whatever the explanation, Mezban’s destroyer was going to come after them, and, unless a miracle also came their way, they were screwed.
“What should I do?” Hsiao yelled, though the bridge was nearly silent save for the hum of the Duchess’s engines.
Carina didn’t know what to answer her. In situations like these, Cadwallader would be the one giving the orders. Atoi was next in command, but she wasn’t on the bridge. And the weapons officer was also absent.
“Uh, just keep on doing what you’re doing,” she replied. Straining with effort, she touched the interface again, opening the Duchess’s weapons system. She brought all the pulse cannons online and readied them.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” asked Hsiao, squinting over her shoulder at Carina.
“Not exactly,” she replied, “but I’m the best we’ve got right now.”
Part of her interface screen displayed the scan data. The Peregrine was advancing on them at breathtaking speed. She wondered if the Regians’ exoskeletons allowed them to endure more Gs than humans could.
She fixed her gaze on the data, her fingers hovering over the screen, waiting for the moment the destroyer came within range of the cannons. Their only hope was to take the ship out before its particle beam fired. The beam’s range was shorter, but a direct hit would cripple or destroy the Duchess.
The numbers ticked down. A split second before they hit the cannons’ effective range, Carina pressed down, firing them all at exactly the right moment. The screen tracked the pulses’ silent progress across space. The Peregrine fired defensively, and its own pulses annihilated most of the Duchess’s long before they reached their target. One got through, however, and impacted on the destroyer’s hull, its energy splashing into space.
The hit was nowhere near enough to slow the Peregrine’s onward progress. The ship flew on unaffected.
The Duchess’s pulse cannons had powered up again. Carina fired, and again the bolts of pure energy sped across the void. The Peregrine’s response was rapid and devastating. This time, none of the pulses made it through.
And all the while the distance between the two ships was closing.
Carina watched the readouts from the Duchess’s cannons, willing them to operate faster, even though she knew it was hopeless, that the battle was already lost.
Then the thing she’d been dreading happened: the Peregrine’s particle beam lanced out.
“No!” she whispered.
A beat later, she was thrown violently forward. The straps of her safety harness dug in painfully.
The merc vessel’s acceleration had abruptly cut out. The hum of her engines had been silenced. An almost inaudible click sounded, and Carina gently floated up from her seat, restrained only by her harness.
“What’s happened?” asked Parthenia groggily as she regained consciousness. “Did we get away? Oh!” She grabbed the straps holding her down.
“Gravity’s out,” Carina said. “Along with the engines, I think. Hsiao?”
“Yeah,” the pilot replied grimly. “They took the brunt of the hit from the particle beam. We’re dead in the water.”
Only inertia was carrying the Duchess onward now.
“Particle beam?” asked Parthenia.
“From the Peregrine,” Hsiao explained.
The other children were also coming around.
The pilot went on to briefly explain to them what had happened.
“I’ll make some more elixir,” Parthenia said, unfastening the straps of her harness. She floated free, turned in the air, and gripped the back of her seat as if about to push herself toward the door.
“We don’t have enough time,” said Carina. She checked the interface. The destroyer had nearly caught up to them.
“We can still fight back,” Ferne said. “We have weapons, and—”
“You’re too young,” interrupted Carina.
Then Atoi opened a comm to her. “We can’t suit up. All the armor has been moved to the Bathsheba, so we’ll just have to do without. When they get here, let me know where they’re gonna come through.”
“Shit,” said Carina. She sagged, feeling utterly defeated. The Peregrine would catch them in minutes, and without power from the engines, the pulse cannons were dead. They’d fought so hard, and come so close to escape, but now the Regians were going to recapture them and take them to whatever horrors awaited on their planet. “The mages can’t help you either. We’re just about out of elixir. I hate to say it, but maybe we should surrender. If they take us to their planet, we might find a way—”
“What are you talking about?” Atoi’s tone was harsh. “We fight. That’s what the Black Dogs do—with or without armor and magical backup. If we die, it beats the alternative. Let me know where they’re coming in.”
The comm went dead.
At the same moment, the Duchess gave a slight judder.
The Peregrine had arrived.
But when Carina checked her interface, she saw the destroyer hadn’t docked with the mercs’ ship. Instead, a thick cable ran between the two vessels. The judder had been the impact of the grip on the end of the Peregrine’s cable fastening onto the Duchess’s hull.
As she watched, the cable tightened and straightened. The destroyer was beginning to slow down, and, now the vessels were joined, so would the mercs’ ship.
“They aren’t going to board us,” she told the room.
“What?!” Hsiao exclaimed before also checking her screen. “Ugh. Cowards.”
“The Regians are going to tow us back to the Bathsheba,” Carina explained to her siblings, Where, she mentally added, their huge numbers will overwhelm any defense we could mount.
“Can we break the tow line?” Ferne asked.
“Without the engines, all our weapons are dead,” replied Carina.
“Maybe we could Unlock it from the hull with a Cast?” Parthenia suggested. “We must have a little elixir left somewhere.”
“They would just reattach it,” said Carina. “Unless we have a Fix Destroyed Engines Cast, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Car,” Atoi said angrily over her comm, “where—?”
“Nowhere, yet.” She told her friend the situation.
Atoi’s curse was cut off as she closed the comm.
The slowing of the Duchess increased abruptly, and Carina found herself thrown against her harness, hard. Parthenia flew across the bridge and hit the wall. She yelled with pain and remained spreadeagled against the vertical surface.
“Stay where you are,” Carina called to her. “It’s safer.”
“I don’t have a lot of choice about it,” Parthenia replied.
After another minute, the bridge door opened. A hand grabbed each side of the doorway, a
nd then Atoi glided in. She grabbed the back of Hsiao’s seat to halt her progress.
“I have a suggestion,” she said to Carina.
“I’d love to hear it.”
Atoi glanced at the children, and pushed off from the pilot’s seat to bring herself close to Carina. Holding onto an armrest while her legs floated in midair, she leaned down to bring her lips to Carina’s ear. “The Duchess can self-destruct. Cadwallader told me about it when I got my promotion.”
Carina reared back in shock. “What the hell? What happened to ‘We fight’?”
“If it was just us against the Regians on the Peregrine, we might have stood a chance,” Atoi replied quietly. “Not much of one, but a chance, nevertheless. If we go up against all the aliens aboard the Bathsheba, it’ll be a massacre. Like I said, death beats the only alternative we have open to us right now.”
Carina gazed at the faces of her brothers and sisters as they watched her and her friend, unsure of what was being discussed. They were so young, only beginning their lives. Was dying really the best the future had to offer them? She’d once thought so, after witnessing the suffering Ma had gone through—rape, imprisonment, slavery, torture. She’d risked so much for a chance at freedom for her family, thinking even if she died, even if they were all killed, it was better than living a life in torment.
Now, she was no longer so sure. So many times her family had been in situations that seemed hopeless, only for them to find a way out. No matter what they had to endure, there was always hope.
“We have to do it,” Atoi urged. “At this distance we’ll take out those fuckers on the destroyer, too.”
Carina stared at her friend.
Risking death was one thing, but welcoming it with open arms?
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. I can’t. I just can’t.”
Atoi’s lips thinned to a line and her eyes narrowed. “Easy for you to say.”
“What does that mean?”
“The Regians will keep you all alive,” she spat. “The rest of us will be dishes on the menu.”
She turned and propelled herself out of the room.
“Atoi!” Carina called after her. “Atoi!”
