by Joshua James
Tim whipped around and bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Shut your stinking hole, you piece of shit!” He spun the other way and collapsed on top of Quinn. He grabbed her and buried his face in her neck, sobbing unashamedly.
Eli just stared down, unmoving. Quinn’s eyes burned up at him from the floor. She never looked away. Her dead face looked deep inside him, seeing things he didn’t want her to see, but he didn’t tear himself away. He owed her this much, at least.
None of the others moved. No one tried to comfort Tim. Eli’s insides twisted in knots. Part of him wished he could show his devastation the way Tim did. Maybe that would make him human again.
He wasn’t human. He was a robot. He was a dead thing on a conveyor belt to some destiny that had nothing to do with him.
Across the cockpit, Yasha stirred. She groaned and heaved herself up on her hands and knees. She moved to sit down on the floor and looked around. She blinked when she saw Tim crying over Quinn’s dead body. Her cheeks blanched and she looked up at Eli.
He broke from his trance and pivoted on his heel.
Twenty-One
Eli marched aft to the first sealed bulkhead and punched his security code into the control panel. The bulkhead released. He went through the ship, releasing one bulkhead after another, until he came to the aft hatch.
He let down the ramp and strode outside. That conveyor belt carried him of its own accord. All these years, he’d felt like he had to haul himself through every excruciating minute of his day. Now it all happened outside himself. He didn’t even have to try.
Eli climbed up the hull and surveyed the damage. He checked the port tender and unscrewed the housing to assess the extent of the repairs it would need to get it up and running. He walked around on the hull for a while, but he didn’t hear any voices inside.
From this vantage point, he cast a passing glance around the vast plain stretched on all sides. The ship looked tiny and frail and lost in that expanse. Hundreds of orbs speckled the ground for miles around. They lay still amongst the gravel and didn’t move. They pointed their rocket ports to the sky or at odd angles. They showed no sign of activating or flying away.
Eli returned his attention to making a thorough survey of the hull. Then he went through every compartment and berth until he understood exactly what he had to do to get his ship off the ground again.
He went back into the cockpit. Tim squatted next to Quinn’s body, but now a white sheet covered her so Eli couldn’t see her. Tim sniffed back tears, looking down at her.
Jood sat in his usual place at the engineering station. His fingers played over the controls. Other than a faint beeping of the systems responding to his commands, a funereal silence blanketed the cockpit.
Waylon sat propped against the bulkhead. He hadn’t moved. Yasha straightened up when Eli appeared, but she didn’t say anything. River rotated the pilot’s chair around. “How does it look out there, Sarge? Can we fix the tender?”
Eli surveyed one face after another. He’d prepared himself for this moment, but before he could say anything, Tim craned back his head. He glared at Eli in unvarnished loathing. “You killed your own daughter. You’re lawless. You’re evil. That’s what you are.”
“Hey!” River barked from her seat. “He didn’t kill anybody. She got hit in the firefight. You got no business blaming Sarge for this. It could have been any of us. You wouldn’t be crying over Waylon if he was the one that got killed, would you?”
Waylon guffawed. “I’d love to see that.”
“You wouldn’t see it,” River fired back. “You’d be dead.”
“He’d still be responsible for it,” Tim said. “He’s the one who got us into this the same way he did on the Devilfish. Every death is his responsibility. Every death is more blood on his hands and he doesn’t even care.”
Waylon rolled his eyes to heaven. “Can’t you talk about anything but the damned Devilfish? Leave it alone for once.”
Tim glared back at Waylon.
“Here’s the thing.” The minute Eli spoke, everyone fell silent. He didn’t have to yell. He spoke out of a glacial calm. Not all the insults in the world could disturb him. “The tender is reparable. We can weld the hull, and she’ll fly again. The EMP didn’t damage our operating systems. It never seems to. It knocks us out, but only until we bring everything back online.”
Waylon puffed out his scarred cheeks. “That’s a relief. Let’s get going.”
“Hold it,” Eli snapped. “I’m going back to Earth.”
River wheeled around in the pilot’s seat. In unison, she and Waylon said, “You’re what?”
“I made a promise, and I intend to keep it. I’m taking Yasha to intercept the swarm. Her EMP is the only weapon strong enough to take them down in one hit. You should see it outside. It’s a graveyard.”
“Insane,” Waylon muttered.
Eli stared at the big man. “I promised Quinn.”
Waylon glared at Eli like he’d just swallowed something rotten, but he said nothing.
Eli turned to River. Her expression seemed to be bordering on panic. “You can’t do this!” she exclaimed. “You’ll get arrested and imprisoned like Waylon said. The Squadrons won’t be kind. You gotta realize that, Sarge.”
He indulged a wry smile. “Maybe they’ll decide to be kind if I help them defeat an enemy they don’t have a prayer of beating on their own. Either that, or they’ll be so busy fighting the horde themselves that they’ll forget to arrest me. I don’t really know. I only know I’m doing this. Anybody who doesn’t want to come with me is welcome to disembark now. The Outpost isn’t far. Once we get the ship running, we’re going. Jood estimates we have just a dozen hours to break through them and get to Earth.”
The others stared at him with their mouths open—all except Tim. He growled through bared teeth. “Don’t think this changes anything between us.”
Eli turned his icy gaze on the young man. “Nothing will change anything between us. If you don’t want to ride back to Earth with me, I understand.” He turned back the other way and scanned his crew. “Anybody else want to get off, be my guest, but I gotta work fast. I don’t have time to stand around discussing it.”
“What about me?” Yasha cut in. “Don’t I have something to say about this? I already told you I’m not going back to Earth.”
“You have to,” Eli said simply when he looked at her. “You’re the only person who can implicate Admiral Wescott.”
She blinked. Tim’s head shot up. “What did you say?”
“When you released the EMP, you transmitted a memory into my mind. How much do you remember about your voyage out here on the Manatee?”
Yasha looked down, and her hand flew to her forehead. “I…. Well, almost nothing. One minute we were crossing the Gamma Belt. Admiral Wescott told the pilot to steer toward a certain system, and that’s the last thing I remember.”
“You probably had one of your seizures, and it wiped your memory the way it wiped our logs. You might even have released an EMP that caused the Manatee to crash. I don’t know about that. I only know he was on that moon with you and the other four officers. They activated the swarm to attack Earth.”
Tim rocketed to his feet. “You can’t seriously expect us to believe that an admiral in the Squadrons sent...” He waved toward the cockpit window. “That!”
Eli followed his gaze to nothing. “I saw him. He was on that moon. He ordered the other four to beat up Yasha, and they dumped her where we found her.”
“And you just saw that?” Tim asked sarcastically.
“Yes,” Eli said. His simple conviction seemed to stump Tim. Eli looked at Yasha. “I think there’s some process, something like a mental imprinting, that didn’t work. They couldn’t control you.”
Tim paced back and forth. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean...”
“We all saw Amir Sulemani piloting one of those things. I can only assume the four of them are piloting a swarm of drones remotely from four command m
odules. They’re linked somehow.”
“When we destroyed Sulemani’s craft, the attack did not cease,” Jood said.
“Maybe they can operate semi-remotely with only minimal input. I don’t know. But severing the link with the EMP did that,” Eli said, gesturing at the cockpit window. “And how they are controlling them isn’t important. Wescott flew the operatives out here to take the swarm to Earth.”
“But why?” Yasha asked. “Camp Utopia was one thing, but this… Why would he unleash an assault like this? That swarm, it’s massive. It won’t just overrun the Squadrons. It might wipe out Earth entirely.”
Eli swiveled around. When he looked at her, he felt some pieces slotting into place but the puzzle was far from complete. “I don’t know why he’s doing it, but he is. Whatever he’s doing, it started at Camp Utopia. He deliberately made the camp vulnerable to invasion, and now this. He’s up to something. I don’t know what, but I don’t need to know. I just have to stop him.”
Waylon, River, and Jood exchanged glances. “We didn’t sign up for this,” River grumbled. “None of us wants to go back to Earth. We signed on with you on the understanding we would never do anything like this. It’s suicide for us as much as for you. I mean, do you really want to run the risk of taking Jood back to Earth? He’d be in exactly the same situation as he was at New Sydney. He’d be executed on sight.”
“I will go,” Jood said without hesitation.
Eli looked at his expressionless face and knew better than to question him. He was going.
“Well, good for you,” Waylon said. “Some of us aren’t crazy.”
River nodded in agreement.
Eli shook their excuses out of his mind. “You can make all the arguments you want. I’m going. I don’t ask any of you to come with me. You can take your pay to Epsilon and pay your passage to anywhere in the galaxy you want to go.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Yasha added. “I don’t have any pay. I don’t have any way to get off this rock.”
He smiled at her. For the first time, he genuinely liked her. “You’re a Squadron-trained special operative. I’m sure you can use your skills to find your way.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Without me, you’ve got no chance.”
Eli cracked a full grin. For some reason, this hopeless mission made him happy. “My point exactly.”
Her eyebrows jumped up in a fleeting hint of uncertainty. “I don’t know how to release the EMP. It’s completely out of my control. You said yourself that must be why they dumped me.”
“You don’t know how to release it, but I think I do.” He hesitated. “I think we do.”
Yasha’s eyes narrowed. “You think…” She stopped.
Eli nodded. “I think you imprinted on me. And I think, together, we can trigger you.”
He turned to the others. “No more talk. Either get to work repairing this tub, or pack your stuff and head for the Outpost.”
Twenty-Two
7 Hours Until Annihilation
The sun started to set on Epsilon before Eli entered the aft hatch. He’d spent five hours welding the ripped hull to make the Boomerang sturdy again. He couldn’t help but notice the many patches and repairs to the aging craft. She’d done some hard parsecs, and she wouldn’t hold out forever.
He sighed, running his hand over welded seams, old and new. If Tim had his way, Eli wouldn’t survive this misguided trip to Earth anyway. Assuming he managed to land the Boomerang on Earth, he’d be thrown in prison for the rest of his life and would never see his beloved ship again. She’d make this one last run and then she’d probably take a trip to the scrapyard.
He entered the hatch to find Waylon going through a crate of cannon parts in the storage bay. The big enforcer snapped a clip of ammunition into the magazine and locked it off.
Eli cocked his head to study the man. He’d flown with Waylon for years, and he still couldn’t call him a friend. “You’ll have a hard time carrying that as far as the Outpost.”
Waylon shot him a mischievous grin. “Who said anything about the Outpost? This is for the Squadrons. As soon as we clear those mosquitos out there, the Squadrons’ll come gunning for us. They won’t get near us without tasting some of this lead.”
Eli studied Waylon’s scarred visage. Waylon didn’t come right out and say he was accompanying Eli back to Earth. He didn’t have to, and Eli certainly would never express any gratitude or gratification about it. That would only make Waylon uncomfortable. It violated an unspoken code between them.
Eli only nodded and continued forward. He spotted River hanging out of the vent above the landing gear. He heard banging down there, but he didn’t interfere. He went on through to the cockpit and leaned over the engineering station. He propped his arms on the console, punched the intercom, and spoke into it. “I’m standing by when you’re ready, Jood.”
“Five minutes,” the voice came back.
Without straightening, Eli glanced up, and his eye fell on the broken window in front of him. Out there on the plain, turning dusky pale in the sinking light, Tim stood to one side, looking down at the shrouded form of Quinn’s body. Flames licked off the sheet. The ghostly light merged with the vacuous immensity of the planet.
Eli puffed out his cheeks in a heavy breath, but he would never dare to go out there. He had no place at Quinn’s burial, no matter how crude and prosaic it might be. He left that honor to Tim. Tim was the one who belonged at her side right now.
Even so, he found himself standing in the presence of something huge and portentous. He was witnessing Quinn’s funeral, and he hung his head. He allowed the fullness of her loss to hit him in all its finality. He’d lost his only child, the one person who’d believed in him and held him to a higher standard.
The last thread holding him to humanity dissolved and broke at long last, but she’d left him with something even more priceless.
She’d given him a purpose. He had a place to be and something to do. He had people depending on him.
This mission of hers would probably end in disaster. He would probably die and be responsible for the deaths of those closest to him, but he made the decision to do it anyway. No one made it for him, and Eli was glad. He wanted to hurry up and get it done.
The intercom squawked and woke him from his thoughts. “The tender is ready, Eli.”
He looked up. For a second, he watched the flames flicker against the gathering twilight. He’d set his resolve to do this, and he wouldn’t turn aside. Never again.
Eli turned back to the engineering station and sat down in the seat. He hit the intercom again. “Stand clear.”
A disembodied voice bellowed up the aft hatch. “All clear!”
Eli entered the activation sequence and the port tender groaned, rotating around. It scratched and scraped in agony. It chugged and coughed before it caught. It built up speed, whirring faster, until it whined and hummed at its usual speed.
He left it running for a minute while he checked all the other parameters. The hull strength came up slightly lower than standard, but he didn’t have time to mess with it now. If it failed, they’d be no worse off than they already were.
He bent over the intercom for the last time. “Load up!”
Twenty-Three
Footsteps rang on the ramp. He looked up to see Tim striding back toward the Boomerang. He left Quinn’s body burning in the middle of that endless expanse. Eli’s stomach contracted again. They were leaving her behind on this rotten planet. She would be here for the rest of eternity. He wished more than anything that he could take her back to a royal Squadron burial on Earth, but that was Tim’s decision.
Just then, Yasha shouldered into the cockpit. She carried a large curved plate of glass between her hands. She shot a grin at Eli. “I got it.”
She pivoted past the pilot’s station and fitted the glass into place. A few moments later, Waylon appeared with the welding torch. Between the two of them, they sealed the window across the gaping hole
.
Jood entered, and Eli vacated the engineering station. When he stood up to cross to the command console, he discovered Tim standing there. Eli cocked his head. “Strap in, Doctor, and we’ll drop you off at the Outpost before we break orbit.”
Tim clenched his teeth and scowled at him. “I’ve decided to go with you.”
Eli raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”
Tim cast a quick glance around the cockpit. “It’s the fastest way back to Earth, I guess.”
Eli let it go at that. He didn’t exactly think he owed Tim anything, but he didn’t need to understand. The doctor had his reasons for traveling on board the Boomerang with people he claimed to hate, instead of taking a hired transport.
Yasha and Waylon finished what they were doing. River lowered herself into the pilot’s station. Tim glared at everything one more time and marched away. Eli let him go. Probably nothing in the galaxy would ever repair the rift between them, but Eli could live with that.
He took his seat in the command chair. “Take us out, River.”
The Boomerang shuddered and wavered when the landing gear lost contact with the ground. She cleared the gravel. The fire shrank to a speck. The next instant, River hit the throttle and the Boomerang screeched away. The fire vanished, and that was the end of Lieutenant Quinn Bryce.
The Boomerang broke the atmosphere. In a few seconds, Epsilon dwindled to an orange ball floating in a sea of black. Eli turned away. “Lay in a course for Earth.”
“Course laid in,” River said.
“Are we going to catch them, Jood?”
Jood was studying his console. “Perhaps. I’ll know more in a couple of hours. If the hypothesis of a handful of central controlling ships is correct, then the mass of ships that attacked us suggests that the entirety of the group is not nearly as far along as we’d feared.”
Eli nodded. “Full throttle,” he said to River. “Give her everything she’s got.”
