by M. D. Cooper
“You’re bringing that madman on the ship? Can’t we just keep the shuttle grappled on the hull? That way, he can’t do any damage, and we can dump him if we need to.”
Cara weighed the idea. “I want him where I can see him,” she decided.
Osla seemed to have forgotten about Cara. Laughter and low voices murmured from the comms speaker. Cara muted the channel.
As the drone towed Osla closer, Cara checked the scans on New Austin. Many of the fires seemed to have stabilized, but news reports still showed ongoing fighting in the government district, and a steady flow of civilian ships continued to launch from Luna toward Matria and Beatrice stations.
The local comms spectrum was overwhelmed with so much traffic that Luna Port Authority had stopped sending public updates. It was every ship for itself until the TSF could regain local control.
Cara shifted the holotank to show the TSF battle group now in orbit above Luna: a dreadnought flanked by a small fleet of cruisers. The space between the ships and the surface looked like a swarm of fireflies, from all the landing craft rising and falling.
“The drone just connected,” Rondo announced. “I’m bringing them around to the main cargo hold to use the big airlock. I forgot the shuttle’s lock was blown.”
When Rondo soon announced that the shuttle was safely inside Amplified Solution, Cara unstrapped from her seat and stretched. She was leaving for the cargo section when Rondo’s voice drew her attention back to the holotank.
“Holy crap! Look at that.”
In the holodisplay, the TSF dreadnought was exploding along its center line. As Cara watched, three more missiles left the Lunar surface, from a territory north of New Austin. Two ships threw out countermeasures, but it wasn’t enough to stop the missiles at such close range.
“They’re sitting ducks,” Rondo said.
“Seal yourself in engineering,” Cara commanded. “Don’t let anyone in, even me. I’m locking down the command NSAI.”
“What are you worried about?”
“I’m afraid we just did exactly what Osla wanted us to.”
Cara checked the pistol at her hip and grabbed a rifle from the weapons cabinet, then sprinted out of the command deck, headed for the main cargo hold.
PARTY DOWN
STELLAR DATE: 3.23.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Near-Luna Orbit, MSS Amplified Solution
REGION: Luna, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Cara was pulling herself down the zero-g maintenance corridor in the center of Amplified Solution when she received a Link request from Felix.
she said.
Cara chewed over the information as she reached the entry hatch to the main cargo hold.
For the first time, he didn’t say ‘Don’t call me Felix’.
He sighed.
Cara paused. Did they have a backdoor to the ship’s NSAI? She was going to have to scrub the entire system for anything allowing outside access.
Cara closed the connection. If the Felix’s boss was going to start trying to pull strings already, she would need to find a way out of their agreement sooner than she had planned.
Activating the cargo hatch, she waited for the airlock to cycle, then pulled herself up into the bay. When the interior hatch opened, she connected her magboots to the deck and walked toward the shuttle.
She was halfway across the bay when the shuttle’s side door unsealed and slid open. Osla hung through the opening, looking around with a bemused expression. A blonde woman poked her head under his arm, and he caught her in a headlock, rubbing the top of her head with his knuckles.
The woman laughed and pulled out of his grip, jumping down from the shuttle, and Cara realized it was her actor-double, Llana.
Osla slapped Llana’s rear as she walked away, and she waggled a finger at him.
“Cara!” Llana shouted, spreading her arms.
She folded Cara in a stumbling embrace, then gripped her shoulders to hold her at arm’s length. She squinted, studying Cara’s face.
“You seem different. Did you cut your hair?”
Cara shook the actress’s hands free. “No. Who else is in the shuttle with you?”
“Just me and Osla. Oh, and our recorder.”
Osla jumped down on the deck and stretched luxuriously. He wore the same shipsuit, now open to the waist to show his muscled stomach.
Behind the chancellor, a hoverdrone recorder flew out into cargo bay and then centered on Cara and Llana.
“Are we broadcasting?” Cara asked, pointing at the recorder.
“Of course,” Osla said. “My people need to know everything. Did you see the attack on that TSF cruiser? It was like an opera, the grand movement. Luna is mine.”
He threw the statement out like he was talking about a racehorse, not the home of millions of people.
Osla adjusted his shipsuit as he walked up beside Llana. Putting his arm around her, he pulled her against his side and kissed her neck with a loud smack.
“At first, I was angry with you, Captain Sykes. Then I realized you were doing me a favor. I could only hide for so long. The TSF are coming for me, and you just so happened to lend me your warship.”
Cara forced a smile. Like hell I did. She called out on the private channel.
The asteroid’s current orbit placed it between Earth and Mars. If she ran for Cruithne, she wouldn’t be without help when she arrived.
Osla rubbed his chin. “I think I’ll rename this ship the ACS Phoenix Fire. My state cruiser. Isn’t that what that company was trying to bill it as anyway? They were falling all over themselves to sell me this ship, and now it’s mine.”
The ship vibrated as the engines lit for full burn. Osla and Llana looked at Cara in surprise, then locked their magboots to the deck. The recorder didn’t compensate in time and flew back from the shuttle to crash into a stack of crates.
Osla tilted his head at Cara. “What are you up to, Captain Sykes?”
“We’re leaving the vicinity. It’s too hot here for my liking. The longer we hang around, the more likely it is that a stray missile is going to find my new ship.”
“Your new ship? Apparently you didn’t hear what I just said. The P
hoenix Rising is my ship.”
Cara set her hand on her pistol. “I heard you. That doesn’t mean you were correct. Chancellor.”
Osla pressed his lips together. He seemed about to speak, then thought better and glanced at the recorder, and it soared back toward him.
Osla nodded at Llana. “Give us the show we came here for.”
Llana struck Cara with a hard-upward jab. As she stumbled backward, the actress snatched Cara’s pulse pistol from its holster.
As pain flared across her face, Cara realized what Llana had done and tried to raise her rifle. A pulse blast hit the stock of the weapon, though, numbing her hands. The rifle spun out of Cara’s grasp and clattered on the deck several meters away.
Llana smiled as Cara straightened. She held up the pistol, then tossed it after the rifle.
“We’re going to give the people a show,” the actress said. “It’s time to put the real Cara Sykes to rest as the savior of the Andersonian people. They need a true member of the Collective to stand up for them. You’re nothing but an imposter, a useful idiot manipulated by circumstances. Stars the Hard Way has outgrown your story. It’s time for greater things.”
Cara wiped blood off her lower lip. “How long have you been practicing that speech?”
“My whole life,” Llana said.
She flipped her hair back and gave the recorder a grim smile, then dropped into a fighting pose and advanced on Cara.
LYSSA TRAPPED
STELLAR DATE: 3.23.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Outer Shell Manufacturing Layer, Mars 1
REGION: Mars 1 Ring, Mars Protectorate, InnerSol
The explosion beneath New Austin boiled the lunar surface. The city burst into space, painting the black grey as it spread outward. Flame-outs and follow-on explosions flashed in the dust, and Lyssa made out the shapes of bodies tumbling away.
Camaris had won.
Calling her remaining Weapon Born to her location, she took stock of her few fighters and mourned those she had lost. It seemed she was always losing.
The TSF battle group had pulled away, forming a defensive position in the space between Luna and Matria Station. Once enemy forces held Luna, they would take Matria and Beatrice, and then nothing would protect High Terra or Earth’s surface from attack. The destruction of the Insi Ring on Ceres would play out again, and Psion would control more of InnerSol.
TSF communication channels were a chaos of conflicting chatter. The battle group commander had been lost in the destruction of the dreadnought, with several lower leaders struggling to take control of the situation. The chain of command wasn’t clear, and no one had better information than any other.
In the midst of the confusion, more Psion fighters moved on the TSF armada, cutting them down at the edges before they could mount a unified counterattack. Additional ships were en route from Beatrice, but they were minutes away, and the battle group didn’t have that much time to survive.
Lyssa pushed her perception away from Luna, taking in High Terra and the major networks on Earth. The data flowed around her like waves of light. She could absorb it all as a unified wave, or dig down to the smallest stream.
She followed the view of a surveillance drone down to the roof in Summerville where she had stood with Cara. The worn plascrete was surrounded by kilometers of green forest, with other disintegrating buildings in the distance. The wall of new construction she remembered still hummed on the edge of the old district. Soon, this portion of Jerhattan would be renewed.
It was a peaceful contrast to the battle on Luna.
Lyssa looked up at the grey sky, the band of High Terra, and the afternoon shape of Luna as it just became visible.
Something didn’t fit.
She had felt the schism for days and blamed it on the sick feeling over how she had ended things with Cara, and her decision to enter Camaris’s expanse, and how nothing seemed to have come from it. She was failing again and again, and didn’t see how she could break the chain.
Emerson’s voice continued the out-of-tune feeling. She could not remember a time that Emerson, born from a Psion plot, had ever suggested working with the other SAI. Would it have occurred to him? Forgiveness was not his strength. He had moved forward with all of Kylan Carthage’s courage, and little of his empathy.
As she stared at the rooftop, thinking about Cara’s grip on her forearm, Lyssa noticed a discrepancy she hadn’t expected.
There were no burn marks from Andy’s case.
Frowning, she shifted the drone to focus on the center of the roof, and stared at the plascrete. She recalled the crumbled sections where bits of rusted steel showed through, collected mud from years of storms.
Cara’s plasma grenade had already scarred the plascrete when Lyssa grabbed her arm. Though Lyssa hadn’t stayed to watch the case melt, there should have been some evidence of the fire.
Leaving the drone’s feed, Lyssa re-entered her attack frame above Luna. The battle had moved to the industrial areas around New Austin. Metal structures glowed as plasma consumed itself and burned out. Camaris’s ground forces were peeling the surface of Luna as they had tried to do on Vesta, tossing any humans they found into vacuum. The space behind them was littered with floating debris that flashed with secondary explosions.
A shared Link update showed the last group of Weapon Born being torn apart by a new wave of Psion attack drones. Emerson’s last transmission melted into static, cut off by projectile fire.
The expanse continued.
Camaris’s forces razed Luna. When they were finished, they moved to High Terra.
Lyssa watched the ring break apart, massive pieces of the structure flung against each other, fragmenting into more projectiles as they succumbed to Earth’s atmosphere and fell in sustained bombing runs.
Time no longer mattered as events sped up. Camaris was punishing her, taking her revenge on humanity.
Earth fell.
CLOSING CREDITS
STELLAR DATE: 3.23.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Near-Luna Orbit, MSS Amplified Solution
REGION: Luna, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Llana preferred kicks. She forecasted her attacks by setting her shoulders, a move that might have pleased audiences, but gave Cara plenty of time to get low and jab beneath the actress’s outstretched leg, punching hard into an exposed length of lower thigh.
On the second kick, Llana stumbled away, mewling with pain.
“No,” Osla shouted. “You’re finishing this too soon.”
The chancellor waved an arm at his recording drone, sending it high over the two women. Cara glanced at it, wondering how she could knock it out of the air while holding Llana off.
“This is the final battle,” Osla said. “Llana, you’re leaving yourself open, and Cara, you’re taking advantage. Add some drama.”
“I’m going to knock her out, and then I’m coming for you,” Cara told him. She looked at the recorder, pointing. “Everyone watching should know that I’m about to beat your leader’s ass.”
Osla barked a laugh. “Now that would make an excellent show. Of course Llana can’t beat you. She’s an actress. Her skills aren’t in actual combat, she portrays a characte
r, and she does it well.”
“If you say so,” Cara said.
Llana howled with anger and rushed at Cara. The actress’s eyes flashed with hatred.
“I tried to help you,” Cara said in a low voice as Llana got closer. “You could be running this whole operation, but here you are, doing what this man wants you to do.”
“He’s my chancellor,” Llana corrected, huffing as she spun away from Cara’s jab.
“What are you going to do when I break your nose and mess up that pretty face? I don’t recall seeing many autodocs in the Anderson Collective.”
Llana grabbed a small crate and flung it at Cara. The box was too heavy and fell at Cara’s feet, sliding on the smooth deck. Sidestepping, Cara aimed her pulse pistol at the recorder and got two shots off as Osla shouted at her.
“That’s cheating, Captain Sykes. The people are going to lose their love for you. Is that what you want?”
Cara caught Llana with an elbow to the nose. The actress stumbled backward, her face spraying blood.
“I told you,” Cara said. “I didn’t learn to fight the nice way. All I know how to do is break arms, legs and noses.” She pointed the pistol at Llana, who stared angrily at her from behind a fist pressed to her nose.
“Come on, now,” Osla said.
He shifted to a shipping container on the edge of Cara’s vision, forcing her to sidestep so he and Llana were both within her field of fire.
Llana straightened and dropped her fist. Blood ran freely down her face. She fixated on Cara with a crazed look, then looked over her shoulder to make sure she was within sight of the recorder. The drone bobbed as it locked on her.
“The Dread Pirate Sykes is dead!” Llana screamed, and ran at Cara.
There was plenty of time to consider options as Llana sprinted toward her. Cara shifted her firing stance and drew down on the actress, debating firing on a knee or center of mass. She was aware of the recorder watching her every move. She had no doubt that commentators were debating her choices even now.
