Copyright © 2010 Nathalie Gray, Robert Appleton, and J.C. Hay
All rights reserved — a Samhain Publishing, Ltd. publication
Metal Reign by Nathalie Gray
Frankie threw her hands up. “Because it’s home, dammit!”
“A toxic planet with a potholed moon.” John rolled his eyes. “Some home. And we’re not even sure anyone survived the initial attack. What if we can’t even live down there anymore? What if everything is dead?”
“Earth is tougher than you think.” The old debate. She was tired of it, tired of waiting, of running out of everything, of being afraid all the time. But then again, humanity was about to do something about it. Stand up and take their planet back. In a matter of hours—
“Your turn.” John tapped the deck of cards on the plastic trunk by her bunk.
She played her card in their weekly game of poker. But her heart wasn’t in it. A headache squeezed the back of her eyeballs. Damn, another low.
John’s eyebrow arched the way it always did when pain slipped past her guard. He never missed much.
“Want one?”
“Sure.” That man was one in a million.
The toffee John offered melted on her tongue as soon as she popped it into her mouth. Caramel flavor spread from the velvety candy as sugar entered her bloodstream. The latest glycemic low left, her hands stopped shaking and her mood lifted. Somewhat. Frankie closed her eyes and sighed. Buttery paradise in her mouth.
“Good, huh?”
In all the years she’d known him, John’s voice had always soothed her nerves. It did again that evening, a mere twelve hours before the great charge. D-Day, as in the old days. But right now, they were playing cards. She focused on that.
She smiled with her eyes still closed, knowing John would wear that corner grin she liked to tease him about, the one that invariably got him in trouble with the ladies. Or more aptly, with their territorial boyfriends. Frankie opened her eyes and caught him not grinning as usual, but wearing a pained expression that flitted to mocking in the blink of an eye. There, then gone. Like those schools of silver fish she had watched in old-fashioned movies.
She let it go. John O’Shaughnessy, her ship’s cook and long-time friend, was eccentric if nothing else. “Better than good.” She winked.
“Is the low over?” The lone lamp in her cabin cast coppery rays in John’s light brown hair, which he wore a bit past the collar. Eyes bluer than an iceberg stared, as if he could see right through to her core. “You still look pale. Want another shot of sugary sin?”
“I think I’m good now.” She extended her steady hands to prove it.
“A surgeon’s hands.” John pocketed the rest of the toffees. Little drops of amber clad in gem-colored wrappers. “You should have the doc take a look at you. I can’t always come bravely running to save you, armed with candy and benevolence. You could lapse into a diabetic coma, and then who would complain about my menu?”
“The rest of the crew?”
“Ouch.” John put a long hand to his chest. “How you wound me, my fair lady.”
“I’m no lady and you know it.”
Without taking his gaze off her, John delicately lowered his cards. A full house.
Frankie slapped her hand on her thigh. “Goddammit.”
“Tut-tut-tut. He had nothing to do with this.” Eyes sparkling, he scooped up and pocketed the evening’s win—old tokens from a long-destroyed bridge on Earth—and leaned back against the bulkhead. Muscles twitched along his rower’s shoulders. All angular, lean lines. “So… That plan of yours…”
And there it was. She knew it had been coming. All evening she’d waited for John to broach the subject of her plan. In his characteristic way, he’d taken his time. A true poker player. No wonder he beat her nine times out of ten. But then again, she didn’t play to win against John, she just played to spend time with him. Once in a while even Commander Beaumont needed to let her guard down and be herself.
“About damn time you said what was on your mind.”
John shrugged. “My nan always said there’s never a good time to make a bad decision.”
“Going after the Imbers is a bad decision?”
“Not if you have tens of thousands of professional troops and an armada of warships. You have neither. Those are biomecha death on wings. How do you kill the machine part of them when you don’t have armor-piercing ammo? And how do you get to the soft, chewy inside when you can’t get past their mechanized defenses?”
Intellectually, Frankie knew he was right. But humans couldn’t afford to do nothing, as they had for the past five hundred years since the invasion. In 2149, Imbers had come on their monstrous ships, thousands of them, machines made of living parts. They had landed and taken everything. Ravaged the planet, killed half of its species, mined it to a hairsbreadth of its ecosystem’s life. While the Imbers raped the planet for its precious ores, unyielding and unafraid of its inhabitants, people had fled in what ships could be launched. Cruise liners, freighters, personal crafts. Those who couldn’t flee died on a planet suddenly toxic. Or so everyone had surmised. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Mass exodus of unparalleled proportions had preceded a couple million humans stranded in space, struggling to sustain life onboard ships never designed for prolonged habitation. After decades of disease and despair—a second Dark Ages—people had begun to reorganize, colonize. Start over. But none of the space colonies were Earth. None of them felt like home.
“We can’t afford to sit on our hands. Not anymore. We’re starving, John. Food is running out. We keep losing power. Our hydroponics crops are failing, children are born smaller and weaker with every generation. Our immunization programs aren’t worth a damn. We have to take Earth back. It’s not a matter of ego or honor or whatever. It’s survival. We’re not going to last much longer.”
“We could find another hospitable planet instead of obsessing about one we can’t have. There’s a couple—”
A flare of temper forced Frankie to her feet. Her French father’s side was manifesting itself. Again. “John, there are no other planets close enough. Every single mission we’ve sent came back negative. When they came back at all.”
“So you’re just going to attack them? Get out the slingshots, folks, we’re going after Goliath.”
“No, not just attack them. You know that. One stealth cruiser, no heat signature to speak of, we remote-pilot it close enough to put a charge on the orbital pipeline. The Imbers will think it’s just more space debris and won’t see a thing until their fuel dries out. My plan—”
“Your plan is flawed at best,” John cut in.
Frankie took a deep breath. “You’re not doing that devil’s advocate thing again, are you? Because this is not a good time for it. Not tonight.”
“The devil doesn’t need another advocate, but reason does. It’s not reasonable to think we can hurt the Imbers badly enough simply by cutting off their fuel line. That thing is armored and protected. Plus, they’ll spot us a system away. It can’t be done.”
“It can. And it will. One good hit on that orbital pipeline and it’s bye-bye Imbers. You’ve seen the reconnaissance report—”
“A couple of spotty RSIs don’t count as data to me.”
“Those remote sensing images aren’t spotty when you know what you’re looking for. And people died to get that data back home. It’s the Imbers’ one blind spot, and I’ll be damned if I don’t take a shot at it.”
“Okay. What if you miss that shot? Or worse, what if you succeed and it doesn’t change a thing except make them come after us?” John’s blue eyes turned darker. “They haven’t cared one bit what we do so far, don’t make them. And as the lead ship, Commander Beaumont, you’d be the first to get it in the teeth.”
John always used her rank whenever a debate wasn’t going his way. Frankie sighed.
“You’re on that ship too. And I still wonder why you stayed. You’re a civilian, you could’ve just asked to be reassigned to another ship. This mission was volunteers only.” She raked both hands in her hair. “Look, it’s a decent plan. While the alien scumbags are running around wondering what the hell is going on with their fuel, the rest of our ships will come in for the kill. With the numbers we have, it should be enough to destroy the lunar power plant.”
It sounded true enough, and accurate enough. Yet Frankie couldn’t look into John’s eyes without feeling dirty. Most of what she’d said was true. But not all of it.
She checked her watch, cringed. One standard hour until her ship, Magellan, the largest and oldest in the fleet, would rendezvous with the salvager, Ca Ong, which had in its massive belly the cruiser she’d pilot for the mission.
“Why do you keep looking at your watch? Are you nervous?”
Because all they had was right now. Because she wasn’t woman enough to face him and tell him the truth. Because every time she looked into John’s eyes, she wanted to change her mind and find a quiet place somewhere for another game of poker. Just one more.
In the end, she just shrugged. “Aren’t you?”
Some big Commander you are, Beaumont. Can’t even face up to your one friend.
Through narrowed eyes, John stared at her as she resumed pacing her small cabin. Barely three paces one side then back to the other. When she’d returned for a fourth trip, he stood and blocked her way. She was tall and fit yet was still dwarfed by the man’s six-three, athletic frame. In long hands that didn’t shake—his hands never shook, no matter the situation—John framed her face and placed a kiss on her forehead. Heat wafted out of her collar. He’d never done that. To her shock, the heat caused by his unexpected kiss didn’t dissipate.
“God knows you have a lot on your plate, Frankie,” he murmured. “And I understand you can’t brief me on everything all the time as things happen. But when you want to tell me what’s bugging you, you know I’ll be there to listen. Okay?”
The impulse to tell him everything surged in her. They’d shared so much already. Heartache, frustrations, illnesses and injuries. She could tell him anything, couldn’t she? Almost.
Not this time, Beaumont.
“You’re such a moron,” she let out through a fake grin. Guilt was like a cold knife stabbing her despite the pleasant warmth his hands created.
A dark blond eyebrow arched as he pulled back to look at her. “I’ve been thinking about something…” He scratched the back of his head, sucked his teeth. “Maybe I should just—”
A knock came at the hatch. Both John and she started. It was the first time she’d ever seen him caught off guard. The notion that something could rattle him pained her. He was her rock, her one true friend. If life got to him too, then who else could lend her a shoulder to cry on?
John drew back, an expression of chagrin quickly turning to mockery. He rolled his eyes. “Leila needs to learn how to use the comms.”
“How do you know it’s Seaman Qiu?”
“Only Leila knocks on armored steel.”
Game-face time, Beaumont.
She put the mask back on, changed from Frankie playing a game of poker with her best friend, to Commander Beaumont, ship captain and fleet admiral due to unforeseen circumstances—Admiral Lang’s death had left a gaping hole in the fleet—and a woman about to take what was left of humanity on an all-out charge against the invader. No one but John had ever seen Frankie underneath the stoical mask of leadership. No one but him knew about her drops in blood sugar, her obsessive nail-biting and pacing, or how she would sometimes wake in the middle of a nightmare she couldn’t remember, prey to her own personal demons. Doubts the worst of them. What if she missed something? What if she was wrong about that pipeline? What if something happened to the Ca Ong?
Those what ifs would someday crush her, she was sure.
She felt torn between needing to deal with this latest fire and yearning for a bit more downtime before…
She pulled the lever up and opened the hatch. Seaman Qiu stood not ten centimeters away, brown eyes huge in her pointed face as she saluted. “There’s a problem, Ma’am.”
John slipped his two forefingers inside the arm pocket of his black coveralls and pulled out a toffee. “There. For later.”
When Frankie reached out to take the candy, their fingers brushed. While she turned to address Qiu, she spotted John bringing his hand to his mouth, as if testing the feel of it. That look of pain again flashed in his expressive eyes before the Roman Catholic Irishman who had a direct line to God—John spoke to Him all the time, as he jokingly boasted—winked then walked out.
She could still smell his cologne after he’d left. A strange notion of loss invaded her, made her mad at the intrusion even if she knew intellectually that she could speak with John any time she wished. For the rest of that night anyway. She would go see him later. A lump rose in her throat.
Not now. She couldn’t afford the luxury of self-pity.
“What’s going on, Seaman?” she asked as she rushed down the passageway alongside Qiu. Both sets of boots clanged on the metal grille deck. Those they met snapped to attention along the pitted bulkheads. The Magellan had once been a fine ship. But it was old and tired now. Like the rest of humanity’s infrastructure. They needed that planet back, dammit.
Qiu murmured out the corner of her mouth, “It’s the Ca Ong, Ma’am…”
Glacial fingers of dread gripped her by the nape and wouldn’t let go. The Kraken-class vessel basically carried the entire plan in its hold. If something happened to it, she’d be hard-pressed to find another small, maneuverable craft that could approach, undetected, the vulnerable Imber pipeline.
“How bad?”
Seaman Qiu cleared her throat.
Jesus…
She could tell just by the wall of noise from the hatch leading to the bridge that there was big trouble in the air. Comms crackled with a multitude of messages coming in simultaneously from various ships. None of it sounded good. The two crewmembers manning the console frantically relayed the data to the officer of the watch, who, in turn, barked orders to the rest of the crew. Beyond the wide portholes in front and on each side, inscrutable blackness pressed in against the bonded glass except for one spot lit by the Magellan’s giant searchlight. Still a fair distance away but close enough to ID, the Ca Ong’s unmistakable round prow occupied the beam of light.
When the closest deckhand spotted Frankie stepping through the hatch, a relieved smile spread to his lips. She nodded.
“Captain on deck!”
“At ease. Present location?”
“One light-year from Earth, Ma’am.”
While the chaos of the bridge swallowed Seaman Qiu, Frankie made a beeline for the comms console.
“Sitrep.” She needed a situation report, and she needed it now. Things were not looking good.
“Bad, Ma’am. The Ca Ong just sent a distress call. They had engine problems all the way to its present location—”
“Ma’am.”
Frankie turned away from the comms console to catch the Ca Ong’s starboard green light arcing from left to right, which meant either the ship had executed one hell of a tight turn or it’d just done a barrel roll. Neither maneuver made sense in the present situation when all they had to do was position their aft so that the Magellan’s cargo cranes could tug the stealth cruiser into her hold.
From the comms, a cacophony of messages blared out. Only one word, repeated over and over. “Mayday! Mayday!” Then nothing at all. The silence startled her as badly as the crew. Someone gasped.
“What the hell just happened?” Frankie yelled to be heard above the crackle of static as she rushed to the navigator, who bent over his table and repeatedly jabbed his fingers on the nautical chart. “What’s their heading now? They’re facing us or away?”
“Us.” Lieutenant Bentley blanched when he turned to look at her. “But they’re belly up, Ma’am.”
Dammit.
“Comms, try to get them back. Use short-range.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Frankie tamped down the long line of expletives while she mentally listed what resources she had for a rescue mission. They’d loaded the Magellan to the gunnels with ammo. They had precious little else than warheads and charges for the pulse cannons. Still, the Ca Ong counted at least three hundred crewmembers.
“Officer of the watch, deploy the grappling hooks.”
A couple of the more junior crewmembers—a few had chosen to stay behind for this mission—turned to stare but quickly did as she instructed. She was really pushing her good luck this time. The Magellan, loaded with ammo, would attempt to draw in a ship three times its size and hopefully right it. Should the ships collide…
The Mythmakers by Robert Appleton
There had to be easier ways to make a living.
Steffi Savannah loosened her jaw with a gummy roll of her mouth, then shook her head to stay awake. The stars wheeled at a dizzying clip. She ducked lower into her magnetic boots, but her quads ached from crouching. The dark purple flame of her cutting torch ballooned and dripped behind the tinted welding shield in her hand. It was taking too damn long. She’d guessed at five minutes to cut the metal debris loose—fifteen minutes ago. Bright molten shards spiralled away into space as the Albatross rifled through nothingness on her way to nowhere. “Come on, you bitch,” she urged.
The two chasing ships were gaining. Once mere pinpricks of light against the dull grey cloud whirls of planet October, they now had necks and glassy beaks and shiny metal wings that reflected the suns’ amber. And an arsenal of major firepower ready to annihilate the Albatross.
“How’s it coming, Cap?” Bo Lineker’s snappy boyish voice redoubled her grit.
“Nearly there,” she replied. “Don’t wait for me. Get inside if you’re done.”
“You don’t want a hand?”
“No. I’m almost through.”
“I could—”
“Get below. Tell McKendrick to light the candle as soon as I close the hatch behind me.”
“Aye.”
The weight of resignation in his parting syllable tumbled and echoed deep inside her. She’d always hated being alone outside. Having a man to keep her company, one who’d do anything for her even though she didn’t love him in the least, was a safety cord no rig could best. She looked round but he’d gone. The unique brass hull had been sleek once. Now it was dented and greening and it barely reflected starlight anymore. Laser scarring and rivulet depressions where the seams had started to buckle groaned with old age.
Steffi shot a breath from her nostrils and gripped the cutter’s blunt handle. It rocked and rolled as the mangled wreckage lifted toward her. Dammit. She had to let go of the torch to duck. McKendrick had punched the throttle early, as soon as the ship’s rolling had stopped. Tons of twisted metal almost took Steffi’s head off as the Albatross gathered speed. Ducking backward, she lay flat on the hull. Only her knees pointed up, as her magnetic boots were still clamped. The wreckage lifted like a silver crown of thorns away, ahead of her into space. She hoped like hell the bastards would fly into it.
A large blue glove gripped her arm.
“Bo! I thought I told—”
“Sorry. Was worried about you, Cap.”
She climbed up his arm and shoulder and shook her head. “Of all the dumb goddamn…I told you to tell McKendrick to wait ’til I was inside.” She gave him her hardest shove. It made him blink. “I came this close to being ripped in half,” she added, demonstrating the distance between her forefinger and thumb. “Now get your dumb hulk ass below and help Flyte with the Psammeticum coils.”
“Soon as you’re inside, Cap.”
She wanted to hug him for being a loyal puppy, but he needed to learn what an order meant. Bo adored her. He’d often said so in bed. And a part of her was very fond of him—the sex and the sweet talk had brightened up many a dull evening—but no more than that. She knew it was pity more than love that kept her close to him. Pity for his dumb, harmless nature; for him being an orphan with no hope of anything but a mining or muscle job; and for him not minding being used for sex whenever she wanted it.
But this time, his mindless devotion had gone too far.
“I said get inside right now. You’re not to wait for me, you’re to get below and do as I say. Or I’m dumping you on the nearest rock.”
His loyal squinting eyes neither moved nor blinked. What the hell could be going on behind them? She felt like the small guy from Of Mice and Men, trying to tell her backward giant friend that they’d never have a ranch together. It made her insides curl and tug. And he still hadn’t responded.
“Bo? Say something.”
The fingers of his glove caressed the loose folds down the arm of her suit. He gently jabbed her hip.
“Bo?”
His mouth eased open. Blood trickled from his nose then fell from lip to lip. Steffi caught him as he began to sway sideways. Gasping, she looked down at a hole the size of a cricket ball in the centre of his chest. Gobs of blood squeezed from his arteries and froze immediately like misshapen ice lollies.
Oh my God.
Her mind blanked.
An infinitesimal spark in the tar pit of her being ignited her into action with a shudder. She swivelled her head round far enough to see loose rosaries of enemy fire following the Albatross_’s dive. The energy pulses were small but rapid through space. One sheared the corner off the open hatch. Fifty others streaked above while McKendrick barrelled the ship low and steep. Steffi made a fist with her right foot to squeeze the insole’s magnetic grip. The boot loosened its hold and she swung her leg out past Bo, then clamped it down again. She almost forgot to clamp her next step, and only a magnetic toe kept her from drifting away into eternity. Rhythmic steps from now on. Rhythmic and metallic and precarious. Arrhythmic heartbeat. No way to steady that.
What about Bo? She couldn’t just _leave him…but she had to.
The shots streamed by like a shower of white micro-meteorites. They lit her way across the brass hull as though she was back on old Xiu Pau’s roof on Chinese New Year, fireworks drip-webbing the sky. Before she reached the hatch, the firing ceased. It felt like the eye of the storm. She waited for a single, well-aimed sniper shot to thud into her spine. None came. Where was Bo? She daren’t look behind. A deep dark pool of emptiness lay around the Albatross while she gripped the hatchway ladder and bunched her toes. She tried to blink the silvery sears of light from her retina but couldn’t. Spinning the exterior hatch lock above her, she thanked God for giving her a bit longer to exist. Down through the inner hatch. Into the grimy airlock. Captain Steffi Savannah pulled the gravity lever and let Sir Isaac plonk her down onto the metal floor, right onto Aurora McKendrick’s white painted sign:
DON’T DO IT! YOU’RE YOUNG. YOU’RE HEALTHY. YOU FORGOT TO PUT ME IN YOUR WILL!
Anxious breaths misted the mess door’s rhombus window. Two pairs of eyes peered through, waiting for the air system’s green light. Suddenly the door swung open and Rex and Alexandra Van Rynn raced toward her, blankets and first-aid kit at the ready.
Steffi puffed her cheeks and sank her chin into the damp foam guard of her helmet. She’d just done a hell of a thing. Saved her ship. But it would be forgotten in no time. A few handshakes and a cup of hot chocolate and that would be that. No regrets. Achievement did not exist outside the law. Only survival, from one job to the next. She was used to it. But Bo’s death had to last a little longer. How much would she miss him? As long as the power in his magnetic boots lasted, he would be clamped on the hull like a barnacle. She knew she’d never sleep while he was there.
Christ, Bo! Why didn’t you just do as you were told?
Rex’s huge black hands wrestled her helmet and collar off. “You okay, Cap?”
“Yeah.” She sighed then took a swig of Alexandra’s water. “But Bo’s gone. He took a shot right through the heart.”
Beautiful Alexandra reached into her blouse and fingered the pearl crucifix on her necklace. “We’ll say a prayer for him tonight.” Her ex-smoker’s rasp stuttered into a cough. “In the meantime, let’s get you rested.”
“Amen,” answered her husband.
Steffi removed her gloves to rub her tired eyes. “Are we clear of the Royals?”
“McKendrick seems to think so,” he replied.
“She did good.” Steffi sat forward and rested her arms on her knees.
“She always does. That’s the problem—we never hear the end of it,” Rex reminded her.
“Help me out of these boots, will you?” Steffi’s fingers trembled over her shin locks. “They weigh a goddamn ton.”
But even without the magnetic boots and the bulky suit and the clingy thermal undersuit, she felt no lighter. The burden of losing a man couldn’t be peeled off. As she staggered into the mess room, everything seemed so familiar: the faded, cherry-coloured floor, the spindly yet sturdy dining table clamped askew, the chrome sink surprisingly shiny despite being over a decade old, the wooden board games locker with no handle, the wrinkled cream yoga mats rolled up and tied into the corner like big ancient scrolls. So why wasn’t she glad to be back? After nearly three hours in zero-g in the line of fire, she ought to be.
She spotted Bo’s cereal bowl in the sink. A half-eaten serving of bran flakes soaked in milk. Almost like a child’s cereal. Her sock snagged on the steel grated floor as she ghosted down A corridor in her stocking feet. She let the sock rip loose. Barefoot felt much better, less restricted. Her cosy sleeping quarters consisted of an unmade bunk bed, two quilts and an out-of-date music system bracketed to the wall over her reading desk. She sank into the nest of quilts face first. Her hot breaths accumulated, stifling her pangs of guilt, on the verge of suffocation. At least it felt secluded in that livid place. When it finally became unbearable, she tossed onto a cooler spot and heaved a hollow sigh.
What the hell was she still doing out here, a fugitive in deep space?
Christ! There had to be easier ways to make a living.
Hearts and Minds by J.C. Hay
The air in the assault pod smelled stale, so Syna left the hatch open as long as possible. The musty odor was a sign that the scrubbers were getting old. Replacing those cost money, which she should have in abundance in slightly longer than twenty-four hours. First, however, she had to get through the waiting. Her arms and legs ached, wound like springs in anticipation. Her foot tapped on the floor of the pod in a rapid staccato. “What’s the situation, Bree?”
The computer replied in relaxed tones, the same calm voice it always used. “We’re thirty seconds from approach burn. Seventy from main power cutoff, Captain.”
“Good. Keep me posted.” Too long. The moments before a boarding action stretched out like eternity, too much time to think about all the things that might go wrong. Too much time to second-guess every detail. Syna longed for the actual launch, when all prep would be over and it was make or break.
“Beginning approach burn on mark. And mark.”
There was a low rumble as the engine sprang to life. All around her, the pod shook in its harness—sympathetic to the vibrations of its housing ship. Syna counted backwards from twenty, fingers checking her straps one final time. At five she gripped the handle of the pod’s hatch.
“Position achieved, Captain. We’re floating towards the rendezvous point as planned.” The AI sounded smug, as if reporting its successful maneuver seemed redundant. Syna had heard of artificial intelligences gaining sentience before, just never one as small as a shipboard system. Bree never failed to surprise.
“Nice work, Bree.”
“Of course, Captain. Preparing for main power shut off. You should close your pod now.”
Syna grinned and tugged. The heavy hatch slammed down and pressurized with a soft hiss of air. A thin red light came on in the pod, just enough to see the mirror of the ship’s instruments. “You still there?”
The voice came from a speaker inside the pod, tinny, with a bit of static from the transmission, but unmistakably Bree. “Where else would I be, Captain? Main power shut off—now.”
Through the viewport in the pod, she saw the ship’s corridor go dark. They were inert now, another piece of space debris racing in an unstable orbit around Hamunaptra. With any luck it would get them close enough to launch the pod without getting detected.
Syna thought back to the planetside dive where her client had contracted her. A dingy vid-unit had blared something about another bombing in the government sector, while the client offered her enough money to keep the Hangman’s Quarry in the air for a year in exchange for a simple smash-and-grab job. It had been enough to lure her out of semi-retirement. More than enough to buy off any apprehension she might have had at another boarding action after the mess in Yggdrasil.
Yggdrasil—she had a sudden vision of Anbjorn pulled down beneath a tide of saffron-jacketed soldiers and bit the inside of her cheek to regain her focus. No time for memories. No time for regrets. “Keep talking to me, Bree.”
“Preparing to launch pod, Captain. Target ship is sighted.”
“Describe her to me.” Anything to take her mind off the waiting. Anything to keep her from thinking about the past.
“Narcissus-class personal yacht. Minimum crew one, maximum three. Heat signatures abnormal, leading me to believe the owner has modified the engines heavily.”
“Jealous, Bree?”
“Of course not, Captain. I can fly circles around that heap.” Syna chuckled while the AI continued. “And I don’t need unsanctioned modifications to do it.”
“Your programmers left modesty circuits out, didn’t they.”
“On the contrary, I was programmed to understand my limitations completely.”
“Oh, of course. Anything else I should know about the target?”
“Not much to go on, Captain. I didn’t want to alert them with a scan.”
Of course not, it would defeat the entire purpose of running dark. The AI’s systems and the pod’s life support were both minimal signatures, well below the normal threshold for a sensor array. Without the mains on line, there was little chance of the Quarry being picked up with anything less than a deliberate and thorough search. And even then the sensor operator would have to know they were there. Syna twisted, scratching her back against the acceleration pad behind her.
“Maximum number aboard for a Narcissus-class?”
“At full occupancy, passengers and crew, no more than fifteen. And life support could only handle that many for in-system trips.”
Wonderful, at the best it’d be an even fight, at worst she’d be outnumbered fifteen to one. Assuming they decided to resist at all. Syna hoped the element of surprise would eliminate that idea from their minds. Bree had planned to launch the pod at the precise moment the yacht crossed out of the magnetosphere. The transition created a sensor shadow that could allow a skilled pirate to attach without being detected.
“What’s the count, Bree?”
“Twenty seconds to launch, Captain. Be ready.”
“No prayers for the Mother of Machines to protect me?”
“Sorry, Captain. I wasn’t programmed to be superstitious, either.”
“Very well. Count my final five.” Syna checked her straps another time, made certain her monoblade was still at her hip. The ache in her legs seemed to fill her entire lower body.
“Launch in five, Captain. Four.” Bree’s voice continued to be warm and affectionate, but Syna could have sworn the machine sounded eager. “Three.” She suspected the AI appreciated being employed for nonstandard purposes. “Two.” Piracy tested the boundaries of its abilities, which Bree seemed to enjoy. “Launch.”
The pod flared white and lurched with launch acceleration. The Gs slammed Syna into the thick pad and turned the edges of her vision red as blood leaked into her retinas. She thumbed the switch on her autodrug and flooded her system with adrenaline. Clarity rushed into her brain, and the lead fled from her limbs with a scream of synthetic endorphins. Syna’s eyes snapped open, the red haze receding as her blood pressure spiked.
At long last, the moment had come.
The time for thinking had ended. Now there was only action.
“We’ve got company.” Jonas flipped a switch and tapped on the forward scanner. “Small ship. Shu-class. Looks like the Tse aren’t going to let us go without a fight.”
Galen checked the monitor. The white-green blur above Jonas’s finger was too regular, too steady in course, to be anything other than a ship. Jonas’s nervousness brushed at the edges of Galen’s perception, and he pushed it away. “Maybe it’s nothing.”
“I doubt it.” Another light blinked into life on the console. “They’re firing a pod.”
“Boarders? That seems risky.”
Jonas brushed the two metal studs in his temple—a present from the Hegemony’s academy on Xianshi. “Not if they want to take us alive.”
Galen’s flight response kicked in, a moment of terror at the rumors of the horrors the Tse inflicted on those with psi-talent. He felt a gentle push from Jonas to calm him. The only problem with sending two psions on a mission, they tended to feed off each other’s emotions. Unfortunately, circumstances demanded it.
It could be worse. At least we aren’t lovers.
“You’re not my type, for starters.”
Galen glanced over at Jonas, brow furrowed at the touch of his partner’s voice in his head. “Surface scanning? That’s so rude.”
“You’re tough to miss. You’re broadcasting so badly, you may as well have a loudspeaker.”
“I’ll try and tone it down then. Put us on an evasive course, I’m going to head back and repel them. With only one pod, they can’t be sending more than two people.” Two soldiers, likely trained in black-ops and psi-retrieval, and likely completely resistant to any manipulation he could push towards them. He left that part unspoken. They had both understood the danger when they’d agreed to the trip.
Besides, Jonas could pluck it out of his brain without needing to hear it aloud.
The main room would make an effective bottleneck—the handful of corridors on the small yacht all fed into it, and Galen could hold the bridge corridor as a fallback position. Worst-case scenario, they could drop through the emergency shuttle underneath the bridge. That would get at least one of them out alive, and as long as one was alive, there was hope to complete the mission.
“Pod contact in thirty seconds.” Jonas’s voice came over the comm-unit in the wall.
Galen pressed the switch. “I thought you were going to evade.”
“They’ve got a lock on us. Whoever’s piloting that thing knows what he’s doing.”
A deep metallic bang sent a shiver through the yacht as grappling magnets gripped the hull. “I thought you said we had thirty seconds!”
Jonas yelled down the hall, his voice amplified by the echo. “New contact! New contact! Bastards must’ve launched a second pod while we were in the shadow!”
On cue a second clang echoed through the ship as the other pod attached itself.
Galen tapped an access code into the weapons locker in the corridor. As it hissed open, he slid his hand around the slow-moving door and grabbed a fléchette pistol and two clips. No time for games. He would not let them take him alive. Not to be some subject for a Tse scientist on Xianshi.
The clip slid into the pistol and acted to counterbalance the firing mechanism. Loaded, the weapon became so perfectly balanced as to be weightless. Galen ran to the main room and dropped to one knee behind a table. No comm-unit waited nearby, so he took a deep breath and focused his thoughts. “Any more pods?”
Jonas’s thoughts came back clear. “Negative. They’re holding position on the edge of firing range.”
Galen braced the pistol across the top of the table and hoped he was a small target. The yacht wasn’t designed for shipboard combat. All he could see was the amount of open space even his best defensive position presented. The Tse excelled at shipboard combat, and he was certain they were already planning their best assault based on the layout of the yacht. Two pods. Four attackers. A gambling man would have bet against him.
Galen loved to play the long odds. The Tse were methodical—they acted according to strict procedures. He changed his plan on the spur of the moment. A quick push and he vaulted up over the table and towards the aft corridor.
He found them coming in through the rear lock, the black interior of their assault pod still visible through the door. The two soldiers wore saffron-colored vac-suits, the look of surprise evident on their faces as they heard him charge.
Galen fired his fléchette pistol. A cloud of ceramic needles buzzed from the muzzle and shattered harmlessly against the faceplate of one of the soldiers. The trooper winced away, even as his comrade focused on Galen as a threat. It was the opening Galen needed.
He pushed, hard as he could, to overcome any defenses the grunt had in place. You’re suffocating. No air. Something’s wrong with your suit. Pain flared behind Galen’s right eye, and something warm dripped from his nose. Damn, ruptured something.
The soldier screamed and grabbed at his helmet. Thick-gloved fingers threw open latches as he ripped the can off his shoulders. Galen fired again, and this time the fléchettes found meat and bone instead. The soldier collapsed, just as his partner brought an autofléchette to bear.
“New pod! New pod! New pod!” Jonas shouted over the comm and in Galen’s head simultaneously.
Galen dropped behind a bulkhead as the rifle barked in the soldier’s hands. Shards exploded against the walls and burned through Galen’s shirt. He felt a few break the skin; nothing permanent, nothing serious.
The soldier fired again as Galen jumped back into the main room. The second shot ripped into his calf. Needles buried themselves in the muscle, and Galen shrieked in pain.
“You okay?” Jonas’s presence in Galen’s skull calmed him. He took a breath, felt Jonas tripping the pathways that blocked the pain in his leg, prepared himself for another push into the Tse’s mind. He could taste the blood on his lips now, felt it run in a slow current from his nose.
“Yeah. There’s only two down here. Where’s the other pod?”
In an answer to his question, the door from one of the side corridors opened and another soldier—a woman, with no vac-suit—charged into the room.
Syna exploded through the door and plowed into the soldier, shoulder first. The Tse fell back and tried to bring his autofléchette to bear, but Syna already had her monoblade in hand. She pulled back on the blade’s activator and the monomolecular edge of the sword blurred into life. The soldier blanched at the characteristic shriek of the blade, and she could see him mouth the weapon’s feared nickname—screamsword.
The fear in the Tse’s eyes didn’t register. Syna saw only Anbjorn screaming, his axe rising and falling in lethal arcs as the saffron-suited soldiers overwhelmed him. Her heart felt like a lump of ice, her rage the only fire that could melt it free.
To his credit, the soldier responded quickly, his rifle swinging up to block the shot with a speed born of reflex. Against any other weapon it would have been enough. Against the sub-microscopic edge of her screamsword it was as effective as air. The blade split the rifle without resistance and continued into the torso beyond. Syna saw the soldier gasp in surprise, then kicked him free of the blade and sent his corpse tumbling back.
Bastards. What in the seven hells were the Tse doing out on the frontier? It was one thing to see them well within Hegemony borders, like Yggdrasil, but out here on the edge of civilized space? Her hopes of a decent plunder washed away on a tide of anger and bloodlust. Nothing personal, she tried to convince herself, a business decision, not revenge. The Tse would never allow her to take anything off-ship now that they controlled it, so it was in her best interests to remove the interlopers as fast as possible.
“Bree, I’ve got Tse on board, where’d they come from?”
“A warship pulled out of the lunar shadow at roughly the same time as we did. I don’t think they’ve seen us.”
“How many assault pods?”
“Two made contact, they could be holding some in reserve.” The computer sounded annoyed at the change in plans, frustrated that it hadn’t detected the tiny assault craft until too late. Syna felt a pang of sympathy—she hated being reminded of her own fallibility.
“Can you target their home ship?”
“Negative, Captain, not without giving away our position. Normal weapon payloads can’t reach me from their current location.”
“Monitor that. If they close on you, I want them hulled. Got me?”
“Affirmative, Captain. I can try and detect how many are on board. How many crew are left?”
Syna froze. Crew. She’d forgotten about the Tse’s opponent. The monoblade still shrieking, she turned to find him. He sat on the floor a few feet away, a fléchette pistol in a two-handed grip and trained on her center of mass.
She released the blade’s trigger and it fell silent. “Where are the others? How many crew on board?”
He stared at her, and she fixed her eyes on his to make certain he knew she was talking to him. “Where’s the rest of the crew? How many?”
“Just one. On the bridge.”
It took Syna a moment to realize that the crewman’s lips hadn’t moved. The river of blood pouring from his nose took on new meaning, and she pressed her arm to her eyes. She ran towards where she remembered seeing the bridge corridor, her mind racing through multiplication tables, lyrics of songs, anything she could think of to keep the fingers of the psi’s will from getting hold in her brain.
Her shoulder clipped the edge of the door and she spun into the wall, pain flashing white in her closed eyes. She risked a glance, realized she was in the bridge corridor and got ready to move.
“There’s another pod.” His voice, his real voice, in the air behind her.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. It was reflex. I panicked.”
She risked a look back, but the crewman had a hand covering his eyes. Protecting her. His leg, she realized, had been shredded by fléchettes. His tolerance for pain had to be amazing just to stand, let alone move around. “Where’s the emergency shuttle? Under the bridge?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
Only if you wanted off the ship. The Tse likely used it as a secondary entrance. Tertiary, she corrected. She’d occupied one of the airlocks with her own assault pod. Her presence may well have forced them to the shuttle locks.
“Tell your friend not to perforate me, and I’ll get these Tse vermin off your ship.”
“Who in the hells are you?”
“Just tell him.” She started up the corridor, dropping from bulkhead to bulkhead rather than making a straight shot. If the Tse came up through the shuttle, then they likely already held the bridge. Syna saw no point in giving them an easy shot.
She tucked into a corner and called back to the Quarry. “Bree, scan for life forms.”
“I’ve got four life forms aboard the yacht, Captain.”
Four. She and the psion were two of those, and she knew there was no chance that the Tse had only sent one in their pods. That meant her new friend had taken out one on his own. Perhaps the other crewmember had done the same. Hells, anything could happen.
There was a scream behind her as Syna darted up to the next bulkhead. She thought about looking back, but sudden movement in the door to the bridge pulled her attention forward. A ragged human form appeared in the doorway, chest ravaged by fléchette rounds. The corpse teetered for an instant before a boot sent it skidding down the corridor. Another saffron-suited soldier stepped into the door, rifle at the ready. Syna pressed back behind the bulkhead, anticipating the coughing bark of the autofléchette turning the hall into a whirlwind of sharp ceramics. Instead a heavy voice, thick with a Hegemony accent, filled the hall.
“Galen Fash, you are under arrest for violation of the Tse Precepts of Harmonious Living. Come quietly, and no one else will get hurt. Continue to resist, and your ship will be hulled.”
She looked back the way she’d come, but the mouth of the corridor stood empty.
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