Sam heard a thump against the locker above as she sat on the bench pulling up her socks. She looked up. Phira was leaning over her. “You’re in my personal space, Sergeant,” Sam reported.
“You have that far-off look.”
“Okay, but, personal space?”
“I’m pulling rank. My question first,” Phira said with a grin.
Sam shrugged. “We’re gearing up for a pretty risky op. I’m just trying to keep a nice, empty mind.”
Phira leaned a little closer, tilting her head with brash inquisition. She had coffee breath. And a faint scar running just under her right ear, down across the corner of her jaw. Interesting. “You’ve never had a hard time keeping an empty mind before, Corporal. Spill.”
Sam sighed. “Will you back up a bit?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay. Salemo palace. There were Dread Fist there.”
“We knew this,” Phira said, standing up straight and crossing her arms, relinquishing the personal space she had cruelly taken hostage.
“I still don’t know who we shot.”
“We knew that might happen going in and it didn’t bother you then, did it?”
“Damn, I expected a little more sympathy.”
“We’re getting there. Did it bother you going in?”
“No, not going in. But it’s one thing to know you’re going up against the old squad. It’s another to maybe have shot them.”
“Granted. That company is ass, though. Bastards dumped you and left you for dead.”
“But I turned on them.”
“No? You can’t be this stubborn and self-hating. Command sold you out and struck you from the rolls while you were still alive. You don’t owe them shit.”
“No, I mean, Fae and Olsen and Chen. I told those guys I had their backs. Just because Colonel Magnussen is a bastard, I can shoot my old sergeant?”
“I mean,” Phira said, sitting down next to Sam.
“Oh come on.”
“No, no, no, wait to hear what I have to say, will you?”
“Okay,” Sam said. “Don’t you have to get kitted up, though?”
“It can wait. Anyway: the answer is yes, because Magnussen is a bastard, you get to shoot his guys if it comes to it. But isn’t that fucking demented? You know the answer is yes, you shoot them, it’s just fucking demented.”
“… Yeah.”
“That’s good. It is fucked. You’re right to feel that.”
“All this time, though. I always thought I was doing it for the men and women beside me. I’m not in this line of work for the money or fame…” (“I know, I’ve seen your apartment”) “… but because I’m good at it, and I wanted to fight beside good people. Brothers and sisters in arms, right?”
“Well, just because it’s all fucked and you had to shoot some of them doesn’t mean you aren’t fighting beside good people.”
“Uh. Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it mean I’m doing that until something else comes along, then I’m not? Kind of a crummy approach to principles.”
“Nah,” Phira said, standing. “What, nobody’s allowed to compromise on their principles? Or realize they went about them wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“First, I’d like to reemphasize that you’re right and this is all fucked. But I think you need to expand a bit. You were in a shitty company with shitty brass and a shitty head honcho. Of course you didn’t live up to what you wanted to be. You couldn’t.”
“But…”
“We’re not going to solve this today,” she said, reaching into her locker. “But, you know, I think you’re doing alright. Next time you brood on it, remember that I think you’re doing alright, yeah?”
“… Yeah.”
That was when Olivia opened the door and peeked in. “Hey. Captain Lun sent Lieutenant Highwell to tell me to ask if ‘you two fluffheads were ready yet.’ I assume those are Ash’s words, not Lun’s.”
“Tell Lun we’re good for the departure time. And tell Ash you found us eating the last donuts in the rec room.”
“This is Charger Three to the Redeemer, requesting permission inbound.”
Thanks to the analysts working overtime on the dataset Jack got out of Salemo, the Neptune-class assault lander finally had a name: the Redeemer.
Captain Lun sounded like his usual, preternaturally cool self from the flight deck of the cramped Pisces-class SSTO. Amazing, given what they were asking him to do.
There was a long, eerily long, wait for a reply. The SSTO engines eased off and weightlessness came to the crew compartment. Sam undid her straps (the armor was far too big for a seat and harness) and floated out. Phira stayed in her seat. “Don’t like being tied down?” she asked with a mischievous little twist.
“I feel like cattle on a train. You all got a hold of Troya-class power armor and didn’t bother getting a seat for it?”
“I think you mean we, not you all.”
“Yes ma’am. Still.”
“We’ll get there eventually. We’re still integrating it into our doctrine, you might say.”
“Still figuring shit out.”
“Yeah. Faster with you here, now.”
Finally there was a reply on the radio.
“Redeemer to Charger Three. Transmit personal codes.”
“Got ‘em,” Lun said out loud, line closed. He keyed in the codes Jeong had pulled out of the dataset.
“They suspect something, though,” Sam said.
“Yep,” Lun replied. “That silence was definitely an argument. Someone had to call in a superior officer to get it untangled.”
“The Dominion guys probably think their knight-justicar is alive, but Hect’s boys think it’s fishy.”
“Really?” Phira said. “I would have figured it the other way around. The Dominioners would be the ones with the good sense, not the flunkies.”
“Nah. Count on the Dominioners to get high on their own supply. They’re happy to believe that their brother knight is immortal. The fact that they’re feuding with him just makes it more believable; it’s less of a too-good-to-be-true thing.” And so the knights’ division would be, in part, their undoing.
The line came to life again, bearing a broad, imperious, familiar voice. “Brother. They think you are dead.”
“Of course not,” Lun said. His voice, cool and crisp, was being run through a transform, and would come out the other end as something that matched recordings of the voice of Sir Wallace Ilyich. And Lun had done a little bit of reading himself to complete the illusion. “And I come with spoils.”
“Spoils, brother?!” That caught Roth by surprise.
“Spoils. Arif was in Salemo. She submits to justice.”
“To justice?” His voice tightened with suspicion. “I thought you meant to execute Arif.”
“I did, brother. But the code compels me otherwise. We shall discuss aboard.” They were coming to the tricky part of the plan: figure out where De Myrre was and, ideally, separate her from Roth so they could nab her with a minimum of fuss and burn hard for the atmosphere.
Roth’s voice suddenly surged. “But first you must regale us!”
Lun flipped off the line and looked back at Sam. “Milk it,” she said. “He’s hogging their comms desk to flex on them. Let him.”
Lun smiled and thumbed the transmit button. “Theta Group was at Salemo, Paven! They have some feud or another. I jammed their communications and isolated them. Their sergeant gave in with their back against a wall and no backup to rescue them.” It all sounded genuinely so weird and wrong coming from Lun, who usually sounded for all the world like a vid-star stereotype of an Eridani Federation Ace. Sam just had to trust the transform, to trust Jeong’s data, to trust the operation. It was hard, but she had to hang on.
“You always make the impossible sound so routine, Wallace.”
“Is it not?”
“Not to everyone.” That sounded pointed. Someone in that Neptune, probably sitting down at the desk next to him, probably wearing a goldenrod uniform, would be getting very red-faced. “You’ll tell the tale again to our brothers in the locker room, no? See you soon.”
“Soon,” Lun said, hanging up the receiver. “Alright, Sergeant. I’ll bring her in and then you two are up.”
“Yes, sir. Five minutes, in and out. We don’t have any more time than that, anyway. Let’s listen in and see if we can figure out where our target is.”
Lun jabbed a few buttons on the radio receiver. “Jeong is on a hitting streak so far. Let’s see if his signals book is another one.”
The line came on again. “Belay that order,” Sir Paven Roth shouted, muffled slightly by range from the microphone picking him up. All three of the passengers of the SSTO jerked their heads over to the speaker like it was a live grenade bouncing at their feet.
“He doesn’t give you orders; I do!” another man screamed. There was a thump, like a fist—maybe something heavier—against a metal surface. “Shoot that ship!”
Lun’s hands shot to the throttle and stick. “Ten minutes inbound to dock; five minutes for them to get their weapons warmed up. We’ll have to…”
“Plan B!” Phira shouted. “Buckle up, Sam!”
Sam pushed off the ceiling, back down onto the hatch-floor of the SSTO, and grabbed onto the traps.
“I dislike plan B,” Lun said, as cool as it gets through gritted teeth. “It’s my ship, but it’s your show.” He slid the throttle forward, and Sam felt the weight on her body as it was slowly, inexorably pushed against the back of her armor as she lashed herself back down to the hatch, feet first.
“I don’t like it either. But Sam’s a big girl, she’ll handle herself in there, right?” Phira said. Her voice labored against the mounting Gs.
“Mff,” Sam managed.
Phira moved a hand over to the pad at her fingertips on her armrest. “EAP freeze?” she said.
“Aff,” Sam replied. Her armor, with its EAPs locked in place, gave her the strength to stand still on the floor of the SSTO, even in the Gs produced by the hard burn. It was impossible to reconcile the sensations of being so capable, so strong in the armor, but so weak inside, insignificant against the might of the laws of physics.
The SSTO’s radio simmered with chatter; Lun hadn’t had any time to shut it off. Over the chatter, unmistakably the Kaiser, Johan Hect: “Faithless! The offworlders, once so eager for their revenge, flee before the storm. We will weather it, we will…”
Lun shouted over him: “Executing the turn. T minus 40. Hold: no! Abort!”
The G-forces yanked, torqued, and lurched, all in one instant of wild yaw and roll.
“Maneuvering,” Lun said. “Ah.”
“Ah?!” Phira said.
“We took a bad hit. This bird isn’t going home. Sam, T minus 20. Sergeant, abandon ship with her.”
(“We will hold; we, an ever-fixed mark looking upon tempests…” Kaiser intoned.)
Just like that? This bird isn’t going home? Sam almost didn’t believe him, he seemed to have so little urgency about his imminent death.
“Fuck!” Phira said. Well, her sense of urgency was quite believable. “Alright, Sam, Plan fucking C, hold on tight. Don’t be afraid to hurt me.”
“Roger wilco!”
Phira slammed down her visor and stumbled off her seat. The Gs in the cabin were insistent and unpredictable, an ill-mannered stallion pulling them to and fro in the void of space as Captain Lun tried to maintain some blasted course of some sort. This bird isn’t going home. She clung to Sam’s armor, chest-to-chest. Sam locked her arms tight—maximum strength through the EAPs would kill her, but Phira had been pretty clear which side to err on—and braced her feet.
“Brace! Two, one, go!” Lun said, and then the floor hatch swung open, flinging the two of them into the void.
“That’s going to bruise like hell,” Phira said, as Sam put her head on a swivel. The swirling white-and-green planet lay beneath their feet, and the Pisces SSTO was drifting away from them overhead—or they were drifting away from it, having been propelled by the evacuating air in the cabin. The Pisces was, in fact, badly hit. One of its wings had been sheared off, and a tail of delicate, sparkling debris trailed it, elongating by the second. It might have caused damage to one of the rear engines, and whatever the case was, the craft would never survive re-entry with its thermal barrier so compromised.
Sam, Phira, and the Pisces were all approaching a rapidly enlarging gunmetal gray mass, shaped like a foreshortened whale with its fins set too far back, sporting pale gun domes and a coat of blue solar panels: the Neptune-class Redeemer, in its orbital configuration, fairings retracted.
“Reorienting,” Sam said, before twisting her self and Phira to put their feet down toward the Redeemer. As she was doing so, a flash caught her eye: the Pisces was firing its attitude thrusters again—and then a silver blur burst out from them, and the craft began to yaw lazily out of control.
“Confirm you are free and clear,” Lun said, tones of alpine breeze and aviators catching the sunlight just right. He was insane, right? “Confirm,” Sam replied. “Captain, you can’t…” Can’t control the craft. Can’t abandon ship. Can’t escape.
“Be advised that this craft will collide with the Redeemer. It won’t be pretty. Find their escape craft. See you on the other side. Captain Lun out.”
“Oh, shit,” Phira said. It was odd, hearing her crackling voice over the radio, even though her mouth was just six inches from Sam’s left ear.
“Plan D?” Sam said, watching the Redeemer draw inexorably closer.
“Something like that. Find De Myrre, find escape pods.”
“It has simplicity going for it.”
“We have to keep it that way or you grunts will fuck it up. No offense.”
“Hey,” Sam said. The Redeemer was really very large now. “We’re gonna hit a few seconds before the bird does. Looks like a gunhouse. It’s going to… I don’t know. Hang on tight.”
“Roger,” Phira said. “Good luck, Sam.”
“Good luck, Sergeant,” Sam said, staring at the approaching wall of steel.
Sam extended three fingers in a hand motion to activate her boot magnets, flared her feet and took the impact, a painful shock up her heel and shins. She almost bounced off again, but the magnets held, and she stuck to the side—and everything immediately lurched sideways as the Pisces crashed violently into the fore end of the Redeemer.
“Ow! Fuck!” Phira said.
“You okay?!”
“Yeah…” they had hung on for the moment of impact. Now, even though the stars and planet above were spinning wildly overhead like a time-lapse in a documentary vid, there was no more torque. “Captain, come in.” Sam lowered Phira gently onto the shroud of the gunhouse; there were ample handholds for Phira to secure herself to while she operated her suit radio. She flipped to another frequency. “Captain, come in,” Sam could see her lips saying, though not hear.
“Sergeant…” Sam began, tapping her shoulder. There was no way…
“Thank God,” Phira mouthed, shooing Sam. What? Sam dialed channels until she picked up Phira’s voice again. “…tion, Captain?”
Captain Lun was breathing hard and rapidly. “Bird’s done, obviously. I’m uh… aahhh,” he said, sucking in air. Sam winced—he sounded like a man with a wound. “Safer in the cockpit for now, can’t risk the corridors…”
“It’s better if you do,” Sam cut in. “Sitting ducks are easier targets. Can you move?”
“Zip it,” Phira said with unexpected venom. “Stay strapped in. We’ll get you, Captain. Lin out.” She turned up to Sam. “Get us in, Condor. Time’s wasting.”
Sam nodded, a little taken aback but thankful for the forward motion. She thumped over to where the barrel of the gun—a naval-grade autocannon, the pointy, leaden tip of the spear falling down on a hostile planet—found a seam and an angle for her steel fingers, and pried it off. The metal groaned, felt through her fingers rather than heard, and it popped as thick bolts gave way to her artificial strength, and there was a gust of wind and noise as the gun house gave up its air. It was little more than a metal chair with a peeling cushion, a console with a stick and a few too many black-and-amber screens, a viewport, currently rotated shut, and the gun bore, also latched shut. The hatch behind the chair…
A bang traveled through the hull of the ship as Sam led Phira into the gunhouse, and then the metal beneath them shuddered.
“Secondaries,” Phira said. “Those dumbshits. We’d better pick up the pace.”
“Right,” Sam said, grabbing the hatch wheel and throwing it open as fast as she could. Phira was right: ordering the guns to fire on the SSTO at such close range was a dumbshit move that had doomed the Redeemer, which was not gracefully tolerating the impact it had just suffered from the corpse of its kill. Apparently the crew was not competently executing damage control. “Nearby corridor, probably runs the length?”
“Hope it still does,” Phira said, unfolding the stock on her carbine.
The hatch flew open, sucking the air out of the next room—a bunk room, not a corridor, of course a nice empty corridor was too much to hope for—and sending bodies and loose tools hurtling about the room. A magnetic chessboard exploded into a hail of ivory pieces as a goldenrod-clad man careened into it, and some of the furniture was coming loose under the sudden depressurization and the violent trembling of the deck under stress.
“Where to?” Phira yelled into her radio.
“Hope she’s in the bridge and not the brig,” Sam replied. She took a second and tried the dial on her radio. She found something interesting, so she bridged the channels in her headpiece so she could hear the external chatter while communicating with Sergeant Lin.
“Your Highness,” Kaiser barked. “Your power is here, with the faithful and sturdy. The mercenaries are beneath you, physically and spiritually. You would abandon your strength here?” and then “God, you dumbass, what are you talking about?” was De Myrre’s reply.
“Forward,” Sam finished, gesturing to her left as the hull wheeled out from under them again.
“Not yet,” Phira yelled, bringing her carbine up and shooting a man across the room. It was a good spot; he had been holding a handgun, though who knows if he would’ve ever been able to put any rounds on target at the speed he was hurtling sideways. “Captain Lun! Location!”
“Uhhhh, ahhh,” Lun said. He sounded rattled. Sam could imagine his shaking hands punching keys on the SSTO console to see if it was in any shape to help him find out. “C-crashed amidships. F-f-firmly wedged. Maybe opp-opposite you? Help quickly,” he moaned.
Phira gestured with her carbine at the door opposite them, partially obscured by a floating trail of globbing blood, which probably led into some sort of operations room and maybe out the other side. “Sam, go!”
Sam pushed off and dove directly for the door, swatting shattered aluminum out of her way. She got lucky. The moment she put her hand on the grip beside the frame, and not a moment before, another secondary explosion from somewhere in the aft sent the craft lurching onto a new angular momentum. She clung, feeling sick while she listened to Kaiser and De Myrre bicker on the radio: “Men! Hearken to your officers! Damage control, faith, strength!” and “what the hell are you doing, Johan; give me that!” Once the wave of nausea had passed, she undid the latch (here, she heard, faintly, the report of Phira’s rifle again) and flung the door open, causing a rush of air and noise as this room began to void its atmosphere.
Damn, Sam belatedly realized. This bird isn’t going home, either.
She slid feet first into this new room, some sort of computer room with, happily, a hatch on the opposite wall, and then clung to the doorway to halt her momentum as the bulkhead to her right tore off. And there were the stars, and then swirling, bright Volga, and then the stars again, as this room was completely exposed to space, which spun by at a frightful rate. Sam tore her eyes from it before she could get sick.
“Lun!” Phira shouted.
“Help! Help, help, still here,” he choked out in reply.
“Thank fuck. Sam!”
“On it!”
Sam swung herself down at the opposite hatch and repeated her opening drill. For a moment it was almost like being a cadet during emergency naval action exercises above Bosporus. Then, the hatch opened, the entire corridor voided of air, sending a man hurtling out into space (Sam dodged just in time). That hadn’t happened in any of the training exercises. She looked up, checking Phira’s progress, and then swung herself down into the corridor.
(“You dare?” Kaiser was shouting over the radio. Sam couldn’t make out De Myrre’s reply.)
About ten meters to Sam’s left, toward the fore of the doomed Redeemer, the Pisces SSTO rested, having bisected the corridor with its nose. At first it looked like a meaningless tangle of metal, but then Sam recognized the pattern of the forward viewport panels. Lun’s lower body could be seen through one of them, a black nylon coated vacuum suit arranged in a tense, bracing pose in the captain’s chair.
“Visual on Lun,” Sam said. “SSTO hatch is outside, I think. No good there.”
“Get him out, Sam,” Phira replied, gripping the corridor frame above her. “How long?”
“I’ll have to pry off one of the ports. Just a few minutes.” As she said so, the corridor shuddered. “Shit.”
She flung herself to the SSTO window and tapped on it. Lun was in there, alive and well, but even through his visor, he was pale and hyperventilating.
“Keep it together, Captain,” Sam said, finding handholds and footholds. The EAPs would be plenty strong enough to get through the hull of the SSTO, but she still needed something to push and pull against.
“Hang tight, you two! Contact!” Phira shouted, as Sam find her spot and began to pry. The thoughts raced through Sam’s head. Contact with who? Who was insane enough to be trying to chase them down instead of abandoning ship?
Actually, she thought, as the bolts by her fingers began to fail, she’d be insane enough. And the others insane enough to think like her would be the Dominion guys. And then, on the radio: “We speak death; we say it with our bodies, with our lives!” Maybe Kaiser’s flunkies—urged on by the unraveling oratory that was surely crowding out useful orders from the ships officers—were insane enough too.
So the spaceship full of madmen continued to disintegrate. The only way out was a long, long way down.
“Phira, who’ve you got?” It was quiet back there, but Sam knew that was an illusion. Phira had probably fired dozens of rounds back through the computer room in the dead silence of the vacuum.
“Mad fucking sailors with las-carbines!”
The window came free.
“We need a way out!” Sam said, offering her hand to Lun within. Lun seized it with both hands and began to scramble, kicking and jerking. “Fuck! Calm down!”
There was a flash of light. Sam turned as Lun clung to her shoulder.
“Back that way!”
“You brought a fucking grenade?!” That stuck out from the old naval exercises: las-guns were preferred, to reduce damage to a ship; regular lead-and-powder guns were extremely dangerous but acceptable in some situations; explosives were only for suicidal madmen. Of course, when you’re boarding a ship in this state…
(“I will hold! My purpose cannot be extinguished! Take your strength from me! Wait. You: had your kind not abandoned ship?”)
“Three of them! And I’m glad I did! Give me Lun and go!”
Sam shoved the panicking Captain Lun at Phira and swung around her up into the computer room, readying her own carbine. Only two dead bodies were there to greet her; the one shot earlier and the other newly broken by a grenade concussion and skidding across the ceiling, trailing blood from a gruesome wound in its side.
Sam dragged herself along the near wall toward her right, toward the forward hatch. She was rewarded by another wretched torquing of the hull, another spasm from the dying Redeemer.
“How many more fucking secondaries can there be?!” Phira said.
“Plenty,” Lun whined. “Engines and tanks, redundant, s-stressed… more might fail.”
Sam pushed his bleating from her thoughts, reached the hatch at the fore of the room, gripped the handle over a thick smear of blood, and pulled it open, revealing another corridor. She led the trio up the corridor, past a few unmarked hatches, and to the one at the end of the hall.
This hatch opened straight into bedlam.
The bridge, rather. But within, every object seemed to be in action, around and against every other object. The wide windowpanes that spanned opposite the hatch showed the spinning stars and giant mass of Volga. Within, debris careened about: screens ripped off of consoles, chairs unmoored from the floor, stray tabs, severed steel handrails, and gobbets of blood and flesh. To Sam’s right, there was a raised semicircular platform surrounded by consoles, at its center a brass-plated binnacle. A figure in a white vacuum suit, face shielded by a dark visor, clung desperately to that binnacle, while another, wide-set in a goldenrod marine battledress, one hand on a piece of guardrail still affixed to the consoles, held a laser handgun at the white figure.
Held rather than aimed; Sam decided it looked like an amateur waving around a piece for show rather than a real intent to shoot someone.
“This is your doing! Your petty, myopic treachery will undo you,” Kaiser said over the radio. So here he was, in the final throes of his struggle with De Myrre.
But then he yanked the gun around… to the far side of the bridge, where amid the debris a knight (but who else could it be?) in Orléans-class armor was deftly rebounding off of the bulkhead and readying a steel-core sword. A body smashed into the gauges and panels near that section showed the gruesome work of that blade.
“Oh, fuck, Sa—” Phira said, as Sam catapulted herself at the sole true threat in the room. “SAM.”
“Contact!” Sam’s trajectory took her just clear of the ring of consoles around the dais. A spatter of blood plopped onto her visor as the knight noticed her arrival and whipped himself into a new orientation: rather than diving, sword-first, he swung his feet around toward the binnacle he was falling to, and he moved his sword into a one-handed grip, held slightly back but angled for a swing at Sam.
“SEE?! See the disloyal buckle and turn on each other before the weight of Providence?” Kaiser gasped.
“DISENGAGE, SAM,” Phira shouted into her radio.
Sam felt a twinge of panic and forced it down. She whipped herself around, swinging her left arm out wide for a handrail, grabbed it, and began careening away from the knight. She felt a sudden intense burning, and then a numbing heat, and she gripped the handrail. She tried to bring her right arm onto it, too…
Something whizzed past her face. Sam gripped the handrail with the force of animal fear.
There was a bright flash, a whoomph that could be heard even through the pathetically thin remaining atmosphere, a shriek over the radio, a horrible force torquing against her and her EAP-augmented left arm, and a blur of steel. Sam clung with her left arm; it hurt like being pinned by a wrestler three times her size. She couldn’t hook her right arm over the rail; it was numb and heavy, and she couldn’t feel the rifle she held in it; what was happening?
“Sam! Grab De Myrre!”
Sam gritted her teeth and shook out the pain. “Roger!” De Myrre? Eliminating the knight and the marine, she must be the white vacuum suit. White Vacuum Suit had been flung away from the binnacle—that flash, it had been a grenade—and bounced like a ragdoll off of the aft bulkhead, not far from where goldenrod marine was doing the same. The knight had been catapulted by the burst of the grenade right out of one of the fore windows. Sam turned back to white vacuum suit, who was drifting just…
Just out of reach.
Sam couldn’t feel or move her right arm. The sinking feeling would have to wait. She scrambled her feet into a position to push off the little bit of distance to intercept the drifting vacuum suit, which was twisting in the air drunkenly, still conscious. Sam reached and seized the back of the suit by its pack with her left hand.
Sam felt a pull from behind her. “Secure!” Phira said. And then she was being pulled backward from the room, being tugged insistently at the waist by a tether whose other end was anchored to Phira’s vacuum suit. The devastated hell of the bridge disappeared through a hatch door. Sam pulled the body in the white vacuum suit closer. De Myrre wasn’t struggling.
Sam’s right arm began trailing into view. The armor was charred, blackened in a streak from the inner forearm up through the bicep. The continuity of the steel line had been broken, and at the elbow the blackened mass looked uneven. Lumpy. My arm, Sam thought with a wave of sick fear. Her carbine was gone; the right hand of her armor hung open, unresponsive.
Phira and Lun were shouting at each other over the radio, she was dimly aware. All she could think of was her operational left hand, holding on to De Myrre’s suit with a death grip, and the tug at her waist, carrying her backward. Or forward. Aftward, she decided. It was a ship, after all.
By the time she had decided that, she was being tugged up—distal, rather—through a hatch and into a cramped, pill shaped hold.
“Sit! Buckle up!” Phira was still belting orders into the radio. She’s not used to space operations; she doesn’t need to yell so damn much. Did well as an officer, though, Sam thought woozily. Phira was pushing her around. She tried to cooperate. “Let go!” Of? Oh. Sam let go of De Myrre; Phira began lashing her to a seat, just as a jolt struck the entire world sideways again.
Phira was done quick, damn—maybe she does have space ops training?—and then began trying to slam Sam into a seat.
“Where’s Lun?” Sam managed, as Phira arranged her limbs and latched the harness over her shoulders. “Entry vehicle. Flight deck,” Phira replied. The edge had suddenly come off her voice.
“What?” Sam said, slowly. “He can’t…” her frustration began to rise through the pain and dizziness. “He’s in even worse shape than I am. And this whole thing is in a million pieces…”
“Shut up, Sam,” Phira said, backing herself into the seat across the little cylinder.
“You don’t ditch and burn from a ship this broken. The hazards, the reentry angles… nobody ever can. We need…”
“SAM. Lun is the fucking best. We’re going fucking home.”
There was a hum, felt through her seat, and a thunk. Separation.
They gave space evacuations as a pilot test at the academy on Bosporus. But it was also a test of their officers. Because sometimes they’d pick a test script from the list that was guaranteed death. They never told the officer cadets, of course, and the cadets always liked trying to figure out which ones were the impossible ones and which ones had some order, some decision, or some bar for execution that could get the crew home. The guessing game was kind of the point; you never knew. But the guessing game was also, in another way, not the point. You didn’t need to know whether survival was possible. You commanded.
Phira would’ve made a fine candidate for the knighthood.
But… “Lun?” The best? Frustration, nausea, and the numbing of acute disaster were all mixing like a stew in the front of Sam’s mind, swirling somewhere between her forehead, eyes, and mouth. “But…” But he was real cool when things were going well, but now he’s been kicked in the teeth. Now he’s in shock. Now he’s come apart. Now we’re on the simulation where the craft breaks up and everybody dies. But it’s not a simulation.
“Sam, shut the fuck up, that’s an order.”
And then the retrorockets roared, and the three of them were pinned back into their seats.
Sam took long, deep breaths as she let Phira, kneeling over her, work the harness around her steel abdomen. De Myrre, face obscured by her visor, hung, not quite limply, but certainly defeated, from her seat, which was hanging overhead given the orientation of the landed entry vehicle.
Re-entry had taken just fifteen minutes. Sam’s memory, already strained and addled by pain, had smeared the first five minutes of pure fear and nausea across the entire fifteen. Forces had rocked, pulled, pushed, and smashed them as Lun had worked his savant’s magic on the spacecraft: main thrusters, reaction control thrusters, retrorockets, all employed in sequence and in harmony as he took the craft around and through the hull-shredding debris being flung from the disintegrating Redeemer. He even had had time to warn them of the impending reentry G forces as the craft slammed into Volga’s upper atmosphere: “One last maneuver and we’ll hit the air in tee minus five,” he incanted over the radio, like a bored civilian airliner announcing descent for the sixth time that day. Then the craft gave one last sickening pitch before Sam felt the onset of that familiar feeling of being crushed back into her seat.
By all rights the ten minutes following that must have been much calmer. Re-entry vehicles, even military-grade invasion craft like this one, don’t survive the fiery embrace of the upper atmosphere unless they accept it in a controlled fashion, with a cool hand at the tiller, so that’s the only thing that could’ve happened.
But they also don’t survive being violently ejected from their exploding parent craft, and that had certainly happened.
“Got anything to say?” Phira said, freeing the last cinch.
“You ordered me to shut the fuck up, ma’am,” Sam said, after sucking in one more deep breath.
Phira smirked. “I did. Order rescinded. Lun’s phoning home now. We’ll get you medivac. Stay awake for me, will you?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. She glanced at her limp, unfeeling arm. “I’m here.”
Theo burst into the room unannounced. Ash frowned and took his feet off the desk. It was Theo’s right as an officer to do that, he supposed, but it was really annoying having to always look like he was doing work, even on an overnight vigil, just in case the captain dropped in.
Theo didn’t wait for a salute or a “Captain” or any sort of acknowledgment. “Ash,” he said, nearly throwing a tab at him. “Do you see what I see?”
Ash turned over the tab. It was displaying, on a gray-on-black grid, an orbital trajectory chart. Ten bright trajectories traced themselves down toward the surface—kinking and slanting, which meant they must be spacecraft firing rockets—as well as dozens of dimmer traces, adrift. Ash pinched and rotated the chart around, orienting himself in the space.
Then he remembered what time it was. “Damn. Damnit. Is this that Neptune? Did it break up?” Dozens of dimmer traces, adrift: debris.
“They made it out,” Roche said. “I got word from them right before they hit the reentry blackout.”
“Hot damn! Lun always delivers,” Ash said, nodding to himself. “So, what’s got your panties in a twist?”
“Take another look,” Roche said, ignoring the hideous breach of decorum. Ash’s eyes narrowed. Theo let some shit slide, but not something like that, even when they were alone.
Ash glanced back down. Ten bright trajectories: entry craft, obviously.
The one that had departed last was the one that descended first.
The nine others bent toward it, chasing it to the surface.
“Shit. Shit, Theo. Shit. They’ve got company.”
“Yes. And?”
Ash stared at the trajectories. “And they’re good. Clean. Coordinated and well-calculated. Safe buffers but a tight pursuit. Shit. Captain, that can’t be just the bumblefucks from Salemo.”
“Damn it,” Theo said, visibly deflating. “You’re right.”
“The knights,” Ash said. He realized: Theo had already come to that conclusion, but he had been desperately hoping Ash might give him a reason to doubt it.
Ash leapt to his feet and pushed past the captain, toward the door. “Fucking shithead fucks…”
Theo clapped a hand on Ash’s shoulder. “Ash!”
“Sir?” Ash said, stiffening and wheeling around.
“They’re landing in the north wards.”
“And?”
“Ash, that’s Federation territory.”
“Sergeant Lin, you’ll want to come up here and see this,” Lun radioed on the channel.
Phira clambered over into the flight deck, leaving Sam alone to breathe. Only, not really alone: De Myrre was still strapped to her seat, hanging on the top side of the capsule, facing down. Sam looked up at her. She looked away. Not that they’d be able to talk much anyway—both were still wearing their helmets, vacuum-sealed against the atmosphere.
“Sam,” Phira said over the radio. She was climbing back into the little crew compartment in a hurry. “We’ve got a problem. Can you stand?”
“Yes, ma’am. What’s…?”
“We’ve got company.”
“How? I’m not even sure how we’re alive right now,” Sam said.
“The knights were on the ball and began evacuating their people as soon as rear admiral birdbrain insisted on firing on us. Most of them were off by the time our bird crashed into their ship. They waited around and then followed us here.”
“Damn. No chance that evac…?”
“No,” Phira said. “Not in time. Sam. We don’t have many good options here. So I have to ask. They want you, right?”
“Right.” Sam said. Her restraints had already been undone. She levered herself up to a seated position with her left arm, and she eyed Phira carefully.
“If we want to live, we’re gonna surrender to them. Maybe we’ll try giving them the princess and seeing if they’ll let us go. But…”
“But?”
“If they won’t, I need to know if you want me to give you to them or go down in a blaze of glory with you.”
Ash, standing practically at attention, bit back a few ill-advised replies before deciding on one.
“Fuck that, Captain, sir. I’m not asking permission from you or the Federation fucks. Court martial me later.” And then he turned on his heels and sprinted out the door, down the hall.
It was the fastest he’d ever reached the walker bays.
He stopped at the little office at the top corner of the bay, the one with the window panes overlooking the four bays, and smashed down the intercom button on the desk. “Clear bay two for immediate egress!”
Three techs looked up from their work to stare up at Ash in the office.
“This is Ash! Clear bay two for immediate egress you fucks!”
He didn’t stop to see how they reacted; he ran down the catwalk, unbuttoning his office shirt and stripping it off, leaving it in a heap at the top of the ladder. No time for proper kit; his undershirt, slacks, and brogues would have to do. He slid down the ladder and almost collided with the chief tech, Horace.
“The fuck’s going on, Ash?”
“You heard me! I’m fucking going!” Ash said, already hurrying to the console at the feet of the war machine.
“Dude, it’s not ready!”
“What do you mean? She’s got her two feet on!”
“I mean we’ve been servicing the armor and the rear torso bearings…”
“The engine runs, right?!” Ash jabbed a sequence of buttons on the console. Horace didn’t leap to yank his hands off. The beast gave a whine and a hum. The engine was running.
“The engine runs,” Horace admitted. “But, oh, fuck. Don’t get shot, man.”
A few more buttons on the console and the Doru class walker crouched down and the canopy swung open. Ash wheeled a ladder over and scrambled up and in.
“Get the door, Horace!” he yelled, pulling the canopy shut and strapping his helmet on.
His hands found the stick and throttle, his feet the pedals. The machine was already humming underneath him in the pre-start regime. The bay door was rising in front of him. He flipped open a cover on the right panel and turned the red switch underneath a quarter turn until it clicked into place. Systems behind and beneath Ash whirred and hummed as the start sequence began.
He ticked the toggle up for the machine’s external loudspeakers and began his pre-op list. Extreme rush or not, Ash was no amateur.
“Reactor power nominal. Sensors ready. Mobility ready. Weapons ready. All systems ready. Stand clear bay door number two.”
The bay door was open into the night. He slammed the throttle forward. The reactor surged; the beast heaved.
“Cassock is underway.”
“Samantha Arif! Our wayward sister.” Paven Roth, clad in Orléans-class armor, gestured broadly, standing on an unblemished stretch of grass not far from the scorched and mutilated center of the football pitch that Lun had put the escape craft down on. The Orléans-class was a sleek suit that seemed designed to project a sort of masculine athleticism, with prominent EAP bundles at the shoulders and calves and a brimmed helmet with a narrow visor: perfect for a peacock like Roth. He was flanked by a full platoon of standard infantry soldiers, armed, at ease, and spread out to create an imposing silhouette of casual, cocky lethality. Like assholes shooting a vid, Sam thought.
Sam jumped down from the hatch, wincing as her right shoulder bore the painful twisting of the limp arm below it. There was no hiding it, but that was the risk.
Phira had raised HQ, but help was complicated by the Federation’s state of alert. ETA was twenty minutes. HQ was going to try to get through to Stukov—his Federation Marine Sentinel officers would damn near shoot each other for the opportunity to let loose on a platoon of Dominioners—but you never knew with coalition efforts. So they had a goal: survive for twenty minutes.
“We’ll bargain with the princess, of course,” Phira had said. “And with you, if we have to. But…”
“Let me do it,” Sam replied.
Kevin nodded thoughtfully. Phira’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding.”
“No, ma’am. This one’s easy. I know how to talk to them.”
“But what are you going to talk to them about?”
Phira hadn’t really liked Sam’s idea for that, but Kevin agreed that beggars can’t be choosers.
Sam scanned the horizon. The pitch was bordered by a dark mass of trees on the right and a brick-and-concrete building on the left—some sort of civic building, lit by streetlights and outdoor flood lights at all hours. The pitch here had tall stadium-style lights, but they were off; Roth and his soldiers stood at the edge of the pool of light spreading out beneath the landing lights of the escape craft. If it came to a fight, it was the middle of the night and not too densely populated here, but any stray bullet was still a terrible failure of responsibility.
Not that the Knights of Aquila saw it that way.
Sam finally made her reply to Roth’s greeting: “Wasn’t my choice, really.”
“Then come home,” Roth replied, grand and magnanimous.
“No.”
“The Macedon raises his banner. Would you not raise yours?”
Sam rolled her eyes. “I never earned my cape, Paven. I never got the chance. I don’t care to have the chance any more. What the hell is all this about, anyway?”
“I’ve been wondering that,” Phira chimed in over the radio. She and Kevin were listening from the flight deck.
“It is about,” Paven began, drumming each syllable with emphasis, “honor. Family. Glory. Your birthright, Arif. What is this scrabbling and dust? A mercenary private? It is beneath you. They are beneath you.”
“Christ.”
“Get a load of this guy,” Phira added.
“No, Arif. Glory unto ourselves. Yourself.”
“I still don’t get what you’ve come all this damn way for. Plenty of other POWs from the Valkyrie IV on this rock and others. Why me?”
Paven Roth paused. He swept his gaze about his soldiers. And he laughed. And they laughed.
“Samantha Arif. Do you not know? Are you so far from your heritage?”
“Know what, Roth?”
“The Macedon wants you, because wouldn’t any Grand General want to be sure of the loyalty of the closest of his kin?”
Oh, shit. Could it be? “…Jair?”
“Jair Arif, the Macedon!”
“Oh, shit,” Phira said.
Sam sighed. No wonder it felt like she was being chased to the ends of the system. She was. And she would be, until she submitted or died.
“But I tire of this, Samantha,” Roth continued. He waved a hand in the air. Twenty or so rifles rose to level. “You are not impressed, I see. You have lost your taste for the finer things, and you prefer to squabble in the dirt. If that is so, then…”
Sam pressed the releases under the jawline of her helmet, one at a time, and she lifted it off. Phira said something over the radio, but it was lost as the earpiece came away. She was trying to give Sam an earful. This was the part of the plan she didn’t like.
“It is my right and duty to defend which is mine,” Sam began. Roth turned theatrically, his arm and palm shifting into something suggesting a question. The rifles immediately began sinking. “It is your right and duty to conquer what you wish and to yield what you cannot. What say you, Sir Paven Roth?”
Roth lifted his helmet off.
“So you do know your way, Samantha Arif. I accept the principle of your challenge. I shall take you to Bosporus, alive, and you will be presented to The Macedon.”
“I shall remain on Volga.”
“We shall decide within a circle of equals.”
“We shall decide within a circle of equals,” his men said, and Sam said, at once.
Sam and Roth approached each other as his soldiers fanned out into a wide circle, its perimeter completed on its eastern side by the cylindrical entry vehicle.
Sam eyed the two soldiers flanking it over her shoulder.
“The weapons for our wayward gallant,” Roth said, gesturing at Sam with his stupid faux-generous palm. A soldier near him knelt over a pack and drew from it a long, sleek steel-core sword and a blocky gray service pistol.
He walked them over to Sam—an eternity across thirty meters. Sam watched, listening to the crickets and the far off aural wash of late night traffic on the suburban streets.
Her heart pounded in her chest.
“Arif,” Roth called out, as he readied his own handgun. “Your valor is not in question. I hope you know that.”
He’s telling me to throw in the towel before I die. Motherfucker really does want to take me back there. What a trophy I’d be.
“Of course,” Sam said, smoothly.
“Good. My men came here to do some shooting. It would be so easy to give them what they want.” He gave a meaningful glance at the exit craft.
This fuck, Sam thought, her rage spiking. He thinks I don’t know. He thinks I don’t know what happens with a Dominion team goes planetside. He’s going to order them to shoot up the place anyway, and he thinks I don’t know. He thinks I’m fooled by this stupid fucking farce. She was, irrationally, glad she didn’t have Phira in her ear. This red-hot hate felt like it was best stoked alone.
The man bearing her weapons stopped at her right side, holding out the sword for her mangled right hand.
She turned her head to look at him. A stupid grin on his stupid chin.
Sam whipped her EAP-augmented left leg around at his midsection and he buckled, ribs snapped and pulverized by the sudden force. She threw herself down onto him, knee first, crushing him like a bug beneath a thumb and wrenching the steel-core sword out of his hand with her left arm.
“ARIF,” Roth bellowed, charging forward.
Roth would be on her with his blade in three, four seconds. Would any of his soldiers dare take a shot at her in that time? Sam took off to her right, running, hooking her left elbow up over her ear. Exposing the power armor’s somewhat vulnerable armpit to small arms fire was much better than exposing her bare head to it.
She crashed through the next two soldiers on the perimeter sword-first, leaving gashed and crushed bodies in her wake, before Roth caught up to her.
“YOU SNAKE,” he roared, diving at her with a wild blade plunge. Sam dipped sideways, kicking a soldier down screaming as she went. The perimeter was beginning to come apart, now; soldiers scattered for the shadows, looking for cover from the duelists. Sam could see only a few targets left at the edge of the pool of light, and even those were vanishing fast. None dared shoot at her: Roth was there, too, unhelmed.
Sam grinned wickedly. She had baited the oaf into a fight and bloodied his dignity. Now there was nothing left to do but die trying to win.
Roth advanced, swinging at her with wild abandon, again and again. Sam kept backpedaling, dipping sideways—it was too easy. Roth was too mad.
And then the guns began roaring, and the earth began pitching.
Stukov pulled on the nearest shirt he could find beside his bed, threw his legs over the side, and flipped up the tab on his bedstand.
“Yes, General. Is it the Neptune?”
“Yes, sir,” replied General Idkowsky. She herself was wearing only a white collared shirt, no tie, no regalia, no hat. So she had also been woken up to take this information to him. Stukov frowned. “Colonel Jimor is at the operations room. It’s best if you hear it from him, sir.”
Stukov felt the sudden clarity of… oh, not fear. This ambassador was too old for fear. But a certain clarity accompanies fear. A sharpness to every new piece of information. The world becomes suddenly rich in its truth, and every detail becomes lethally important.
Stukov knew, and Idkowsky knew that he knew, that Jimor was excitable, prone to overstatement. He made an excellent Colonel because he had a unique ability to rally and drive men and women, though he was perennially a pain in the ass to his superiors. A trade made well and gladly, Idkowsky would say, commiserating with her staff over brandy. If Jimor was running a show on the ground, Stukov would bet his life that the Marine Sentinels were at their absolute best. But if Idkowsky was saying that Stukov needed to hear directly from him… well, that could only mean the situation was very dynamic indeed.
“Put him through, General. Who have you woken up?”
“You’re the first, sir. My staff is next.”
“Good. See to it, General.”
Idkowsky nodded, punched a button, and then winked off the screen. Colonel Jimor appeared, his dark complexion washed blue as he leaned over a console over the shoulder of some haggard-looking lieutenant. Stukov immediately recognized that he himself was one face upon one of the many screens Jimor was personally watching.
“Colonel,” Stukov said.
“Ambassador. The Neptune has begun its invasion procedure. The 10th Combat Aerospace Brigade and 5th division, 1st Combat Brigade are activating.”
“Sir…” the lieutenant below him began.
“Entry trajectories are for New Hope,” Jimor continued, oblivious. “Our marines are itching for them. It’s go time.”
“Sir!”
“We’re going to meet them with fire and steel, Ambassador. Force those rubes at Salemo have never known. Our defensive doctrine is fast reaction to deliver overwhelming aggression and numerical superiority to the point of incursion, and we are pleased to oblige.”
“Colonel,” Stukov said. “We are proud of the response of the Federation’s finest. Please do not allow me to delay receipt of your report from your lieutenant.”
Jimor looked down. The haggard lieutenant mumbled something to him, inaudible over the remote call. Jimor looked slightly concerned, then turned back to the call with Stukov. “Ambassador,” he began. “The Neptune is breaking up. All ten of its secondary invasion craft are away and appear to be operating. Signals is trying to make sense of this now, but Salemo is… silent.”
There was a noise, and Jimor turned to look somewhere to his left, off-screen. He visibly drew in breath, and his eyes widened.
There was a pickup in cross-talk and noise. The operations room that Jimor was in had burst into excitement, shouted reports, orders. Jimor shouted something. Part of it sounded suspiciously like “fist of an angry God.” There was an evil cheer, and the pace picked up even more.
He hunched back over the screen, looking Stukov dead in the eyes across the remote call. “Sir,” he said, “signals tells us there’s Dominion soldiers on those boats. I’m calling in another brigade. We’re going to grind every single one of those bastards to dust.”
The football pitch was churned in two great lines, black scorched gashes in the field illuminated by flames as the VTOL that had fired the rockets howled overhead. Sam scrambled to her feet. Roth stared around in disbelief as tracer rounds arced up into the blackness around them, men shouted, and engines screamed in the air.
And then he turned to face Sam again.
But Sam was gone.
Sam was running, laughing, one eye on Roth as she chased his soldiers across the pitch. They couldn’t escape, not from her EAP-augmented legs pounding the turf as hard as the turf could stand it. Two more Dominion soldiers fell under the crushing force of the steel-core sword, handled crudely but with gargantuan strength by Sam’s power-armored left arm.
A combat VTOL swept in for another strafing run, and Sam dove to the side as flames and noise blossomed on the grass, flinging chunks of earth skyward. Sam saw Phira leaning out of the hatch of the entry craft now, training her carbine on one target at a time. They saw each other. Phira waved frantically.
Sam turned around and barely ducked a swing by Roth that would have taken her head clean off her spine by the sheer force of it.
Roth was in with more and more furious attacks. Sam was backpedaling again. Even if she had been wielding the sword in her good hand, there was no deflecting his steel core sword with her own; one sword swung with the force of power armor behind it would crush another sword as readily as it crushed bone or steel armor. There was only dodging, getting clear.
Sam sidestepped one more time, and then her luck caught up with her. She was lifted from the ground by a rocket blast, and she tumbled. She lost her sword—her only offensive threat, no matter how pitiful—in her effort to bring her left arm up to protect her head from impact with the ground.
Roth was running toward her, sword in hand. She scrambled to get up off the ground, but the shredded earth was too soft, and she stumbled.
Roth was upon her, blood streaked across his suit and rage in his eyes.
There was a force against her head, and then there was darkness.
Three separate indicators were screaming at Ash as he swung the Doru around the last building—one for heat buildup, and two for unacknowledged urgent signals and sensors readings—and he had no damn time to silence them. He looked over the chaos on the football field. So here was ground zero. One entry craft lay on its side, hatch open, Phira half leaning out of it at her rifle. Of course she was. There were only two foot soldiers Ash knew suicidal enough to keep on the offense through a full aerial bombardment like this.
Ash thundered onto the pitch, toward the entry craft, scanning the field with his eyes and sensors as he went. His IFF transponder would keep the Fed VTOLs from shooting him, which meant the only threats were below him.
Assuming the Feds would play nice.
“Lin! Where are the other two now?” he asked over the radio.
“Lun’s inside. I don’t see Sam.”
“Get her here, now. My IFF can keep us safe if you can find her.”
“No comms, no contact.”
Another pod of rockets streaked across the field. Too close to the entry craft.
“Fuck!” Ash said. “They really hate these guys. Who are they…”
Ash flipped his sensors to see what the VTOL had been shooting at. Mag scan revealed two forms: one in Troya-class power armor, the other in Orléans, both appearing as headless men in his scan because they were missing their helmets.
The Troya was down, scrambling.
Ash wheeled the Doru’s torso around, lined up the crosshairs…
The thoughts crowded the milliseconds:
Too close to each other for the explosive shoulder cannon. But the hand lasguns won’t defeat the armor. Don’t. But if you don’t, she definitely dies.
Too close.
No choice.
…and pulled the trigger. His shoulder cannon roared. The headless Orléans armor in the magscan vanished into bits and dust.
He slammed open the radio.
“Cassock requesting immediate medical evac! Coordinates oh-ten-nine…!”
“Cassock,” Captain Roche replied. “This is First Company. We’re two minutes behind you. Hold position and hang on, help is on its way. What, did you think we were gonna sit it out?”