12

The ship lurched sideways as something exploded against the shields.

“Jelly, what’s going on?” I shouted, already running for the bridge. Rejon followed.

Another series of explosions rocked the ship and this time I thought the shield might’ve been breached. Warning lights flashed. Fire retardant chemicals filled one of the side hallways.

My feet left the floor. The wall reached out and slapped me sideways. Stars filled my vision and I blacked out for at least a few seconds.

“You should put on your helmet,” Rejon advised, snapping the latches to his own head protection.

I grabbed him by the back of his EVA armor and steered him toward the bridge. “Once we get inside, we can strap into safety chairs.”

The door to the bridge opened and I pointed to where I wanted him to sit. It took him awhile to figure out the restraints, but I didn’t have time to help him. I went to the captain’s seat.

“More saturation bombing, but a lot of it is directed in our vicinity—like they’re looking for us,” Elise said, her hands flying over her control terminals at the sensor station. Locke and Tom consulted over another display, discussing something in animated tones but not including me in their conversation.

“Can we fire back?” I asked.

“Our weapons are underpowered and lack sufficient range to do much good,” Jelly responded. “Against a few of the micro-fighters, we would have a chance. We can’t go head-to-head with this type of onslaught.”

“Get us back in stealth mode if we’re not already,” I ordered. “Then let’s get out of this area. Look for someplace with an escape route, maybe behind one of these planets or near a slip tunnel in case we have to leave the system altogether.”

Rejon and Locke looked at me sharply.

“I’m not abandoning anyone, but we’ve got to have options,” I said. My friends needed to learn how to be merciless. There were hard decisions that had to be made. Since I was already going to hell, I might as will be the one to make them.

We flew the Jellybird between a barrage of rockets and kinetic weapons that made Nebs’s first attack look like what it was, a series of ranging shots. The only thing in our favor was that most of the debris field was already in motion and couldn’t get any worse.

From a distance, it looked impossible to navigate through the area without being struck by the ruined hull of a ship or asteroid, but there was actually space to maneuver if the ship and its crew had the skill to do it.

Nearly an hour passed before the bombing abated.

“Jelly, what’s the damage?” I asked.

“Our shields maintained their integrity. We will need repairs and recharging, but nothing fatal. If they had known exactly where we were, we would not have survived,” Jelly said. “As for the other bystanders in this system, several need our assistance. I recommend picking up wounded from the coordinates I just displayed on your HUD.”

I read over the figures. “What are we going to do with that many wounded civilians?”

“You could ignore them and continue on your mission,” X-37 said to me privately. “Saving innocent lives will be worthless if they’re only going to be killed later by Nebs. I have made significant progress since the last time we contacted the vice admiral’s ship. Give me another chance to access their communications network. I can implant further code strings that will help us when we are finally prepared to move against them.”

“X, we can’t wait that long,” I said.

“I suspected you would say that,” X-37 said, not sounding amused.

“In the meantime, we need to do something about the civilians. Maybe we can’t make them comfortable, but we can at least keep them alive.”

Locke studied me. “How can we do that, Reaper?”

I could see there was nothing more he wanted than to save innocent lives if we could.

“Jelly, contact Slipdriver. See if they have a med bay large enough to handle this many casualties. In the meantime, let’s round them up. We can worry about what to do with them later,” I said.

“We have enough space,” Novasdaughter advised from the Nightmare. “But we are on the opposite side of the system and well hidden. We avoided most of the collateral damage from the bombing runs.”

“Start heading our way,” I said. “We’re going to need you one way or another.”

Locke, Elise, and Tom worked together to bring the Jellybird close to a box freighter that had been camouflaged with randomly affixed bits of junk. Even in its heyday, the ship hadn’t been much. But now it was struggling to move toward a distant planet as it vented atmosphere. I saw bodies shooting out of a hole before we got close enough to help.

“Can we dock with this thing?” I asked.

“Yes, Captain,” Jelly said simply.

I gripped the sides of my chair as the maneuver was completed. Elise took over some of the remote controls. Locke asked Horvath and Carrie if they were ready to go out again in their suits.

“We need to recharge our air tanks,” Carrie advised.

“Tell them to be ready but to standby,” I said.

Jelly maneuvered alongside the damaged vessel and linked to it. Alarms went off in my head. If this was some sort of pirate ship, they could easily swarm aboard now and we would have a fight on our hands.

“I’m going down to meet them,” I said. “Rejon, you better come with me. And Elise.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “There’s a lot of work to do at the sensor station.”

“I agree, but if there’s a fight, I will need you,” I said.

I wasn’t trying to give her a compliment. But I knew she wouldn’t let me forget this moment. I could already hear conversations about how she had saved my life.

Whatever. Like anyone needed that kind of mental abuse.

We rushed again to the airlock, and heard people banging on the outside of the door to get in.

“Jelly, let them in. I’ll deal with the consequences,” I said.

The door slid open. People streamed inside, falling over each other. Some were injured, holding broken arms. Some were bleeding from shrapnel. Others seem to be damaged by exposure to the void. Despite the chaos and their obvious distress, they moved with a sense of purpose. This wasn’t the first time these people had faced a crisis like this.

There was lots of hugging and weeping when they realized they’d made it. Before long, the docking bay was overcrowded.

“Rejon, I’ll need to put them in one of our storage bays. The conditions won’t be ideal. Everything will probably stink like fuel containers,” I said.

“My people will not complain,” he assured me.

“Jelly, get us to the Bold Freedom. If we don’t find some medical facilities, this is going to get a lot worse down here,” I said.

“Of course, Captain,” Jelly responded. “I will do my best.”

I helped treat minor injuries and corralled people toward the storage bay, sometimes earning confused looks as I explained what was needed. Each frantic conversation was a chance to learn their dialect.

“X, are you getting all of this? I’m not sure my language skills are what they used to be,” I said.

“The more you talk to them, the more data I will have to analyze and thus be better prepared to help you,” X-37 said.

“I need to get back to the bridge, but I’ll do what I can,” I said. Looking around, I couldn’t believe how many people we had crammed into this little ship. It made me think of what would’ve happened if the Jellybird had been overrun on the Dreadmax when people were desperate to escape.

“I’m telling you I saw them,” a girl said to an older woman.

I took both of them by their arms. “Saw who?”

“The ones with the gold armor. I thought they had come to save us, but they pushed old-man Patterson through an airlock when they didn’t like his answers to their questions.” The girl was eleven or twelve, maybe older than she looked because she was half starved.

“What questions?” I tried not to scare her.

The girl’s eyes darted around and she swallowed hard. “They wanted to know where the Reaver was.”

“You mean Reaper?” I asked.

She nodded emphatically. “That is what they said!”

The woman interrupted, pulling the girl away from me. “There are no golden men. That was your imagination.”

“You said they were wearing armor?” I asked.

The girl nodded but bowed her head when she received a stern look from the woman who was likely some type of relative.

“We’ll get you to safety,” I promised, already planning how I was going to deal with this new threat of the Archangels in their battle armor.

“I guess that confirms their gear can function as EVA gear,” I said.

“I will make a note,” X-37 replied.

* * *

“I know we don’t stand a chance against them, X,” I said. My limited artificial intelligence was getting on my nerves. “You said you had a solution for the Archangel problem.”

“The situation has changed. I had hoped to subvert Necron and send out a message summoning all of the Archangels to the armory for a check of their gear, and then to lock them inside and throw away the key.”

“Would that have worked?” I asked, distracted by the simplicity of X-37’s plan.

“It had a better than average chance of success,” X-37 said. “But that option is now off the table because I don’t believe we can trick them into boarding the Nightmare.”

“Why not just send them to their own armory?” I suggested.

“I don’t have sufficient access to the Dark Lance,” X-37 said.

I narrowed my eyes, impatient. “So what’s the answer?”

“We must truly have Necron on our side,” X-37 said.

“That’ll be easy. Why didn’t you just say so? I’ll ask Nebs to give us his other ships while we’re at it.”

X-37 beeped twice. “I’m not sure if I detected sarcasm or a poor attempt at humor.”

“Assuming subverting Necron is even possible, what would come next?” I asked. “How would we do it?”

“We need to reestablish contact with the Nightmare,” X-37 said. “If the Dark Lance or the Black Wing have attempted to take control of the Nightmare remotely—which they probably have—the viruses I spread during our last communication with the vice admiral will have spread through all three ships. I don’t know how far or how effectively they have been contaminated, but it will be something to work with,” X-37 said.

“I’ve got a better idea, considering our circumstances,” I said. “Jelly, send the Nightmare a secure message. Hide it in a maintenance routine. Henshaw will know what to do with it. Let’s get them over here. By the time we’re done offloading survivors onto the Bold Freedom, Novasdaughter and Henshaw should be able to bring the carrier close to our location.”

“Right away, Captain,” Jelly said.

I disembarked with a group of refugees and escorted them to the makeshift medical bay of the BF. Elise joined me.

“Why are you interested in the medical bay?” Elise asked. “We’ve done our job getting them here.”

“I’m playing a hunch,” I told her.

“You’re looking for Bug,” Elise guessed.

“First X-37 tries to read my mind, now you’re doing it,” I said.

X-37 squealed. It was similar to a beep being hit with a hammer. “That is an untrue statement that could get me into trouble if anyone believed it.”

“Relax, X. We all know you’re just a limited artificial intelligence. I was just pulling your chain.”

“I’ve asked you before, Reaper Cain, to stop with the nonsensical metaphors,” X-37 said.

“You have, about five hundred times,” I agreed.

“One hundred and three times, to be exact,” X-37 provided.

I was stunned. “That’s all? Never mind. Help me scan this crowd.”

“Oh, cool,” Elise said. “I’m going to see a Reaper in action.”

“You’ve seen me work before,” I said as I scanned the crowd of people. The room was packed full of scavengers being treated for all manner of injuries. There were rows of cots where men and women wearing mismatched hospital clothing attended to them. The doctors and nurses—some more qualified than others—were as likely to wear janitor scrubs as lab coats. I identified them by their behavior, not the way they dressed.

“I’ve seen you kill people and some monsters. But I’ve read books and watched action holos. When I was a kid, I always thought the scenes where the heroes were searching the crowd for their victims was just to ratchet up the tension,” Elise said. “Now I understand how freaking impossible it is.”

Normally, I enjoyed this type of interaction with Elise. Today, I didn’t have time and I wasn’t in the mood. “You’re still a kid.”

She didn’t take the bait this time. “I’m less of a kid now.”

“Whatever.” I stopped and looked around. “The air purifiers on the ship have to be working triple time. There are too many people here.”

“What can we do about it?” Elise asked seriously.

I realized then how much the pressure of back-to-back missions in a constant fight for survival affected her. Of course she was tough. I knew she was accustomed to running and surviving in impossible situations even before I met her. But we needed a break. Her ability to crack jokes and genuinely be excited about a trivial activity like searching a crowd for Bug was a warning sign. I was a jerk for not giving her five minutes of normality.

“We can’t do anything about it, unless we can get these people to Wallach, and that’s assuming they still want to go there or that the people on that planet will accept them. And that the Union doesn’t send three more fleets after us and wipe everyone from the galaxy.”

“Someone’s grumpy,” Elise complained.

“You’re right,” I admitted. “This is my fault. We shouldn’t be looking for Bug.”

“This won’t take that long. We’ll just do a quick walk-through like in the movies, find your target, except not kill them because this isn’t a movie and we like the kid, and get back to work,” Elise said.

“That works for me,” I said, moving deeper into the storage bay that had become a field hospital. An older woman in a white lab coat asked me to get out of her way and I did. She was polite about it, but obviously tired and stressed out.

“I don’t remember what Bug looks like,” Elise said.

“You never met him face-to-face?” I said.

“It seems like I did. But I’ll recognize his voice,” she said. “Maybe we should call out to him. Can X-37 do voice analysis?”

“Not under these conditions,” I answered. “X, have you got anything?”

“I have not matched our brief encounter with the child with anyone I’ve observed so far in this inadequate excuse for a hospital,” X-37 said.

“It was worth a shot,” I grumbled. “Any news on the Nightmare or Necron?”

“I’m working with Jelly and Novasdaughter. This would be easier if I could contact the Nightmare’s AI directly,” X-37 said. “Standby, Jelly is providing an update. Apparently, Novasdaughter is unable to talk with us directly. Necron is having a prolonged debate with Henshaw.”

“I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. What are they arguing about?” I asked.

“Part of my virus has taken hold. It’s a simple line of code that allows Necron to see Nebs’s actions through the filter of Union values,” X-37 said.

“We are so screwed,” Elise commented, crossing her arms and watching the crowd pass by us with medical supplies in their hands as we talked to X.

“On the contrary,” X-37 argued. “The codified laws of the Union and what their politicians are constantly telling the population often mimic strong civic values. It’s the implementation that becomes toxic and antithetical to human freedoms. Necron is very powerful, but Nebs restricted him to basic functioning.”

“I see where you’re going with this,” I said.

Elise nodded vigorously, also putting it together. “You’re causing stress to Necron’s system, setting him off balance. Couldn’t that go horribly wrong?”

“Yes, Elise, it could get us all killed,” X-37 admitted. “But it is our only chance.”

“It’s the mister,” a boy yelled. “Get out of my way, you stupid asswipe. I need to tell him thanks for getting us off that deathtrap. Yeah, you fuck off. I don’t care if you’re a doctor. I’m checking out.”

A young man with a scar that divided his face horizontally backed away from Bug, clearly intimidated despite having an obvious age and height advantage.

“Elise, you know Bug is going to be trouble,” I muttered, regretting my decision to seek the boy out.

She laughed. “That’s nice, coming from you. Or from me, for that matter. Neither of us are exactly low maintenance.”

Bug swaggered toward us. He’d grown about three inches, not quite reaching his natural height. I estimated he was about thirteen. Back on Dreadmax, he’d claimed to be fifteen but sounded much younger. As for life experience, he’d probably seen more violent murders than a kill team. There had been a reason he and his friends hid themselves away in a security tower.

“Mister!” Bug said, spreading his arms like a cross between a used shuttle salesman and a party host.

“Good to see you, Bug,” I said, an idea forming in my head. I was definitely going to be saddled with the obnoxious cheese-cracker-eating rascal forever. Good Job, Cain.

“Yeah, that’s what I think,” he said, acting cool and looking around as though there was a crowd of spectators—which there wasn’t. We were just in the way here.

“I’m down with joining your crew, or team, or whatever you call a bunch of Reapers. My friends all bugged out—ha, ha, that’s freaking hilarious, isn’t it? I ditched most of them on Imni 7 before this piece-of-junk ship left the Deadlands. They were scared of you. Between you and me and the hot chick, we don’t need them. Better off doing our own thing. Fucktards.”

I tried and failed to get a word in edgewise. Elise kind of, sort of suppressed laughter as she watched the byplay.

“I looked for you, but people are stupid. Half the dumbasses on this ship acted like they’d never heard of you and kept telling me Reapers weren’t even real. I shanked a few to set things straight,” Bug said.

“Bullshit, kid. Talk like that will get you kicked off the team,” I said without thinking it through. Give this street punk an inch and he was going to take a mile.

“There is a team! Hell yeah, mister. I was worried,” Bug said. “Did you bring me a gun?”

“No. That’s not where you start,” I said, thinking quickly.

“Be careful, Reaper Cain,” X-37 advised. “I strongly advise against this course of action. The boy will only be a liability unless you find a camera tower to stick him in.”

Ignoring X, I leaned toward Bug, making sure he realized I was as serious as a Reaper blade in the face. “You’re going to learn sensors. Elise will train you on the basics, then Henshaw will round out your education.”

“Fuck that!” Elise blurted.

I gave her a warning look, then stood between her and Bug to prevent them from going at it. “You do what I say or you’re done. That’s the way it works.”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” Bug said. “She just told you to fuck off.”

I narrowed my eyes at the kid. “No she didn’t.”

“Pretty close,” Bug insisted.

“Do you want on the team or not?” I asked.

“I want to be a Reaper. There are a lot of people I need to find and snuff out. Fucking rats and bullies and all-around assholes,” Bug said.

“This will be a problem,” X-37 warned.

I grabbed Bug by the front of his jumpsuit. “I’m not running a revenge crew. You want to roll with me, then you do what I say.”

Bug swallowed hard. “Sorry, mister. I get it. You’re the boss man, the big cheese, the tough guy.”

“I believe I have seen through his hard exterior,” X-37 said.

“Yeah, X, me too,” I said, then released the boy.

“Who are you talking to?” Bug rubbed his chest where I’d grabbed him.

“My conscience,” I said.

“He has a limited AI, Bug. Don’t let him fool you. He doesn’t have a conscience,” Elise said.

I shrugged rather than argue. “She’s not lying to you. Let’s go. We have things to do.”

Bug cheered up immediately, turning to wave a finger at the crowd of caregivers and wounded who mostly ignored us. “See you, losers.”

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“Do what?” Bug asked.

“Fuck me,” I grumbled too low for anyone but X-37 to hear. “We’ll talk about it later, Bug. Just don’t be a dick.”

“Rule one, don’t be a dick,” Bug stated cheerfully.

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