Hodgepodge, Pirate Cruiser, Far Reaches
There had not been many times in Roman Kaminski’s life when he had prayed. As a child he had of course done as his parents had bade him, dutifully saying his prayers before he went to bed and confessing all to the God he had long since abandoned in all but habit. He prayed now though, prayed that the mad Australian’s equally crazy scheme – to burn away the power conduits that connected the reactor to the FTL – would not only not kill them but would leave them in a position where they could actually get home, or at least back to base.
“Looks like they’ve done a real job on fucking sealing this all up,” Adrian observed, trying to get into the web of cabling that ran below he floor. “Give me your knife, mate? Mine broke in another floor.”
“I do not have my knife,” Roman was forced to admit. He hadn’t seen much of point to go carrying around yet more stuff tied to a vacuum suit that was not intended for such attachments, not when he was as equally able to kill just by driving his fist into things. It had never been used on any of his missions out in Celzi space thus far, but of course it was when you left it behind that it turned out you’d need it.
Beyond a mutter of annoyed resignation, that admission didn’t seem to do much besides mildly disappoint the muscle-bound Australian over the inconvenience, and he instead switched over to striking the panelled floor with the butt of his rifle. He struck three times on the same spot, driving at it with a precise yet savage power and crumpling the metal enough to get his fingers under. Then he heaved and tore the floor away with a roar of effort.
Roman tapped his fingers against his gun to reassure himself that he could hopefully still stop this berserker of a man should he decide that he didn’t like Russians. “Looks like you didn’t need a knife.”
“Looks like,” Adrian replied, pulling aside enough of the cabling to slip his whole body down into it. He looked back up to Roman, clicked his fingers and pointed at him. “I need your fucking torch.”
Roman detached the small torch from his carabiner clip, and tossed it to the man in the hole. “Don’t lose it.”
Adrian disappeared into the cabling after an experimental on-off-on click of the torch, ducking down below the webbed mass of cords and conduits and crawling into the darkness. Roman crouched beside the hole of ruined decking, listening to the grunts of effort and frequent curses that indicated work was being done, and that something was hopefully being achieved. He counted every minute, and a full seven passed before Adrian reappeared with the torch in his mouth.
“We better fucking move, mate,” Adrian advised, springing out of the hole with surprising grace for a man that big. He grabbed Roman by the arm and dragged him along with no apparent effort, a feat that underscored the difference in their power and had Roman wondering whether all of this was due to the ‘alien mutant juice’ the Australian had mentioned; if that were the case the side-effects must be significant to make him disdain it so.
“What’s going on?” Roman asked, finding his feet and moving under his own power all the way to the reactor. “Is it going to blow?”
“Yeah, I switched around a few cables,” Adrian replied, getting to work on the reactor itself, and working so swiftly that Roman wondered how long the man had been out here. The torch was returned with only a small amount of saliva coating the grip. “You’re going to need that in a bit.”
“Why would I need the torch?” Roman asked, wiping it dry. “Are the lights going to go out?”
“Only once they’ve got a little brighter,” Adrian said with the mad kind of grin that filled Roman with dread; this wasn’t the kind of man that could be easily predicted, and appeared to take delight in that fact, and that would inevitably make him a liability.
“What are you planning, Adrian!?” Roman demanded, fixing his eyes on those of the madman until the madness calmed. “Tell me what you’re planning.”
Rough hands ran through wild hair as the Australian recovered some small fragment of himself. “Fuck mate… I just switched the wires around on some control boards. Now I just need to burn the lights out to kick them over to the secondary conduit, I didn’t have any way to move it when it was running all that power.”
Roman took the man by the shoulder, a firm yet reassuring grip to hold the man in his moment of sanity. “Adrian, what do we need to do to make that happen?”
“Just… we should get the guys on the command deck to set course for Cimbrean first,” Adrian said. “There’s a human colony there, your guys might get treatment there.”
“I could take them to the Celzi bases,” Roman replied. He didn’t know about Cimbrean, and that probably meant it wasn’t a Russian-Celzi initiative. That being the case it would be pretty stupid to drop his men off there.
“I don’t know how hurt they are,” conceded Adrian. “But I can tell you that we’re not going to get anywhere like that for a long fucking time. Cimbrean? A day, no more than two.”
Roman stared the man in the eyes, looking for some trace of deception, but he found only absolute, fundamental exhaustion staring back at him. He’d seen that look in the eyes of men who had given up, and only those with a clear mission would keep pushing through. What was this man’s mission? Those details would have to wait.
Roman picked up the datapad that the command crew had given Adrian. “This is Roman Markovic, do you read me?”
“We’ve been listening in, Roman Markovic,” came the terse reply, and Roman recognised the voice as belonging to that raccoon guy. “I’ve just locked in the coordinates for Cimbrean. Is this going to work?”
Roman looked to Adrian who only answered with a thumbs up. That would have to be good enough, because Roman sure as shit didn’t have any better answers. “It’s going to work.”
“Tell them to set lights to negative one,” said Adrian, still working on the reactor like a conductor in front of his orchestra. “Then tell them to close their fucking eyes before they hit the go button.”
“Did you hear that?” Roman asked, but dropped the datapad as the lights flashed brighter than anything he’d ever seen before. He roared in shock and pain as the brilliance lanced into his eyes, and threw his hands over them as quickly as possible.
Similar sounds of pain came from the datapad; Adrian’s advice had come a moment too late. “I should probably have led with that,” the Australia mused. “I would hold your hands where they are, mate. It’s only going to get brighter!”
Roman didn’t need that sort of advice; he had both hands clasped across his eyes and the light was still working its way in through his permeable flesh. Every part of his exposed flesh was beginning to tingle under the intense white glare, and he contemplated whether it would escalate to actual burning.
He didn’t have to find out, because when the light seemed as bright as it could possibly get there was a hiss of burning and the sharp scent of molten metal and burned plastic filled the air. Then there was darkness and a hum from the direction of the FTL.
“What was that?” Roman asked in alarm, flicking on his torch to show a rising cloud of smoke flowing from the hole. “It’s on fire!!”
Adrian shook his head. “I only flashed the primary conduit end section. Probably not enough to start a real fire, but the FTL is now running on the line normally used as a backup for the lighting. Not a lot of power, but stable enough. We’ll have to gravity spike ourselves to stop though.”
“So we have no lights?” Roman asked, turning his torch to illuminate both of them. “Except for the torches?”
“And the displays of everything with a fucking screen, mate,” Adrian replied. “Truth be told I’m a bit surprised all the lights didn’t fucking explode, but small mercies, eh?”
As he said this the lights flashed back on, brilliant as before and flashing sporadically between dim and blinding and completely off. Both of them screamed out in pain as the all-encompassing flare caught them off guard.
The lights finally died with sputtering bursts destroying every lamp, and the ship of darkness rumbled with gurgling thunder. There was absolute silence for a few moments afterwards but then, for some reason, the Australian began laughing like this had been the most hilarious thing in the world.
“What the fuck is so funny?” Roman demanded, his eyes still too flare-blind to really see the man even with the aid of his torch. He certainly seemed to be in the grip of either madness or genuine amusement, or maybe a good measure of both.
“Mate…” Adrian said between laughs, grinning like a fool, “the other thing I hooked the FTL up to… it was the sanitation system. I just flushed every bog on this boat!”
“That was the sound of all of the toilets flushing?” Roman asked. Admittedly it was at least a little bit funny, but he pushed down the desire to laugh along. The most that made it to his face was a twitch at the corner of his lips.
Adrian nodded, his amusement only marginally faded. “About a hundred of the fucking things. Still, better to eject a hundred turds than either of us.”
Roman considered his next words carefully, he looked the man straight in the eyes and spoke them with deadpan delivery. “No shit?”
+++++
Adrian was still alive, and for once a near death experience did not involve him floating in space and hoping that someone would save him. Actually being victorious for once had him giddy with relief, and while Roman seemed like kind of a hardarse, that pretty much went with the territory of being special ops. The point was that the man wasn’t trying to kill him and that made a nice change.
But the fact remained that Adrian was more tired right now than he had ever been in his life. His body may have already recovered from its exertions but his mind… that was definitely fraying. Thanks in large part to being shot in the eyes, he hadn’t had a proper sleep since before he’d been poisoned by the Celzi fire suppressants. Who knew what kind of fucked up shit that stuff might have done on its own, let alone when combined with the alien mutant juice that apparently permeated him? All he could do was try and fight the effects on his judgement, and hope that he could find a human doctor on Cimbrean who could figure out what was wrong with him.
“Where are we going now?” the Russian asked him, managing to stay close now that Adrian knew the speed he could travel at. “I have men who-“
“Need help,” Adrian finished, sparing a glance over his shoulder at the frowning face of the special forces man. There was barely enough light to see by, but the man’s exposed face at least showed its shape in the strange hues of warmth. “I know where they are, and we’re going to them now.”
Roman’s frown deepened. “Then is there likely to be a doctor aboard? I believe some may be quite badly wounded, and it is important that they get treatment soon.”
Adrian gave an ignorant shrug. “Wouldn’t know, this isn’t my ship or even really my side,” he said, putting the datapad to where its tinny little microphone could best do its job. “What’s the go, Command Crew?”
“We don’t have any doctors,” the Gaoian male replied. “This was intended to be a quick and easy mission.”
“How’s that working out for you?” asked Adrian with a laugh.
The answer was just as terse as expected. “Less successfully than we had hoped. We are now on a direct FTL vector for Cimbrean, however, so maybe you’ll find a human doctor there.”
“I know I sure as fuck hope so,” Adrian replied, his cheer gone. “What kind of medical supplies have you got?”
“Minimal,” came the one-word reply. It seemed that the Gaoian didn’t much care for him, but Adrian reckoned he was in the majority there; shit, it was getting harder for Adrian not to feel the same way.
That didn’t make Roman happy either, but Adrian supposed that if a crew he was leading was in that position he’d have been just as pissed off if not more so. “That is not what I wanted to hear, alien!”
“It’s no fucking use having a sook about it at this point, mate,” Adrian informed him. “There’s always something you can do if you’re willing to improvise.”
Roman glared at him. “As I recall it was your explosion that has them so injured.”
Adrian returned the glare. “Mate, do not fucking blame me for what I had to do to get past a plasma trap. Would you have done different if you’d been rushing to stop a ship from disappearing out from under you?”
Roman continued to glare, but with less aggression and more recalcitrance. Adrian had known a lot of men like him – fuck, he’d been a man like that as often as not – and they weren’t the sort to admit when they were wrong, but he hadn’t denied it and in spite of his pigheadedness that was enough.
“How did you know the traps were there?” Roman asked suspiciously, not long after passing the halfway point.
There wasn’t much reason that Adrian could think of to keep his methods a secret. He didn’t really need the Russian being wary of him when all he wanted was Jen and some god damned peace and quiet. “Mutant juice gave me heat vision.”
The Russian was surprised, and raised a bushy eyebrow to express that fact. “Useful…”
“Usually not,” Adrian disagreed. He’d already started to notice how he could see through his eyelids, and he was trying to think of ways to sleep with that being the case. “Any ideas on how a man might sleep when closing his eyes doesn’t fucking help?”
The Russian frowned, but he didn’t answer, so he was probably just as fucking clueless as Adrian himself. Fantastic as usual.
They were nearing the area where the plasma blast had occurred now, and the normally smooth-white walls and floor were covered with filthy grime. The closer they got, the thicker it was, and it reeked of molten plastic and steel.
And then the floor ahead was slick with fire suppressant, the biting smell of burned out ship intermingling with traces of the aerosol.
“Fuck.” Adrian stopped dead, holding up a hand to indicate that the Russian do likewise.
“What is it!?” Roman demanded, drawing up right beside him. “My men are just ahead, are they not?”
Adrian shifted his eyes from the suppressant to the Russian. “Tell me, mate, did your men happen to be breathing through their Vacuum suits?”
“It would be normal for them to do so until we had control of the ship,” Roman replied. “But afterwards… I cannot say. Why?”
“If this white shit is the same on every Celzi vessel, they’re probably totally out of their fucking minds by now,” Adrian explained, and emphasised the statement by tracing a finger through the air next to his head. “Completely fucking mental.”
“What is it?” Roman asked, squinting into the darkness ahead. “Some kind of fire-foam?”
Adrian nodded. “Something like that. I can give you a first hand account of how fucked up it makes you. Put your fucking helmet on, mate.”
Roman did as he was told. “What about you?”
“If you reckon I’m going through that shit again, you’ve got another fucking thing coming,” Adrian replied directly. He was still reeling from the effects of his last exposure and he certainly didn’t want to double up on the dosage. “Don’t hesitate to knock those fuckers out if they’ve been breathing it. Fortunately for you they’re injured, but I don’t know if my little trip was different because of the mutant juice. I was aggressive, but I could be reasoned with; no telling if that’s going to be the case here.”
“So you can only tell me nothing of use,” Roman assessed, which was a little bit of an overstatement but perhaps only a little bit; Adrian and Jen no longer made for particularly good examples of common humans.
“I can tell you that if you can get them back to me, I’ll be able to help,” Adrian told him, although to be honest he didn’t care much about what condition they arrived in. He just wanted to be able to sleep in peace without being murdered by insane Russians, provided he ever managed to make it into an unconscious state.
“And what is Plan B?” the Russian asked him.
Adrian shifted uncomfortably. “Typically that involves me personally trying to kill everything.”
The Russian appraised him, and didn’t seem to enjoy whatever it was he was imagining. “Then let us hope that Plan A succeeds.”
Adrian responded to that with a level gaze. “Mate,” he said, “I fucking always hope that Plan A succeeds.”
+++++
Roman held torch and datapad before him, both to give light but only one to give him directions. The corridors may look as though a bomb had gone off, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any live traps just waiting for some poor bastard to walk by. After finding himself so heavily reliant on a crazy man just to survive, and with the likelihood that his men were going to turn out to be completely insane, he was not in the mood to have to deal with the ship itself trying to kill him again.
The Australian didn’t seem to have been lying about the fire suppressant either; Roman had been sure he’d only had a whiff of the stuff, but he was already feeling light-headed with impaired judgement and fewer inhibitions. A stronger, more direct exposure to this kind of chemical could have all sorts of unknown side-effects on a man, and if Adrian was anything to go by it could have a lasting impact.
“Sergeant,” he called out over his radio, wary for any sudden movements from the shadows. “Sergeant Markovic, do you hear me?”
There wasn’t an answer. That was bad, if Valery had been conscious or in his right mind he would have replied. At the very least Roman could see that they hadn’t moved from the areas to which they had retreated, so it wasn’t as though they were going to be jumping out at him.
The room containing two of them – Valery Markovic and Anisim Sokoloff – came first, and Roman was relieved to find that they’d managed to close the door. That might have reduced their exposure, but at the very least it would give him the edge of getting his weapon into hand.
He knocked on the door with the butt of his AK-9. “It’s Captain Kaminksi, I’m coming in. Remain where you are.”
He didn’t bother to wait for a reply; if they were going to jump him that would just give them time to prepare, and if they weren’t they wouldn’t give a shit whether he waited or not. He opened the door and was met with the sight of a gaping-mouthed Valery Markovic, unconscious with his eyes still open. He twitched, confirming the life that the sensors told him were there, but there was nothing more from him. From the wet shine on his pallid skin it looked as though he’d been stricken with a fever that had robbed him of his wits, and the fact that he wasn’t wearing a helmet gave a good indication that the man had suffered a full exposure.
“Fuck,” Roman muttered. “I’m sorry, Valery. I-“
Roman got sloppy. Sokoloff had also been in the room, but he hadn’t been moving when Roman had entered. It had been easy to discount the body rolled on its side in the corner of the room as not being a threat, especially as it was one of his own men, and even more because that man had been wearing a helmet.
Roman revised that opinion when the man stabbed him. The combat knife sliced down through the vacuum suit, and drove through the body armour below. The cut to his chest was shallow, but it hurt more than enough for Roman to fling himself away and bring his AK-9 up firing.
But Sokoloff was gone from the room before Roman could get the gun pointed in the right direction, and the bullets just blasted through the thin walls.
“Fuck!” Roman growled. Whatever this gas was doing to him it wasn’t making his reflexes or his aim any better, and in that moment he’d felt the fugue that had been settling over them to make him slower. Now one of his own men was loose on the ship, out of his mind on some kind of psycho-active alien gas, and didn’t seem to be differentiating friends from enemies. “Plan-fucking-A has gone to shit…”
He really hoped that the cut in his suit wasn’t big enough to let the gas pollute his air supply, and proceeded with his original plan of helping Valery. The man seemed to be catatonic, but at least he wouldn’t be stabbing anyone, and the gravity on the ship was far enough below Earth-standard that he wouldn’t have to worry about the weight.
But he didn’t start moving the man right away; he checked over the datapad for Sokoloff, and saw the man moving off into the unexplored parts of the ship. There wasn’t anything Roman could do about that, not when he had to deal with other wounded, and it was highly likely that Sokoloff would find himself a trap and the problem would go away. If not, there was always the possibility of finding and subduing the man once everybody else was safe.
Satisfied that the insane soldier wasn’t going to be lying in wait, Roman began the task of dragging Valery from the room, back towards the rendezvous point with Adrian. At least the fire suppressant made the floor slick enough to make that an easy task, and there were no pieces of debris for the injured man to further hurt himself on.
He heard Adrian call out before he saw him. “Jesus, your mate isn’t looking too fucking healthy!”
“He has been exposed to much of the gas,” Roman called in answer. “He is not responsive.”
“Drop him here and I’ll get him some place safe,” Adrian told him as Roman got nearer. It was clear the Australian was keeping his distance from where the gas would affect him, and with the kind of wariness that made Roman wonder just what the man had done whilst under its influence.
“You’ll need to restrain him in case he wakes,” Roman informed him, and pointed to the stab wound on his chest. “One of my men appears to be mobile and violent.”
“Wonderful,” Adrian replied dryly, then shook with a grim, tired laugh. “Any more surprises to brighten my fucking day?”
Roman shook his head. “Just this one. Do you need the datapad to get back? The torch?”
“Nah, mate,” Adrian declined, taking Valery up into his arms and slinging him over a shoulder with little effort, “I remember the way and I can see in the dark well enough for this. Besides, I reckon you’ll need it more.”
He wasn’t wrong, there was a strong chance that Sokoloff was going to cause him more problems before the man found himself an early grave, and Roman didn’t feel like getting stabbed again. “I will see you at the medical room?”
Adrian nodded. “You know where it is? You should be able to figure it out from the datapad, but-“
“These ships are mostly the same,” Roman assured him. He didn’t see a problem with getting there so long as he didn’t end up getting crippled by gunfire or more stab wounds, neither of which were very pleasant prospects in a place full of poison gas.
“Then I’ll see you when I see you,” Adrian said, putting out a hand for Roman to shake. “Good luck, mate.”
Roman shook. “Thank you. I think I will need it.”
+++++
Getting to Mark Yakovlev proved a greater challenge than Roman had wanted. By the time he was re-entering the blasted out section of the ship he was already beginning to feel the effects of a mildly increased exposure to the gas, and although he could remain focused on his mission to rescue the injured man it was at the exclusion of everything else.
Including where Sokoloff was at any given time. For whatever reason the madness the man was suffering did not seem to be slowing him down, or perhaps it was that the man was now operating on a pure, violent kind of instinct with no thought left behind it.
When Roman had remembered to check, he had found the rogue soldier far closer than he would have liked, and remaining at a set distance as much as he was able. It was clear that the man was stalking Roman, remaining out of sight in the darkness where there was no chance of being spotted. It was likely the man was stumbling around blind just like Roman, but he didn’t have the problem of being lit up by a torch and datapad display.
The feeling of being hunted by a murderous trained killer unsettled Roman more than it ought have done, a feeling that he blamed on the gas, but the fear penetrated the fugue that was settling over his wits and gave him the extra willpower to reclaim some of his thoughts.
He had only thought he’d been looking away from the datapad for a moment when he heard the growl, and threw himself to the side as the beast of a man sailed through the space he’d just occupied. The torchlight flashed against the glint of steel in the soldier’s hand, a bright reminder of the death that could come so swiftly.
Roman raised his gun too slowly, and found the man on top of him before he could fire it. He could see Sokoloff’s face now, burned where the helmet had cracked and his right eye had cooked out, the other eye wide open with complete insanity. His mouth was twisted into a crazed salivating grin that made him look more monster than man.
Kicking out from fear as much as training, Roman drove his foot into the madman’s guts while shoving him aside with his AK-9. It was enough to raise a snarl of pain, but even then it only just managed to lift the man off him.
The knife was still in Sokoloff’s hand, and he was recovering a lot faster than Roman. Again he turned the AK-9 towards the madman, trying to fire where he thought the man was going to be.
He missed again, and Sokoloff sprang out of the arc of fire to get into Roman’s flank. The body of the rifle shifted by instinct alone to put itself between his body and the deadly blade, and the two men grunted with the effort of the moment.
Roman kicked out, knocking the man’s leg from under him and gaining the advantage for the moment he needed: the moment to turn the gun towards Sokoloff and put him down like a mad dog.
The madman still managed to plunge the blade into Roman’s leg on the way down, but the pressure behind it vanished as three shots rang out in rapid succession.
Sokoloff fell away with half of his head in ruin, leaving Roman with the task of removing the knife from his leg.
“Fuck!” he grated as he drew it out. It was a real goddamned pity that the fugue in his head didn’t seem to dull the pain as well, but at least it helped bring his thoughts into clarity.
He couldn’t put weight on the leg, and with such a deep stab-wound he really needed medical treatment. He could improvise a bandage, but he didn’t dare take off his suit to do it, and there was next to no fucking way he was going to be able to get Yakovlev anywhere if he couldn’t use one of his legs to do it.
He lifted the datapad closer to his face as Adrian had done. “Adrian,” he said. “It seems that I could use some help.”
Adrian’s response was immediate. “You’re poisoned.”
“How can you tell?” Roman asked with a strained chuckle, he’d have thought the pain would have been more obvious.
“You’re slurring, mate,” Adrian replied. “So unless you’re drunk off your arse, I’m guessing you’ve been breathing the pixie dust.”
“Shit,” Roman cursed. He couldn’t even tell that he was slurring, it all seemed to be completely normal to him, and it was only in comparison to Sokoloff that he had seemed slow. “I had to kill Sokoloff. He knifed me in the leg.”
There was hesitation on the other side. “You need help getting out of there?”
“I don’t think I can carry Yakovlev out,” Roman told him. “Sokoloff is dead, and he knifed me in my leg.”
“Fuck, you’re getting worse,” Adrian said, although Roman wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Can you get your sorry arse out of there by yourself?”
Roman tested his leg, stumbling to the floor almost immediately. He lifted himself slowly, gingerly avoiding putting too much weight on his bad leg. “Not good…”
“Roman,” Adrian said. “Answer me!”
“What is it, Adrian?” Roman asked as he stood. “Damn… Sokoloff stabbed me in the leg. I had to kill him.”
Adrian sighed over the radio. “Sit tight, arsehole, I reckon I’m coming to pull your arse out of the fucking fire.”
“But you’ll get poisoned…” Roman objected. It didn’t make sense that Adrian would come into the area after being so hesitant earlier, not unless he was playing at some other game. “What are you up to, Australian?”
“And there’s the paranoia,” Adrian observed, sounding as though he was already on the move. “This is going to be fan-fucking-tastic.”
+++++
There must, at some point, be a rock-bottom for Adrian’s life to reach, but it seemed difficult to determine why he had not yet seemed to have achieved it. It was difficult for him to believe that somehow his life had put him in a position where he was not only going into the pixie dust again, but was actually doing it by choice.
It would have been nice if there’d been some form of protection available to him, but right now it looked like his best chance was to just hold his breath and run like hell.
It was a shitty plan. It was also exactly what he was doing.
One of these days he’d actually have a stroke of luck that wasn’t simply something that kept him alive in an increasingly worse situation. It had to happen, it was statistically impossible that it would never happen, but it would really be nice if it was much sooner than it was later.
Roman was just ahead, and Adrian took his first breath of the poisonous air. He could take a little bit, even if that was apparently a fuckload more than normal people could handle, and he had the feeling that he was going to need a fresh breath when he finally got to Roman. The Russian had started repeating himself, started to sound more vague and confused with every passing moment.
By the time he got close he could see the man slumped against the wall, illuminated by his torch and the heat he gave off, nursing his AK-9. He moved slowly when he heard Adrian coming, turning his head and recoiling in alarm.
The gun raised, and fired.
It missed completely. Right now Adrian must look like some kind of terrifying blur to the poor, dumb bastard, but he kept firing the damned gun until it ran dry. At no point did the shots hit anywhere near Adrian, and the interior walls were so flimsy that no ricochet was possible.
He got to the man as he was realising that the gun was empty, tore it from his hands and smashed him in the face with the butt. It shattered the plastic visor in the process, but it wasn’t as though it was doing much to protect the man anyway, and Adrian wasn’t going to spend valuable time – and valuable breaths – trying to make this a peaceful encounter.
Roman wasn’t unconscious, though, merely stunned. His hand went for the bloody knife resting on the floor next to him. Adrian wasn’t about to fucking let that happen, and hit him with the rifle again.
This time the Russian blacked out.
Adrian took a second breath, grabbed hold of the unconscious Captain Kaminski and dragged his sorry Russian arse back the way he’d come with all the speed he could manage.
He left the man lying in the hallway beyond the spread of the pixie dust, and then he took another breath, wishing that he hadn’t needed to break the man’s helmet to ensure his compliance.
It was time to go find Yakovlev.
That journey was almost identical to the one he’d just made, although he made the whole distance on one held breath this time. It was only when he stood before the door of the room Yakovlev had sought shelter in that he took another breath.
Pixie dust breath number three; he probably couldn’t take many more before he started feeling weird, at most he’d say he had another two left in him before it really started to affect his thinking.
The man, Yakovlev, did not move when Adrian burst into the room, and it wasn’t hard to see why. His body was covered in scorched clothing, and there were so many punctures and tears all over his vacuum suit that he may as well have been wearing a sieve. The man inside the suit wasn’t psychotic, he was catatonic, and Adrian doubted the man was going to make it.
But he wasn’t dumb enough to put the poor fucker out of his misery until Roman had decided it. You didn’t just go around killing other peoples’ team members unless you wanted to deal with the rest of them. No, he took that guy by the feet and started dragging him with all the speed he could manage.
And he only needed one more breath before he made it back.
He looked at the two Russians laid out at his feet, sighed, and began unceremoniously dragging them both towards the medical bay. Evidently today was the day he was going to discover how much fixing a human was like fixing a building, and it didn’t seem like he was going to get much in the way of sleep, or whatever passed for it these days, before he did so.
“Just keeps getting better.”
+++++
Carltopia
Keffa awoke with a sore throat and a start, instantly coming awake as the panic of suffocation resumed upon waking. It took a few moments of clutching at her throat and breathing sharply before the terror fell away and she once more began taking normal breaths.
“You’re awake,” Darragh said, sitting nearby. His face was covered with bandages that covered his nose, his eyes were red and puffy and he generally looked like hell. “Welcome back.”
“That motherfucker strangled me…” she said, her eyes darting around to establish her new surroundings. She remembered that Adrian had agreed to her demands that she accompany him, only to step in behind her and throttle her half to death.
It had not been a pleasant experience, despite how brief the memory was.
“He stole your ship as well,” Darragh informed her, although he certainly didn’t seem to care very much. Not that she could blame him, it wasn’t his ship and she’d been forced onto him almost as much as he’d been forced onto her. “Commander Chir is not happy.”
“Commander Chir isn’t happy?!” she raged. “What about me?! That was my fucking ship and that motherfucker stole my fucking ship!”
Askit entered. “Ah, it seems that our strangling-victim has awakened. You’ve got drool on your face.”
Keffa glared at the Corti, although she did wipe her face. “What are you doing here!?”
“Saving everybody,” Askit replied curtly. “You can tell that because I haven’t been unconscious or lamenting my life away in a medical centre.”
“I should kill you for what he did!” Keffa said, rising from her bed and advancing on the Corti. It didn’t make a lot of sense, especially not since Adrian had apparently abandoned Askit along with everyone else, but she was certain that it would feel good.
“You could kill me,” Askit admitted, although he didn’t take a step back and looked at her more with contempt than fear. “But then you wouldn’t get your ship back, and you’d be in a hole too deep to dig yourself out of.”
“I’m in an asteroid!” Keffa informed him, continuing her slow advance. “The whole place is a hole!”
“How’s ‘you’ll be completely fucked’ for a phrase?” replied Askit angrily, although it looked like he was beginning to show real fear. “Does that parse?”
“Keffa wait,” Darragh said, rising from where he sat. “What are you talking about, Corti?”
“Two things,” Askit explained. “There’s two spies aboard this base. One of them is Grznk, but I’m already ensuring he isn’t going to let everybody know that Adrian Saunders was on base. Can you say Hierarchy assault? Because that’s what you’ll be screaming if those guys find out.”
Keffa and Darragh shared a glance, and turned their attention back to the Corti. “You said there was a second one?” asked Keffa. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know yet,” Askit admitted, “but I’ve got some ideas, and quite frankly I could really use the help of two people who have absolutely no reason to ally themselves with the people who want us all dead.”
“Because we’re human?” Darragh asked.
The Corti nodded. “Because you’re human and you’ve spent enough time with Adrian Saunders to make yourselves targets.”
“So now somebody wants me dead just because I know Adrian?” Darragh asked, looking thoroughly unimpressed by this turn of events. “Did you know this was going to happen when we brought you aboard.”
“Yes,” the Corti admitted, which took so much more courage than Keffa had ever seen a Corti display that she forgot to immediately kill him over it. “But that’s why I’m trying to stop all of that from happening.”
“And what do you get out of this, Corti?” she demanded, not willing to let go over her hostility quite yet. There was no way that Askit was going to be acting altruistically, even for the strangest Corti she’d ever met he didn’t seem the type.
“I get to live,” Askit replied bluntly. “And I get an asteroid base named after me.”
“What do you mean?” Keffa asked, frowning as Darragh groaned in despair.
“I mean I should be welcoming you,” Askit said, sweeping his arm out towards the exit. “To ‘New Askitoria’.”
Darragh shook his head. “That,” he said, “is a terrible name.”