Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lt.Col Owen “Stainless” Powell
Powell was feeling useless.
He was doing an important job. Nobody ever said otherwise, nobody thought otherwise as far as he could tell. It was his job to command the HEAT and JETS and he prided himself on being good at it.
But for fook sake, generals had stormed the beaches at Normandy, Daar was storming the Ring alongside his Lads and here Powell was, safe and clean and comfortable in his fookin’ utility trousers with a cup of tea next to his hand and a comfortable HEAT-sized chair to plant his arse in.
Somewhere out there on Earth, Rylee would be waiting to scramble if and when the opportunity came to deploy Firebirds. Up in orbit, the Fleet was on a hair-trigger to rush the Ring system and mop up the Hunters. The Lads, thousands of sailors and every pilot in the 946th were ready to put their lives on the line, not to mention the Stonebacks and Whitecrests.
But it sure as hell didn’t feel like Owen Powell was part of the fight any longer. He felt like a clerk. And he certainly bloody felt like a fraud.
And now that the wormhole carrier signal from the team had been lost, any chance he might have had to participate and prove his worth was gone. Given how abruptly it had cut out, the most likely explanation was a suppressor of some kind like the Farthrow generator on Gao.
He should have been there. He should be suited up and kickin’ arse with the best of them, but God fookin’ damn him, Daar had said no.
The big furry bastard had been contrite about it, but firm. And Powell was smart enough to know what that meant: It meant Daar wasn’t certain that any of them were coming back from this one. If they didn’t… well, humanity would still need the SOR. And it’d fall to Powell to rebuild it.
Christ, he could still remember Arés as a child for fook sake.
He sighed, drained his tea in one go—it was slightly too hot for that, but he was past caring—and stood up from his desk. He needed to move. He thought better when he was moving. And frankly, he needed to talk with somebody, too.
The base had gone that eerie kind of tense quiet it did when the Lads were deployed. No booming laughter or shouted Motivation echoing across the grounds or through the walls. No sound of constant machining and mechanical work from the suit shop. The occasional Rate or other allied Enlisted man who stepped aside for him in the halls had a quiet, intense look that was probably identical to his own.
If something big came up, there’d be action and noise again but now that the Array was silent and the mission was on, and especially without any kind of intel flowing back to them… well, there was nothing to do.
Make a cup of tea, sit and wait, sit and worry.
He found what he was looking for in the medical wing, which was easily the most lively part of the base right now. There was quite a knot of human activity in there: a couple of his Techs, Mears, Captain Galicki the Chaplain… and four of the five humans they’d recovered, plus nurses and doctors.
The conscious survivors were all skinny, massively undernourished and wearing the distant, haunted expressions of people who’d seen far too much. Spears was African-American and looked like a wild man thanks to years of beard and hair growth that he’d never stood a hope of properly maintaining. Choi looked like he’d just finished shaving and showering and was wearing clean clothes, and frankly the petite redhead sitting up in bed chatting with Galicki looked almost healthy.
That had to be Holly Chase, and if she’d had a shot of Crude then she was probably feeling amazing for the moment. One of the USAF techs, Miller, was brushing her hair.
The man in the bed next to her was pretty obviously sedated, and being watched over by young Tisdale. Powell share d a nod of recognition with the young man, who stood up as he entered, only to reveal a huge bruise on his jaw.
“Good afternoon, sir…”
Christ, the lad looked so much like his sister. Even all those years on, it made him difficult to look at. Powell gave him a nod, and then directed it more generally around the room. “Good afternoon… Christ, Tisdale, who gave you that?”
Tisdale indicated the sedated man. “He did, sir. He, uh…”
“A little too much information, a little too early,” Mears said, and Tisdale nodded with a slightly chastened air. Mears took the opportunity to make introductions. “Gentlemen, Doctor Chase, this is our commanding officer Colonel Powell.”
Spears and Chase had grips that belied their malnourishment, and Choi’s handshake was legitimately firm.
“This has all been a lot to take in…” Spears said after the handshakes were done. He glanced at the sedated man. “…Too much for Ben.”
“It’s too much for me,” Chase said. Of the three she looked closest to chipper, but that wasn’t saying much. “…one second I was in a warren on the Ring, and the next…” she waved a hand, then touched her stomach. “…Things have come a long way. I’m told it should be fully healed in an hour or two.”
“Please, Colonel,” Choi said. “They won’t tell us about our friend… Ben said she’s dead.”
“If she was, I’m sure they’d let you know,” Powell said. “I’ve found it’s best not to rush the doctors. Any road, I just got done talkin’ with Byron Group. They’re sendin’ one of their people over as we speak.”
“Who?” Spears asked.
“Xiù Chang. Nice lass. Pilot of EV-Eleven and the first person to set foot on Mars… and all of that’s after making such a good impression with the Gao.”
Choi looked interested. “That’s a hell of a resumé.”
“She’s had a hell of a ride,” Powell agreed. “There’ll be others too, I’m sure, but she’s closest by. I’d be surprised if Byron himself wasn’t over here before… long…”
He turned at a knock on the door. One of the base MPs opened the door, making the already crowded room even more so.
“Special consultant’s here for the doctors, sir,” he explained.
Powell was about to echo the words ‘special consultant?’ in search of an explanation, but he didn’t need to. There was only one person on the whole planet who could mince into a room so extravagantly.
Inwardly, his sentence started ‘oh, God…’ but externally he kept it civil. “…Good afternoon, Nofl.”
“Darling!” Nofl chirped happily, resulting in a bewildered stare from Choi, an arched eyebrow from Spears and a stifled giggle from Chase. Everybody else in the room was familiar with Nofl, though Powell was pretty sure he saw Miller wrestle a smirk off her face.
To be fair, if he’d seen some of his old COs being called ‘darling’ by a flamboyant ET with a handbag, he’d have had trouble keeping a straight face too.
“I take it our medics called you in to deal with one of our patients,” he observed.
“Yes indeed!” Nofl flounced through the room, and the man could flounce with the best of them. Something about his huge grey head just added to the spectacle. “Though they really didn’t share the details… this way, yes?”
“I’m sure you know it by now,” Powell grunted. He gave the MP escorting their guest a sympathetic nod and stood aside to make room.
Conversation resumed only after he was gone. The three Dauntless survivors had watched him with the same wary fascination that people always did the first time they met Nofl.
“…Is he for real?” Spears asked, once he was out of earshot.
“To be perfectly bloody frank, I have no idea,” Powell confessed. “An’ I don’t know if it scares me more if that’s an act he puts on or if it’s not.”
“Is… he here for Ray?” Chase asked.
“Most likely. Nofl’s a fookin’ oddball, but there’s folks walkin’ around with all their limbs an’ eyeballs today who wouldn’t have ‘em but for him…”
“So, he can—?” Chase lit up.
“Maybe.”
“I’ll take ‘maybe’,” Spears said. “‘Maybe’ is a hell of a lot better than ’no’.”
“I can find out more for you?” Powell offered. Their grateful expressions was all he needed, so he ducked further back into the medical center and quickly found what he was after. Nofl had been escorted into a room where the base’s two surgeons were standing around a holographic projector, examining a complex three-dimensional volumetric rendering of what had to be their patient.
She looked about as dead as dead got as far as Powell was concerned. That was a big bit of metal stuck through her heart.
“Sir,” Lieutenant Phillips acknowledged him as he entered.
“Your patients outside are keen to know their friend’s diagnosis,” Powell explained. “I don’t know owt about it, so…”
Phillips grimaced and rubbed his chin. He’d obviously come in on an emergency basis and wasn’t properly shaved, so the gesture made a rasping sound. “Rachel Wheeler, forty-six years old. Foreign body right through the cardiac muscle… and by ‘foreign body’ I mean a live fusion blade.”
“Her heart’s been destroyed, then,” Powell said. He could see the scan, and the tip of the claw was tickling the poor woman’s spine, having nicked the lungs en route, too.
Lieutenant Youhas nodded. “Ordinarily we’d call that a condition incompatible with life, but… well she was placed in stasis before brain-death.”
“I take it that makes a difference?”
“Technically she’s alive and on life support,” Youhas explained. “And we’re not going to remove that life support until we’re absolutely certain there’s no hope of saving her. Hence why we called in Nofl.”
Nofl’s chirpy act had become more solemn. He had climbed up onto the table so as to be at the same height as all the humans, and made a vague tutting sound as he inspected the display.
He caught Powell’s eye and affected a shrug. “Tricky,” he said. “Very tricky, with the tools we have available on Cimbrean. And then of course there’s the damage to the surrounding organs and blood vessels to consider… You have a tissue sample?” he checked, and looked satisfied when Youhas and Phillips nodded. “Then growing her a new heart is trivial, I can do that in my laboratory.”
“Hang on, if we can grow her a heart right here then what’s the problem?” Powell asked. “We can do heart transplants, can’t we?”
“Oh, you can,” Nofl agreed. “But how long would it take to hook your patient up to an artificial heart, Lieutenant?” he asked, addressing Phillips and Youhas equally.
“…Too long,” Youhas answered for both of them.
“Exactly. She would be thoroughly dead beyond all hope of resuscitation by the time a blood flow was reestablished. So the tricky part is that your people just don’t have the technology to stabilise the patient and perform the transplant quickly enough. ”
“Our people don’t,” Phillips echoed. “The Corti do?”
“Oh yes. Our most advanced hospitals have field-enhanced surgical suites that could literally take her apart, right down to separating out bones, organs and muscles if need be. It’s quite a sight, seeing a whole person disassembled and spread out in mid-air.”
“That sounds… invasive.” Youhas’ objection seemed more professional than disgusted. “What could you possibly need to do something that extreme for?”
“Injuries like this.” Nofl indicated the hologram. “Also, aggressive metastasized tumors that have spread throughout the whole body, autopsies, training on medical cadavers…”
Powell cleared his throat and pushed the subject forward. He’d seen more than his share of gore, but there was something far too detached and clinical about that mental image. “So a Corti hospital could fix her.”
Nofl didn’t even glance back at the scan, he just nodded. “Oh yes! Absolutely, darling. The human body responds remarkably well to staples and glue, for goodness’ sake. With the techniques available to the Directorate… why, she’ll barely notice she was injured!”
Powell grunted and considered the hologram again. “…How much?” he asked. There was always a price tag, with Corti.
“So cynical,” Nofl smirked, then faltered when Powell turned a trademark glare on him. “…Ah. Well… I can’t say. That would be a matter for the Directorate and the hospital faculty.”
“Find out for us,” Powell said.
“It… might be quite steep. The Directorate is in the middle of rather a large—”
“Nofl, I just want to know what the fookin’ price tag is,” Powell interrupted him. “We can’t bloody well discuss payin’ it if we don’t know what it is.”
Nofl sniffed. “…As you say, dear.” He turned to the surgeons. “I’ll need a copy of the scan data.”
“On the understanding that we take patient confidentiality seriously…” Phillips said.
“Of course! If there’s a contract, I shall sign it,” Nofl promised.
“I’ll go give her friends the news,” Powell said.
He left the doctors and alien to sort out whatever legalities were involved, and headed back through to the infirmary. One nice thing about the Infirmary over the rest of Sharman was that it was built to handle big men on wide gurneys surrounded by medics. The rest of the base could be a little cramped and narrow at times, but here he had all the elbow room he could ask for.
The Dauntless crew were still sitting quietly and being gently brought up to speed on the last decade of political, social and technological developments by Mears, Tisdale and Miller. Cook was still sedated, Spears and Choi were both looking exhausted but Chase was propped up on pillows and alert. She looked up as Powell entered.
“Good news?” she asked.
“…Aye, on balance. From what I gather, bein’ in a stasis bag she’s not technically dead so much as on a kind of life support. Bad news is, the kind of emergency surgery that could save her is just beyond us for now. The good news,” he added before she could say anything, “is that the Corti allegedly do have that kind of doctorin’. So we’re gonna see what their askin’ price is.”
“Asking price?” Choi looked offended.
“Corti aren’t human,” Powell reminded him. “Good news is, they’re usually bloody forthright about their fee, so I guess at this point we just keep her plugged in and… wait.”
“…Thank you,” Spears said, and extended a hand.
“Don’t thank me. I’m just the messenger.” Powell replied, though he shook hands anyway. “I’ll let you lot get some rest. Is there owt you need?”
The question was addressed to Mears, who shook his head. “Nothing important,” he said.
“Arright. You know how to contact me if you do.”
Powell let himself out and shook himself off. The mental image of that hologram kept coming back at him. He kept imagining the person it represented, pulled apart and hanging in mid-air like a butchered pig in the abattoir. The thought of surgery like that honestly freaked him out a bit.
He shook the thought from his mind, and went to find something else to do.
Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
Monument Valley, Navajo Nation Reservation, Utah/Arizona border, USA, Earth
Vemik Sky-Thinker
Vemik had never imagined land could look like this.
He was used to forests and open plains, so the first hand or two of days on Earth hadn’t been so different. The trees were odd shapes, many of them thin and skinny with whippy trunks and limbs that bent more with the wind than even the most pliant Forestfather. Then there had been the exact opposite, giants called “seek-woah-ya” that made a Ketta seem puny! The bark alone was thicker than his knife was long!
Food was a problem: most Earth beasts were small and cunning. The biggest of the ones that they’d seen lived among those trees, were about the size of a root-bird and much less stupid. A man could eat every day and still starve on such meagre fare.
Nearly everything Vemik had thought he’d known about living in the forest needed knowing anew. It had been humbling. Akyawentuo-home was strong, with its big beasts and its mighty trees and the firm embrace of its ‘gravity.’ Earth was obviously stronger than Cimbrean that way, but next to home it was… less.
Well. Except for the Seek-woah-ya. Those were strong trees, to Yan’s grudging admiration.
So, Vemik had learned about a different kind of strength from Earth. If Akyawentuo-home was a Given-Man, then Earth was more like Vemik himself. Smaller, but more… the English word was ‘inventive.’ And a man who wanted to live there needed to be inventive too. He couldn’t just hunt something Werne-like, because there were no Werne-like beasts. Instead he had to dig for roots, brave the waters for “fish,” lay patient traps… And eat everything he could get his hands on.
Squirrel was nice. The brains were nutty!
But this—!
There was so much sky!
There was so much heat!
The landscape was stranger than strange. The plants were tiny, tough things that almost hid from the sun and from each other, so that there was more dusty red soil to look at than greenery. And the ground was nailed to the sky not by trees, but by great girthy wind-carved rocks that danced in the distant hot air.
Compared to a forest, it was a dead place. But in truth it was anything but: there was life everywhere. Huge birds winged in slow loops without ever seeming to tire or land. Every rock was home to a little slithering skittery thing with tough dry skin, or a frantic running furry thing with huge ears.
And then there were the beasts Vemik could hear but not see.
“There it is again!” he held up a hand. Jooyun nodded this time: it looked like he was quite familiar with the barking and the high, thin howl it became.
“Coyote,” he said. “A predator.”
Yan raised his head. He was really suffering in the heat, and was sitting in the back of their “Pick Up” with a cloth over him. Vemik could see the appeal—the sun here was large, and hot and yellow.
“Dangerous?”
“Not to us.”
“You’ve said that about every predator so far,” Yan grumbled. “Isn’t there one on this Earth of yours that humans fear?”
Jooyun nodded. “Sure there are, you’ll meet some later on…actually, funny story.” He chuckled. “There’s one… we call it ‘bear,’ which sorta means ‘the brown one.’ Guess some things are the same everywhere, huh?”
Yan shuddered and looked to the sky. “You have Brown Ones too?”
“Yours are a lot bigger. And nastier. But trust me, we wouldn’t want to tangle with a bear.”
“We have guns!” Vemik said. He’d seen Human guns tear apart the Big Enemy’s weapons, surely there was nothing living that could stand against them? But Jooyun shook his head.
“Lotta times, shooting a bear just makes it angry…” he explained, then perked up as the wind carried a kind of crunching, dusty growling sound toward them. “…I think our guide’s here.”
Vemik, reeling from the notion that an animal could be shot and only get annoyed, turned to see where he was looking. Another “pick up” was kicking up a long tail of dust as it bounced down a long path that was barely worthy of the word to meet them.
There were two guides, in fact. A Human man and woman, both of whom bounced out of the truck grinning broadly and ready to shake hands.
“Are we late, or are you guys early?” the man asked. Humans could be very funny about saying hello sometimes.
“We’re early. Figured I’d give the cavemonkeys a chance to enjoy the view while it was still kinda cool,” Jooyun explained. “Yan Given-Man, Vemik Sky-Thinker, these are Mikey and Raven, our guides.”
“You met already?” Yan groaned as he heaved himself out of the truck. He hated hot days. “When?”
“Never in person. We’ve sent messages.” Jooyun explained. “But it turns out Raven’s like… what are you, my third cousin?”
“Third or fourth, with maybe a removed or two thrown in there somewhere, yeah,” Raven nodded. She had a wide, happy smile that started in her eyes and made them sparkle: Vemik decided he liked her.
“Means what?” Vemik asked.
“We had the same… great-great grandmother?” he asked Raven, who shrugged.
“Think she was my great-great-great, but whatever. So long as it’s good for a selfie, yeah?”
Jooyun chuckled. “Yeah, okay. So, I gotta admit, I know basically nothing about desert survival myself. Hopefully that means I’m gonna learn a few things this week.”
“Should be fun,” Mikey agreed. “We’d better begin before it starts to get hot.”
Yan made a choking noise. “…This is not hot to you?”
“The sun’s only been up for an hour,” Mikey said in a light tone of voice, as though the battering heat that weighed on Vemik’s shoulders like a rock was just a pleasant cool morning.
“We’ll be freezing our tails off tonight,” Jooyun promised. He heaved a bag out of the truck bed and onto his shoulders with an easy shrug.
“Both in one day?” Yan looked up. “…No trees.”
“Exactly. Nothing to keep the warm air near the ground. Nothing but burning sun all day, and cold starlight all night.” Raven produced her own pack from the guides’ truck and put it on. “The animals out here know how to deal with that: they like to live under stuff. So, that’s where today’s lesson begins.”
Vemik and Yan traded a look that they’d traded many times over the last few hands of days. It said something like: ‘…and we thought this would be easy.’
Vemik had said as much to Jooyun, once, who’d immediately lavished a mischievous sideways grin across his face. “Easy, huh?” he’d asked. “What kind of pushovers do you fellas take us for?”
He caught it this time, too. “It’s fine, big guy,” he told Yan. “Just go to your happy place. Think of Amanda.”
It was always fun seeing how fast Yan really was when he was motivated. Jooyun was getting wise to his tricks, but that didn’t mean he could actually do anything about them… a lesson Vemik had learned all too well.
“Funny.” Yan grumbled indulgently, once the blur of motion was over. “A-man-da not strong enough for real man, anyway!”
Mikey paused in putting on his own pack. “…Dare I ask?”
Jooyun was chuckling as he picked himself up, having landed in the dirt several tail-lengths away. That had been a gentle, playful shove by Yan standards. “My kinda-sorta mother-in-law.”
Somehow, this seemed to answer every question both Mikey and Raven had. They glanced at each other, shrugged, and finished getting ready.
“Okay!” Raven said, once everyone was carrying all their stuff. “Ready?”
Vemik shook himself and took a good look at the red, baked land around them. “…At least I learn things,” he said stoically.
“That’s the spirit!” Jooyun gave him a firm smack on the shoulder to encourage him, and then grinned. “Come on.”
The guides led, Vemik followed, and the day unfolded.
The heat only got worse.
Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
The Ring, Hell System, Hunter Space
Fiin, Champion of Clan Stoneback
There was indeed a shanty perched atop their route through the Ring, and the Great Father’s sense of honor had reared its head as a result. Even though they were about to kill all these people, he wasn’t willing to kill them right this second.
Fiin agreed. But the thought that kept coming back to him like a wad of meat stuck in his back teeth was that he didn’t know why he agreed. After all, it fundamentally didn’t matter… did it?
Daar seemed to think it did, and Daar was in charge. Fiin, meanwhile, had learned the hard way that some questions were not for the battlefield.
As Champion, he was on the command channel alongside Daar, Costello and Regaari. So far, he’d kept his contributions terse and simple. He’d share his thoughts if they were asked for. He’d share them good and hard later, with Champions Gyotin and Genshi. But here and now, he might be Champion but he was following the Great Father.
“Okay. Options.”
“Enter that structural void via another nearby route,” Fiin offered.
“Head turnwise-by-down, use another void about half a klick away.” Costello suggested.
“I see those as the only viable options, other than sticking to the original plan.” Regaari finished.
“I already vetoed that, DEXTER.”
“Yes, sir.” Regaari packed a lot of different meanings into those two brisk syllables, though none were insubordinate.
“CHAMPION has the best solution, I think,” Costello said.
“Agreed.” Daar turned his head Fiin’s way. “You got a preferred option, Brother?”
Fiin called up the map. There was a balancing act to perform here: that void was going to gulp up air from the surrounding compartments, just like the first one they’d entered. The whole point of not going in through what they now knew to be the shanty was not to suffocate the slaves living there, so they would need to breach it somewhere close enough for expediency, but far enough away that the shanty wouldn’t get vented if somebody opened the wrong door.
And they had to choose quick, before the Hunters seized on their moment of stillness as an opportunity. Movement was life: if they got stuck in one place, they’d be besieged and most likely never break free.
“…Straight down,” he said. “Three levels, cut through into that pipe-lookin’ thing.”
The Ring was a three-dimensional maze. Every level of it was packed with stuff that gave no consideration to Gaoian (or Human) comforts or logic like where people were supposed to live and walk. It was like the whole thing was purely industrial: They hadn’t seen a single living quarter yet, not one precinct or arcade.
Then again, how sparse were those things down on a planet? Most of a civilized territory by area was farmland, after all, and much more still was unused wilderness. Cities might seem sprawling and huge, but really they were just dense and complicated.
The Ring was huge enough to definitely have the equivalent of cities somewhere in its structure. But probably they were out in the equivalent of the back-country. It would sure explain why so much of what surrounded them was structural voids: there was nothing living in the area to use the space, so it was kept empty.
None of them had any idea what that pipe was or what it did, but Daar seemed satisfied with Fiin’s suggestion regardless. If it had pressure doors, then they’d be able to safely blast into vacuum without massacring the shanty. “Make it happen.”
It took only a couple of clear instructions to pull the Defenders back to the middle of the formation, where they set about tearing up the floor. The Great Father pitched in alongside them, clawing a grav-plate straight out of the deck and tossing it aside like it was easy.
Fiin would have liked to join him, but he was distracted when HIGHLAND turned and gave him an urgent gesture. He indicated a nearby door the moment Fiin had joined him.
“Noise,” he said.
“Slaves?” Fiin asked
“Prob’ly.”
Sure enough, the door’s huge low-tech seal twisted, squealed and it swung aside, admitting the sound of interrogative chatter from the far side.
A pair of enormous Locayl peered through. Their curiosity turned to rigid shock and fright the second they discovered an armed strike force of deathworlders aiming rifles at them.
Murray spoke in a soft, almost amiable tone that sent an intimidated shiver down Fiin’s spine, let alone the Locayls’.
“Away an’ forget about us now, lads,” he advised. “Best thing for ye.”
The pair fled.
“…One’a these days ‘yer gonna hafta teach me how you do that, bruh,” BASEBALL commented. Murray just shrugged.
Fiin snarled slightly and stalked forward to the door. He closed it, sealed it, then broke out the welding tool he carried for exactly these situations. It took only a few seconds for him to permanently close it: he doubted even WARHORSE could have smashed it open from the other side without explosives.
Behind him, the floor gave way and the Defenders dropped down through it, declaring seconds later that the section they’d just entered was clear. The Protectors were second through it, followed by the Whitecrests, First Fang, and finally the Aggressors.
The second floor was just as easily negotiated as the first.
The third dropped them into a group of extremely surprised Hunters, which reacted with commendable swiftness considering the way the ceiling fell in on them and disgorged a handful of brutally effective elite combat engineers.
Fiin had to admit: he enjoyed killing Hunters. There was something truly satisfying about taking the most feared and loathed creatures in the galaxy and breaking them. And it had become so easy to do; he was fast, he was strong, he had the skills and the will to action.
The most bestest was when his prey recognized what was happening, and flashed a moment of fear. He could see it even in a Hunter’s black, dead eyes: The moment they knew that they were beaten and that there was absolutely nothing they could do to change their fate.
Fyu’s nuts but it made him feel alive!
It ended all too quickly. The Hunters were a small group, maybe a scouting party or maybe… who knew. But they lasted mere seconds and their best shot wasn’t remotely good enough.
MOHO finished the last one off with a crushing blow to the head that left it staggering and half-dead, before dispatching it with a point-blank burst of fire to the torso. He left left it crumpled on the deck, but Fiin could see his eyes behind the visor: he felt it too.
Daar hopped down the hole an instant later and surveyed the carnage silently before turning to their target.
“…What’s in that pipe?” he asked, referring to the huge tube running alongside them, easily big enough even for a Hunter to stand up straight in. Humans and Gao, being much smaller, would have no trouble at all fitting inside.
TITAN sprang over to it and pressed a sensor against its surface. “…Water,” he said, after a second. “A fuck of a lotta water.”
“You can work with that, right?” Daar asked.
“Hell yes, sir,” TITAN had a grin in his voice as he gestured to SNAPFIRE. Fiin made room as the rest of the force came down to join them.
SNAPFIRE was already prepping a charge. “Water hammer?” he asked.
“Yup.”
“Awesome.”
“Yup.”
Everybody knew what that tone of voice meant: the whole strike force backed away from them, to a safe distance. Fiin couldn’t blame them: Water, being incompressible, behaved in some very interesting ways when combined with high explosives.
Such as, for example, becoming a lethal cutting jet that blew right through the pipe on detonation and tore out the other side. Rather than flooding them, Sikes and Akiyama had instead created a relatively small hole on their side, and a fuckin’ huge one on the far side.
The decompression did the rest, tearing the pipe open and spilling the water out into vacuum, where it promptly became a fog, and then a cloud of ice crystals as the gas pressure plummeted and took the temperature with it.
It was pretty fuckin’ beautiful, actually. Silence fell again as the air went away, and Fiin reflected that he’d spent most of this mission so far with nothing to listen to except the sound of his own breathing, and the occasional muffled thud and bump through his suit whenever he touched something.
“This one should get us within two klicks of that hangar on the surface,” Costello observed, as the HEAT stepped out into the space beyond and resumed maneuvering on their suit thrusters. Their helmet lights cut eerie beams through the great cloud of snow they’d made.
Fiin used the command channel to privately share a concern that had been building in the back of his mind for a while. “Anyone else think the resistance has been pretty light so far?”
“Yeah.” Daar agreed. “Means they’re waiting ‘fer us, most likely.”
“Right.” Costello stepped out into the void, and Fiin followed him.
Whatever came, would come. There was no sense worrying about it.
Date Point: 15y6m1d AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Jamie Choi
Maybe Jamie was just starved for human contact, but their next visitor was… stunning. Despite the old split eyebrow she could have been a movie star, no question, and she moved like…
He remembered not to stare, though it took an effort when she thanked the MP who escorted her in by flashing a warm smile.
Damian sat up a little in his bed and blinked: he’d nearly nodded off there.
“Uh… hi? I’m guessing you’re miss Chang?”
“That’s me.” She smiled and shook his hand, then Holly’s, and finally Jamie’s. Her hands were surprisingly tough and hard: they looked a lot softer than they were. “You guys raised quite a fuss when we heard you were back… Moses is on his way, but he won’t be here until this evening. In the meantime, you’ve got me. Sorry.”
“I think we’ll cope,” Jamie ventured with a chuckle. “Y’know, the CO here had some crazy things to say about you…”
She made a complicated gesture and sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs. “I’m sure. But I’m here for you guys… There’s four of you?” she asked, looking at Cook.
“Sort of. Ray… that’s Doctor Wheeler, Rachel. She’s, uh…” Jamie trailed off, not quite knowing how to finish the sentence. Holly looked like she was about to start crying again.
“…We’re not sure she’s going to make it,” Damian finished. He sounded numb, not that Jamie could blame him.
Chang bowed her head a little. “…I take it Doctor Berry-Brown and Mister Conley didn’t make it.” They shook their heads, and she sighed. “…I’m sorry.”
“You flew a ship. You know what crew’s like…” Damian said.
“Well.. my crew was a little different to yours,” she said, “…But yeah. If we’d lost… I’d be devastated. I know it’s a dumb question, but are you guys okay?”
“I got shot!” Holly told her. She seemed weirdly proud of it. “Right in the…” she prodded at her bandage then frowned at it. “…It doesn’t even hurt anymore though. They gave me something called, uh… Cruiser?”
“Cruezzir. It’s imported alien medicine. You’ll be all healed up by the time Moses gets here, probably.”
“Good stuff!” Jamie exclaimed, then glanced at Cook. “…Guess it doesn’t work so great on some things though, huh?”
“Not so much…” Chang stood up and checked on Cook for herself. “…They told me he’s sedated.”
“He… didn’t take things well,” Damian explained. “Cracked that guy Jack right in the jaw… Kid can take a punch, I’ll give him that.”
“…It’s a jolt, coming back,” Chang said. “How much did they tell you?”
Jamie answered for all three of them. “There was a lot. Something about how the motherfuckers who bombed San Diego are an alien conspiracy to make us all extinct, and… Well, I guess Cook… I don’t even know. He just… snapped.”
“Is he gonna be okay?” Holly asked.
“If I know Moses Byron, he’ll do absolutely everything in his power for him. For all of you,” Chang predicted.
Jamie and Damian both stared at her for a second, then looked to each other, then at Holly.
“…If that’s so, then he’s a changed man,” Damian said at last. “Compared to the guy who threw us out into space in a cheap ship we barely understood with no map.”
“He is.”
“…You sound like you really believe that.”
Chang chewed on her lower lip for a second, then did something Jamie really couldn’t have foreseen: she shrugged off her jacket, dropped it neatly over the back of a chair, and then rolled up her sleeve.
Her arm was a fractal tapestry of awful scars. Those weren’t self-harm scars or anything; that was an arm that had once suffered a grievous injury.
“…I’ve been through a lot,” she said after letting them stare at it for a few seconds. “I was a Corti abductee, I nearly got eaten by Hunters—that’s where I got these—I had to watch somebody very dear to me sacrifice herself to save my life…”
Her voice caught a little on the word ‘sacrifice,’ and it took her a moment to rally. She pointed out another scar on her neck. “…I had a knife held to my throat so hard that it cut, and I nearly got spaced. Have you ever tried to breathe hard vacuum?”
Transfixed, Jamie just shook his head. She gave him a complicated look he couldn’t really understand: there was a bit of optimism in there, a little trauma, and a large dose of resilience. Above all, it said ‘I have.’
“When I got back to Earth… I wasn’t whole,” she continued. “I didn’t have a purpose, or a life really. I just had my loved ones. And I thought maybe that would have been enough…. but they knew better. They knew we needed to have a purpose. Moses Byron gave us that purpose. He gave us a brand-new ship, made by human hands with human technology. We called her Misfit and I was her pilot, and together we went to amazing places, saw amazing things, met amazing people…”
She rolled her sleeve back down. “…I truly believe he’s a changed man,” she finished. “I think he’s carrying a lot of guilt over what happened to you.”
“As he should,” Damian grumbled, but it sounded like his heart wasn’t in it. Jamie could sympathize—the last person he’d heard speak with such conviction had been Ray.
Chang shrugged her jacket on. “He’ll be here in a few hours,” she said. “If that’s a conversation you want to have with him… well, go for it, I say. I’ll tell him what’s going on with you guys and keep the press off your backs until then… But I need to know what happened to you. Starting from the top.”
“It’s… I don’t know if I’m ready to…” Damian began. Jamie nodded fervently, while Holly just lowered her gaze to stare at her toes.
Chang nodded soothingly. “I understand,” she said earnestly. “And if there’s anything you can’t say yet, that’s fine. I’ll hear whatever you say, no judgement, no pressure, no questions.”
She settled in her chair, crossed one knee over the other, and waited. There was a moment of silence where the only sound was the distant conversation of doctors elsewhere in the medical wing, and then Jamie found himself speaking without ever consciously deciding to.
“…We didn’t have a map,” he began. “No infrastructure, nothing. There was a paid contact out at… Where was it, Irbzrk?”
Damian nodded. “Yeah. Irbzrk. Some guy Moses hired to set up a jump beacon for us. Hell, the ship was mostly made from Irbzrk parts, so I guess he got everything at the same place. So we jumped out there, picked a direction and went with it. Guess nobody bothered to tell us Irbzrk is pretty fuckin’ close to Hunter space…”
“Or that all the best temperate planets in that volume are in Hunter space…” Holly added.
“So, our exoplanet ‘scope pings a half-dozen interesting worlds in that direction and, well… I guess that’s where it begins,” Damian finished. “We flew in there and we found… well, we found…”
Chang didn’t speak. She just listened politely, until the right word dragged itself out of Jamie’s mouth.
“…Hell,” he said.