www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
Hearts and Bones
by
Paul L. Mathews
Part One
Five Seconds to
Live
Three days since leaving Potter’s Field, and only hours after stopping on the planet Ensign for further supplies, the Troika was attacked again.
“Where
did they come from?” Tatiana asked, her voice raised
over the klaxon’s tantrum.
“They
were hiding in asteroid belt.” Ivan vacated the pilot’s seat for her and limped
to the navigation station. His forehead flushed and damp, he began to strap
himself in.
Tatiana strapped herself in also, struggling with the
belts as she tried to fly the Troika with one hand. She had been about
to bunk down when the gunboats had attacked, and was still in her night
clothes—a light, ankle length and amorphous night-shirt. Even so, she began to
sweat. She appraised the myriad displays, the only source of illumination in
the benighted flight-deck. The TAC read-outs
alleviated the darkness, but they had no good news. She looked to her main TAC display. Three contacts, closing fast. Built in the
semblance of sheeps’ skulls, they were of a design
she’s never seen before. As she looked, they each fired a pair of torpedoes.
Great, Tatiana thought. Three
bogies and nothing to fight them off with. “Any
ideas, Uncle?” She stopped fiddling with the intransigent belts and
instead stabbed at her console, deploying a bank of counter-measures.
“We go to light speed,” Ivan said as his stiff old fingers moved as quickly as they could over the navigation computer, “and hope they can’t follow.”
“Co-ordinates?”
“Laid in now, yes?”
“Engaging!” Tatiana reached above her head and stabbed at the bank of switches. She felt the pull at her internal organs as the Troika’s graviton drive engaged, and her vision lost focus briefly as her eyes struggled with the brief, sharp acceleration. Pushed back into the seat, she felt Ivan’s sweat on the back of it soaking through her night-shirt.
“No good,” Ivan said as the compensators finally kicked in. “They have jumped to light speed too.”
“Aren’t they too small to have graviton drives?”
“There are more things in Heaven and Hell, Tatiana.”
Oh, yeah, because quoting damn Shakespeare’s really going to help, isn’t it? she thought, pulse quickening further as her mind raced. “Any more ideas, Uncle?”
“Just get Troika to those co-ordinates.” He was trying to sound unruffled and focused, but Tatiana—perhaps for the first time in her life—detected a tremor in his tone, the slightest quiver. “We will take it from there.”
#
Ten minutes later, and with the three gun-boats still on its tail, the Troika decelerated rapidly, dropping out of light-speed as it arrived on the edge of a gargantuan expanse of ruination and decay. The legacy of an apocalyptic space battle, this lamentation of wrecked capital ships stretched hundreds of kilometres before the Troika. Beyond it all lay a small system of five planets and a red, shifting nebula.
“Is this it, Uncle?” Tatiana said. Is this your plan? You’ve brought us here to be buried with all the other dead ships?
“This is it, Tatiana, the Elephant’s Graveyard,” Ivan said. He cracked the knuckles on his massive hands as he surveyed his display, and Tatiana thought a seam of strength had returned to his voice. “Now, take us in.”
“You’re the boss,” she muttered, head lowering as her eyes narrowed and her fingers flexed on the Troika’s yoke.
#
Thrusters propelling it at an insane speed, the Troika
dove into the mass of mutilated ships. Theocracy vessels, the bigger ones were
built along vertical axis, like monoliths, and had once been majestic, imposing
towers of brass and genocidal potential—but now they
were little more than blackened, bent derelicts. Swooping port and starboard,
the Troika danced between these
warped corpses. It swept passed burnt out destroyers, it blasted by the icy
wrecks of fighters, dove between the smashed remains of battleships, and
thundered through the disembowelled carcasses of frigates. Behind it, every bit
as fast and every bit as agile, the gun-boats still hounded it, firing torpedo
after torpedo. Most were confused by the Troika’s counter-measures,
detonating as they neared them, but some pressed on, refusing to take the bait
and bearing down on the Troika. One had already detonated so close as to
punch a hole in the Troika’s armoured skin and damage the graviton
drives. Now four more torpedoes were closing fast.
#
“Five seconds, Tatiana!” Uncle Ivan shouted. She could barely hear him over the shrieking alarms and wailing klaxons. “Five seconds to impact!”
Tatiana looked at the monitor as it betrayed the four
pursuing torpedoes “I see them!” She winced,
wrist still hurting from her crash on Parlour. Her palms were sweating, and she
could feel perspiration running down her face and from her armpits. She took a
deep, calming breath and gripped the yoke hard, the knuckles of her hand white
as she forced the Troika into a downward trajectory, accelerating.
Torpedoes closing fast, the Troika hurtled
toward the darkness brooding within a dead battleship’s open hangar. Reaching
the threshold of the hangar, the Troika’s retros
flared into life, and the cutter began a violent
deceleration as it entered. Moments later the torpedoes pursued it, swallowed
by the darkness within.
The resulting explosion tore the top off the battleship and split what was left of the vessel in two. The fireball was fierce, but it was brief, subsumed by the vacuum. Out of its dying bosom burst the Troika, reversing at a dizzying speed. Just as the torpedoes had overshot their target, now did the Troika shoot past the gun-boats before sweeping into a turn and firing up its thrusters again. Behind, the pursuing vessels decelerated and jigged to avoid the spinning debris from the dead battleship before adjusting course and heading after their target once again.
“My God, Tatiana!” Ivan’s voice was strained, and Tatiana was fairly sure his face would be every bit as pale.
“Sorry, Uncle,” she said, meekly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She surveyed the TAC display, taking in the mess and confusion of the dead ships. I’ve got to do something. I can’t keep this up. We’ve been lucky so far, but… “Did you say you had a plan, Uncle?” No response. “Uncle?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. He was ashen, and the thought that even her brave, implacable Uncle Ivan was worried made Tatiana feel even worse. “There!” he said, his statement coinciding with a ping! as a new display burst into life on her TAC screen. It was a three dimensional representation of the chaotic graveyard laid out in green, and what looked like a small planetoid glowed red in the centre. “Take us there!” Ivan said. “Take us to centre.”
“Then what?!”
“We shake them off and then go to light-speed again.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Am working on it.”
“Can you work faster?”
“No, I cannot.”
Tearing her attention away from the TAC display, she risked another quick glance over her shoulder. He was hunched over the navigation console, carefully plotting a series of co-ordinates.
“Well-plotted course is essential,” he said. “To activate graviton drives and pass too close to a sun, or hit a planet, m-fray, or gravitational distortion could destroy ship.”
“I know that—”
Ivan ignored her and grasped the mic on his headset “Boyd? Katarina?...Boyd? Can you hear me?”
#
Katarina and Boyd were in the cramped, low confines of the graviton bay, klaxons bludgeoning the air and making Katarina’s ears hurt. All about them was the flashing red of alarms, the orange and yellow of sparks and the oily blue of smoke and Boyd’s vociferous cursing. The air smelt of burning rubber and melting plastic—and it tasted just as bad.
The heat made Katarina sweat profusely whilst she
crouched and tried to jury-rig a new conduit between the bay’s muon catalyst generator—a hulking, cylindrical affair that
dominated the bay—and the hydrogen banks. A whole bank of these conduits had
ruptured. She didn’t know a great deal about engineering, but she knew the muon converter wouldn’t work without hydrogen—and that
meant no graviton drives.
She’d been about to bunk down when the gunboats had
attacked, and even now she was still in her night clothes—a baggy, stripped
sweater and men’s boxer-shorts. Bare feet and hands cut from the shards of
metal that littered the bay, her teeth were bared and eyes wide in a
combination of pain and anger.
For God’s sake! she thought as she tried to batter a bent conduit back into shape with a hammer with all the finesse of a charging elephant. Why can’t we go somewhere without someone trying to kill us?
“Boyd? Are you there?” Ivan’s distorted voice stabbed
her in the ear through her headset.
“I’m here, Ivan.” Boyd answered, tack-welding a new
conduit in place, face shielded behind a safety mask.
“We need those drives!”
Katarina suddenly thought how much his distorted
voice matched her perception of Ivan—warped, angry and threatening. Or at least
the Ivan he used to be.
“I’m doing my best, Ivan.” Boyd’s voice sounded
muffled and angry behind the mask. She looked at him. His hands were shaking. “If you hadn’t dragged us even further into the
bloody Pagentorns it wouldn’t be a fu—”
“You will keep mouth shut and do your job, Boyd,” Ivan snapped, voice raised and serrated with an electronic distortion. “Get those drives repaired. Ivan out.”
#
The Troika sped on, hurtling toward the centre of the graveyard.
“Christ on a bloody bike,” Tatiana yelled, mimicking Boyd. “Look at the size of that thing!”
She’d been wrong. It wasn’t a planetoid on the TAC screen—it was the corpse of a vessel so massive it boggled Tatiana’s mind. It lay rotting at the epicentre of the conflagration, besieged by the ghosts of the smashed vessels around it. The semi-spherical front of the ship was smooth, polished and white like a gigantic pebble, but this seemingly delicate façade dove-tailed into the vessels rear: an ugly confusion of metal, maser banks, torpedo bays, mass-drivers, empty javelin pods, and spent pulse spheres.
“It is Jaroth Pha dreadnought,” Ivan shouted over the klaxons. “It was attacked here years ago.”
“Jaroth Pha?...Dreadnought?
Wait a minute. Did you say this
was the Elephants Graveyard, Uncle?” She’d heard stories about this place—the
legacy of a Jaroth Pha flagship’s last stand against a Theocracy fleet “I remember father mentioning this place.
That, and a name… Tusk?”
“Never mind that, Tatiana—just get inside the dreadnought. We can lose these ships inside it and then get away once the graviton drive is back—”
He was cut off as yet another alarm bleated. The gun-boats were gaining—and quickly.
Think fast, Princess, Tatiana told herself. They’re gonna be all over us like a rash any second now…
#
Katarina paused before answering. “Vast?” she said. “I think she’s reloading the counter-measures on deck three. Why?”
“Get to the hanger, Kat,” Tatiana said over the ‘net, voice edged and sharp. “Meet her there.”
“Vast? The hangar?” Katarina
said. “That doesn’t make sense. An’ who made you boss, anyway!?”
“Not now, Kat—just go!”
#
The Troika convulsed as Tatiana tortured it,
putting it through a spiralling barrel roll as she hurled it along the
cylindrical body of a decayed troopship. Behind the vessel, vortices of
ice left a trail that circled the dead ship like ribbon on a may-pole.
#
“It’s no use—I can’t shake them!” Tatiana
manhandled the ship in to a tight bank, but still the three contacts shadowed
them on her TAC. “Damn it, Uncle—who are these people?”
“They are Calci,” Ivan said, voice heavy and strained, “and I had hoped you would never meet them.”
She pulled back hard on the yoke, steering the Troika up and into a yawning hole in a gutted destroyer before emerging from a similar hole on the other side of the eviscerated cadaver. She looked to her monitors, and allowed herself a brief, rare smile. These “Calci”, in there gun-boats, had overshot the wound through which the Troika had threaded, and were having to slow and double-back.
Buys us a minute...maybe, she thought as she altered course and slammed the throttle forward, driving headlong for the dreadnought.
#
“I’m in the hangar, Tat,” Katarina said.
She’d only just reached the hangar, bleeding feet rendered numb from the Troika’s cold deck. The lights were on and was Vast already there, punching the combination into the Old Bitch’s door-lock. The Troika’s three shuttles were secured to the deck. Even now the Old Bitch seemed to glare at Katarina, as if it still resented her for putting her though Hell on Parlour. For her part, Katarina was trying to ignore the memory of the Witch’s dragons moving across that deck toward her and Matinee…
“Three shuttles, Kat,” Tatiana said over the ‘net. “That’s one more than we need.”
What is she talking about? Katarina thought as she leant back against a bulkhead and raised one foot to massage it with cut, bloodied fingers. Her brow furrowed. “What? I don’t understand?”
“You will. Vast knows what to do. Be ready.”
#
“Tatiana! No!” Tatiana had never heard such obvious
fear and alarm in Ivan’s voice before…
…But she pushed on regardless.
The Troika dove into an aperture on the side of the Jaroth Pha dreadnought so small the Russian cutter barely fit into it. Beyond this aperture was some sort of tunnel—an exhaust, Tatiana guessed—so narrow that the sides of the Troika vomited sparks and slivers of armoured hide as its hull glanced against the blackened, claustrophobic walls. Her TAC told her it ran for a hundred kilometres, at least, with other such tunnels branching off. Her TAC also told her the Calci gun-boats had followed, rushing headlong after their prey. Now their torpedoes were exhausted, and instead they were stabbing at their quarry with maser beams.
“We take damage!”
“I know, Uncle! I know!” She made a rushed appraisal
of a secondary TAC screen, and leant hard on the yoke
as she throttled back. The Troika pitched up and to the side as it left
this tunnel and darted into another.
#
The yaw was so violent that even the
“Tat! For God’s sake!”
Katarina yelled as
she felt her stomach vault into her throat and her whole body vibrate. Helping
the silent, inscrutable Vast prep the shuttle, she had
to stop, hands grabbing at the control console.
“Sorry!” Tatiana said over the ‘net. “Better hold on, Kat. We’re in for a rough ride!”
#
“What kind
of idiot designs an exhaust system like this?” Tatiana muttered under
her breath as she wrestled with the controls. Her TAC
display revealed a twisting convolution of intersecting exhausts. She pushed
the Troika to a speed her instinct described as ‘stupid’.
The undulations of the exhaust, and the Calci’s reticence to match the Troika’s speed, meant the pursuing vessels were presented few opportunities to target their masers on the Valentines’ ship. Their wild, continual fire chewed white hot chunks out of the exhaust walls that showered the Troika in tiny, molten meteorites.
Tatiana looked sideways at the engineering read-out.
“Ivan! Thrusters two and five are down!
We’ve got breaches on decks C, D and E.” She punched at her controls to bring
up a further read-out. “Counter-measures down. Life support and scanning systems at critical.” She pitched the Troika into a new tunnel, barely
avoiding a volley of maser beams. “One
more hit, Uncle, and it’s all over.”
#
“We’re ready, Tat! The engines are primed, the auto-pilot’s active, and the proximity detector’s in place.” Despite the numbness in her extremities (Is it getting even colder? Don’t tell me the damned life-support’s screwed again!), Katarina allowed herself a grim smile as—jumping out of the shuttle—she looked toward the hangar doors.
They were open now, and beyond the hangar’s AEGIS shield, she could see the tunnel walls as they hurtled by. A brazen trail of sparks and bits of the Troika—so hot as to be almost translucent—span away in the cutter’s wake.
The pursuing gun-boats were still there, spitting at them.
“Do it, Kat!” Tatiana said, her voice urgent and strained. “Do it now!”
#
Ivan’s discarded shuttle sped toward the Calci, automatic pilot zeroing in. One of the gun-boats
veered to avoid collision, impacting against the exhaust wall and vanishing in
a silent white rose of fire and rent metal. The remaining pair split up like a
pair of foxes, going to either side, only to be consumed in an explosive fury
as the shuttle’s proximity detector triggered its self-destruct.
What was left of the two Calci gun-boats span out of this brief, explosive flourish, only to smash into the exhaust walls, breaking up instantaneously.
#
“Ha! In your face!” Katarina
shouted, raising her index finger as she looked back at the spinning, twisted
remnants of the gun-boats ricocheting off the tunnel behind. She span on her
feet and gave the grinning Vast a high-five.
“We did, it, Tatiana!” she shouted over her mike as she messaged her aching wrist. “We did it!”
#
“What is she doing, Tatiana! That was our best shuttle! She should have used Old Bitch!”
“Not now, Ivan.” Tatiana didn’t even have time to reflect on the boldness of her reply. She’d never spoken to him like that before. “What’s on the long-range scanner?” she said, focusing on more pressing matters. “Are there anymore of these ‘Calci’ out there?”
“Yes. Four more contacts. They look like troop-carriers.” He turned to her, eyes lost in shadow. “They are closing on graveyard.
“We’re not out of this yet.”
Part Two
Zombie
Twenty years before the ambush, Ivan had stood in the biggest hangar deck he had ever seen. All about him was chaos. Alarms sounded; soldiers, pilots and mechanics shouted as they rushed to and fro; service vehicles ranging from tiny buggies to cherry pickers and hefty wagons criss-crossed the bay, yellow lights flashing and horns beeping; phalanx after phalanx of wardroids marched by, the whine of their servos almost nasal and plaintive; flat-beds laden with torpedoes and ECMs were carefully escorted to their new homes; and, in what few areas of tranquillity they could find, men whispered prayers and crossed themselves as the word spread: The Theocracy was coming.
“Very good,” Ivan said to the tall, thin soldier
beside him. Both were dressed in the red and black flight-suits marked with the
insignia of the Omega Hammers. “Get back to Siberian Winter and get Pavlo’s unit aboard.”
“I remember,” the soldier said, citing the company motto. His sallow, emaciated face was implacable and cold.
“And Yevgeny,” Ivan said, voice heavy as he raised an eyebrow and wagged a finger at the soldier, “we leave when I say, not before.”
Yevgeny saluted and turned
on his heel, walking away. Ivan watched him head toward the ships. The hangar
was so big that the three sister ships Troika, Siberian Winter
and Kronstadt fit in it with ease, along with
a larger fleet of mercenary troopships, supply vessels and escorts. All sat on
the deck, poised and alert as engineers scrabbled about them, torpedoes loaded
and crew boarded. From here Ivan could see the robot Pavlo
V and his unit of cyborg dogs boarding the Winter,
Above this melee were the ships that had already been
loaded and prepped, suspended above by magnetic clamps and metal cable. He
could see the Mercy Seat—Skullion’s black,
sleek medical frigate—and he pictured Thom drumming his fingers on the arm of
his chair, impatient and nervous. Above these ships, the hangar ceiling was
lost behind a multitude of spotlights that illuminated this fleet of thirty-seven
mercenary vessels.
“Ivan!”
He turned to see his sister striding toward him. Every bit as tall as her brothers, she was every inch the soldier in her fatigues, body armour, long coat and ushanka.
“Vassilissa,” he said, nodding toward her. “Shouldn’t you be aboard Kronstadt?”
“I was,” she said, her handsome, masculine face clouded and furrowed with displeasure. She stood, hands on her hips, the leather of her gloves creaking. “But Gregor sent me to get you. He’s been trying to reach you but you’ve turned off your comm. Why?”
“Because I will not let Gregor tell me when we leave,” Ivan said. By now they had made eye contact, and the same old staring match began. “We leave when I am ready, not before.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but paused as an alarm sounded, signifying the opening of the main hangar door. As it opened it exposed the green shimmer of the AEGIS shield, and, beyond that, deep space. Five planets hung in the vacuum, framed by the twisting red of the Theodore nebula, and a tiny, weak sun sulking in the centre of this small, back water system.
“Well, what is there to wait for?” Vassilissa said once the noise had abated and the bay-doors were fully open. “The fleet is nearly ready, and then we can leave. Why wait? The Theocracy will be here in an hour, at the most.”
“We go," Ivan said, sight still locked onto hers, “when I have said goodbye to Tusk.”
“Said goodbye to Tusk?” she said, turning her hands to the heavens. “Why?”
“He is my friend.”
“It’s a good job you have turned off your comm,” she said, the tone and curl of her lip dismissive, “because Gregor would tear you a new arsehole if he heard the reason why you are stalling…”
Ivan blanched and looked away. Vassilissa did not, however, get the chance to crow about this small victory.
Footsteps booming, the sea of chaos parting before them, three Jaroth Pha naval officers marched toward them. Known across the galaxy as 'Space Pachyderms', the Jaroth Pha were hulking, grey skinned quadrupeds with big ears, prehensile trunks, fearsome tusks, and eyes like black-holes. Encased in their thick, chunky space-suits, they were often dismissed as a comical race—until they were engaged in combat.
The leader of the three reached Ivan, who saluted. Vassilissa, however, merely stared, over-awed.
“
“I am afraid the captain is very busy preparing to
engage the Theocracy, Master Ivan.” A Jaroth Pha’s voice was so deep it would
make a human’s ears bleed, thus
“But, Tusk—”
“Will always be your friend,
Master Ivan, and, as such, he asks that you do not waste your time—and our
sacrifice.”
#
Twenty years later, and Tatiana eased the Troika
down a tunnel deep within the mammoth Jaroth Pha dreadnought. Her brow was
furrowed as she peered at the TAC display.
This doesn’t make sense. she
thought, turning her head slightly to address Ivan. “Uncle?
I don’t understand. Shouldn’t these exhausts lead to some sort of engine? All
my display shows is some sort of chamber. A big one.”
“They are not exhausts, Tatiana,” Ivan said. He was
still sat at the engineering station, but now his head was in his hands, and
his eyes were closed. His TAC showed the Calci vessels bearing down on the wreck of the dreadnought.
“Then what are they?”
“You will see, yes?”
#
Finally the Troika reached the end of the
supposed exhaust, which ended in an abrupt downward turn. Tatiana duly guided the
cutter through the resulting aperture, the Troika descending,
nose level and steady, into the cavernous chamber below.
It was pitch black. Hovering in the chamber, the Troika’s spotlights burst into life, and the darkness fled, leaving its secrets behind.
#
Tatiana’s jaw dropped. Speechless, she could only sit and stare out of the flight-deck’s canopy. She felt her Uncle move to stand behind her chair, ducking down to afford a better view of the panorama before them.
“Welcome, Tatiana,” he said as he placed a hand on her shoulder, “to real Elephants’ Graveyard.”
The chamber was immense, its metallic, ribbed walls honey-combed with tunnels. The deck was lost beneath the huge skeletons of countless Jaroth Pha. Tatiana had read about these creatures. She’d thought they were cute when she was a kid. To see the skeletal remains of so many of these graceful creatures was a shock.
“Did they..?” she said, stumbling over the words. “What happened here?”
“Some years ago, there was a war in these systems against Theocracy. This ship fought rearguard action against them, buying me and your father time to retreat and regroup.”
“You and father? You fought
here? Alongside the Jaroth Pha,” Tatiana blurted in disbelief. Her father had
never talked about the past.
“And your aunt.”
“We have an aunt?”
“We all fought in war,” Ivan said, ignoring the question, “but we had to leave Tusk and crew behind. They decimated Theocracy fleet—you can see evidence outside—but battle left their ship—this ship—crippled and most of crew dead.
“Those left came here to die, Tatiana,” he said, and she thought she saw a sheen on his eyes. “It is their custom, yes? When ship is dead, when there is no hope, they will come to these halls and make peace with God, and with each other.”
“But, those tunnels? They’re for what? Escape pods?”
“No, Tatiana. The Jaroth Pha call them Pha Doram Lof—‘The White Gates’. They are for their spirits, that they may begin journey into next life.”
“That’s so…” Tears sprang into her eyes, and her throat contracted. “That’s beautiful.”
“They are beautiful race—spiritual and giving. That they should die out here in cold, so far from home and loved ones…”
“And they’re not going to be the only ones, are they,
Ivan?”
Tatiana and her uncle turned to see Boyd as he walked onto the flight-deck, Vast, Stalin and the smug looking Katarina behind him, now wearing baggy cargo pants, heavy boots and a slack, stripy sweater.
A pit opened in Tatiana’s stomach the moment she saw Boyd, and her heart-rate quickened still further.
“Boyd—”
“Are y’happy now, big man?” Boyd said before Ivan could finish the sentence. “Are y’happy now we’re in a corner and we can’t get the fuck out?” He strode up to Ivan and jammed a finger in Ivan’s chest. “Are you happy you stuck to your guns and refused to buy torpedoes? Eh?”
Tatiana held her breath. She looked at Ivan. Christ, Boyd—what are you doing? she thought. Nobody speaks to Ivan like that!
But there was no explosion from Ivan. No shouting. No violence. Instead he just looked away, shoulders sagging and head going down as he deflated visibly. Tatiana looked at Katarina, and she could see—from the arched eyebrows and the slight parting of her mouth—that her sister was just as shocked.
“So what are we gonna do?” Katarina said. “How are we gonna get out of here?”
Boyd turned away from Ivan as the big Russian sat down. “Well,” Boyd said to Katarina as he avoided making eye-contact with Tatiana, “first we need to get the graviton system online, so if we do manage to get passed the Calci—”
Stalin had trotted to Ivan’s side. “But, Boyd, have you seen the TAC?” he said as—looking up at the station’s TAC display—he stood on his hinds legs and rested his front paws on the navigation console. “There are more of those things out there.” The quiver in his voice, the arching of his eyebrows and nervous twitching of his tail betrayed his fear.
“He’s right, Boyd,” Tatiana said. “How do we get past them?”
Tatiana’s heart was in her mouth as she turned to Boyd. He’d been avoiding her ever since they’d left Potter’s Field. This time he couldn’t ignore her—unless he really was the ignorant peasant Ivan thought he was.
He looked at her, and she was sure he blushed slightly. She smiled, but his expression remained dour and heavy. “I don’t know, Princess—I’m making this up as I go along.”
“Oh. Great,” Katarina said, looking to the heavens. “No weapons, no leadership—”
“Hey, back off Kat.” Tatiana scowled at her sister. “If you’re so damned clever—”
Boyd raised a hand. “Okay, that’s enough. Arguing won’t help.”
“Um... I think they’ve reached the dreadnought,” Stalin said.
Tatiana looked at him. He’d be running around in small circles soon, unless she missed her guess.
“I’m launching the Stasi,” Boyd said as he moved to the Troika’s tactical station, tapping at a series of buttons.
“Stasi?” Tatiana said. “What are they?”
“Flying cameras, remotely operated,” Boyd said quietly without looking at her. A series of pings for the console signified the departure of the cameras. “I’ve only ever heard of these ‘Calci’. I want to see exactly what they are…”
#
Approaching the dreadnought from four different
angles, the Calci troopships, also shaped like sheep
skulls, backed onto the dreadnought’s hide. Muted by the utter silence of space,
umbilical boarding-telescopes extended from the rear of the ships, docking
collars locking onto the dreadnought’s Doram Lof.
Collars in place, their iris valve airlocks began to open, the darkness of Pha Doram Lof pierced by expanding shafts of red light from within.
Within moments, the valves were open, and from each
of these infernal gates of Hellish red emerged a solitary figure.
Moving in a metronomic uniformity, they were cybernetically boosted skeletons. Their limbs were
reinforced with armoured plating and pins that stood proud from pitted bone,
and their brains—kept alive by immoral technology and darker witchcraft.—were
cosseted in basins within their armoured skulls.
Moving a small distance from their vessel, held to
the deck by portable, anti-gravity
Moments later, the tiny Stasi
cameras arrived, hovering above the skeletons.
#
“What? That’s it?” Stalin said as they all stared at the pictures relayed from the cameras. “Four piles of bones? I could eat them for break—”
“Shut up, Stalin,” Boyd said. “Look!”
#
In perfect syncopation, the four Calci
raised an arm, each pointing a bony finger into the darkness.
On cue, the truth spilt from the troopships like an
exodus from Hell.
Partially concealed in Pha Doram Lof’s darkness, silhouetted red by the troop-ships’ internal lights, this black tide poured from their crafts. They lurched forth in waves, an undulating, haphazard sea of bent limbs and dragged feet.
#
“There must be hundreds of them!” Stalin said. Sure enough, he began to run in small circles, tongue flopping out of his mouth as his voice reached whole new levels of nasal whininess. “That’s it. They’re coming. We’re going to die…”
“Stalin, shut up!” Boyd leaned forward, focusing on one the Stasi’s footage. “I need a better view of these things,” he said.
“No, Boyd, you do not,” Ivan said in a quiet voice. “Please, Boyd, do not do this…”
They all stopped to look at him. Sat at the navigation station, seat turned away from its instruments, his legs were parted and his elbows rested on his knees as his head slumped down and forward. He stared at the deck. His commands had no weight and no gravitas. He’s like some sort of ghost, Tatiana thought.
“I’m taking a closer look,” Boyd said as he tapped at the console. Immediately the Stasi zoomed in, and the truth of the Troika’s situation became clear.
Tatiana had to stifle a scream, hand going over her mouth as her eyes loaded with tears.
“Oh... Oh my…” Boyd said as the colour drained from his face. “Oh fuck.”
“I warned you,” Ivan said, looking up at Boyd.
They all fell into silence, and Katarina—looking as though she were about to faint—had to lean against a bulkhead. They all fell into silence as they watched themselves on the TAC screens.
From Tatiana to Katarina, from Ivan to Boyd, countless variations of their reanimated corpses lurched across the flickering screen. All were different, but each horrifically familiar. Some were old, some were young, some were wounded or mutilated, others were outwardly unharmed, but all were dead, mouths open and listless, eyes dull and lifeless. Tatiana could make out a young Boyd with his neck snapped, the head flopping about across his shoulder. Beside him there was a frail, elderly Katarina, skin aged and breasts sagging from her withered frame. She saw another Boyd with his throat cut, and a youngster she thought looked like Ivan with a hole blown in the back of his skull. She could even make out a variety of Stalins amongst this host, and some unholy composites that featured bits of them all sown together to make sickening amalgamations.
One foot before the other, inexorable and
inexplicable, they marched on, moving past their skeletal generals as they
headed down Pha Dorma Lof. The Stasi relayed this ghoulish movement to the crew of the Troika just as, in turn, that crew
betrayed their horror with mute, frozen fascination.
Part Three
Here They Come
“What are those things?” Tatiana whispered as she and the rest of the crew stared at the cadavers on the screen. She hugged herself, skin crawling.
“No one is really sure,” Ivan said, head going into his hands. “Some say they are versions of Crepitus’s victims plucked from across time and infinite paradoxes. Others say they are little more then dead soldiers, scavenged from battlefields and given new faces by Crepitus—”
“Crepitus?” Tatiana’s voice was tiny and thin.
“He is a techromancer,” Ivan said. “An evil, evil man who toys with the dead through science and black wizardry. Your father and I have fought him before. It is said to be the same for everyone Crepitus fights. Always they must face themselves.”
“Are they… Is part of them, y’know, still alive?” Katarina asked, a shudder in her voice.
“That depends,” Ivan said. “Do you believe in the notion of a soul?”
Katarina didn’t answer, she just looked at the display. Black tears, tainted with mascara, slid down her cheeks and she was biting at her lip. It soon began to bleed.
“Why isn’t there a Vast in there?” Boyd asked.
“Have you tried to kill Vast?” Ivan said. “Is not easy.”
Silence resumed as they stared at the screens. Is this, Tatiana wondered as her eyes fixed on a cadaver with her face—albeit some thirty years hence—riven with multiple gunshots and covered in blood, my future? Is that what I’m looking at? Disturbed, she turned away. “What are we going to do?”
“I,” Ivan said as he turned and hit a swift series of buttons on his console, “am going to do the only thing I can.”
He pushed one last button, and the air in the flight-deck was disturbed by a green holographic distortion. It twisted and pulsed briefly before it settled, and the green shimmering representation of a man stood amongst the startled crew. Old, hairless and bent, he was dressed in a shabby, frayed uniform Tatiana didn’t recognise. He was so thin he reminded the Princess of a skeleton shrink-wrapped in liver-spots.
“So, Ivan,” the hologram said, his voice so thin and jaundiced it cut through Tatiana like the sound of broken, grinding bone, “you’ve run back here, to Tusk, to the friend you left behind? And I thought only dogs returned to their own vomit.”
“Who is this?” Boyd said to Ivan, gesturing at the holograph.
“I am Crepitus, you lack-wit. And you, Ivan, want to beg for your life, I expect.”
“No. Not mine. You can have me, but I want you to spare the others. You don’t need my crew—”
“Yes I do, Ivan.” His cracked lips curled back to reveal blackened teeth festering in ruined gums like bombed-out houses. “I need to capture them, to mutilate them, whilst you watch, understand? My Calci are coming for you, Ivan, and they’re going to drag you out of that toy spaceship, and they’re going to bring you to me.”
“Aye, you’re the big man talking from the other side of a comms signal, are y’not?” Boyd said. It was his time to sneer. “Why don’t you come down here yourself and we’ll see who mutilates who, you skinny sack of—”
“Oh, you’ll see me soon enough,” Crepitus said, “and then I’ll cut you down to si—” The hologram vanished, the signal cut by Ivan.
“Well, that went well,” Stalin said.
“So, begging didn’t work,” Boyd said, voice dripping with scorn. “Got any other plans, Ivan?”
“If Calci are coming to take us alive they will try to overwhelm Troika,” Ivan said in a low, tired voice. “We must hold out as long as possible and try to repair graviton drives. Once they are repaired we may be able to get away.”
“Why is this ‘Crepitus’ even out there, Uncle?” Katarina said. Her eyes were narrowed, and her tone suspicious. “Is this another case of you and Father’s enemies taking it out on us?”
“It doesn’t matter, Katarina,” Boyd said, his interruption earning him a withering glare from Katarina. “Ivan’s right. We’ve got to concentrate on getting away.” He tapped his finger against the mic on his comms headset. “Dolly? You there?”
“Yes, Master Boyd,” Doll Two said, its voice crackling in Tatiana’s headset via the ‘net’s open channel.
“Get to the graviton bay and start work on those relays.”
“Yes, Master Boyd. Doll Two out.”
“What are you going to do?” Tatiana said, stepping up to Boyd. She placed her hand gently on his arm. He didn’t move away. Instead he looked at her, and she tried to read him. A subtle watering of his eyes and the slightest inflection in his eyebrows suggested there was a vulnerability there, a yearning, but then it was quickly smothered as his nostrils flared and his mouth drew thin as if some invisible barrier had fallen between them. But he didn’t draw away, he just looked at her.
What are you fighting, Boyd? she wondered. What’s wrong? “Boyd?”
“Yeah—what are you gonna do? They’re gonna kill us all!”
“Stalin! Shut. Up!” Ivan said, the slightest hint of steel creeping back in into his tone.
“Me and Vast’ll set up firing posts outside and hold the Calci off for as long as we can,” Boyd said as he put his hand over Tatiana’s and squeezed gently.
Tatiana felt flushed and a little light-headed, and fancied a ghost of a smile haunted his dour countenance. “I’ll come with you,” she said.
“You will not.” For all his resignation and fugue, the sudden strength in Ivan’s tone reminded them all of the man he used to be. “It will be dangerous. You must stay here and co-ordinate efforts, yes?”
“I can do that,” Katarina said as she put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. She stared at them all in turn as they turned to look at her.
“Katarina, my darling,” Ivan said in the kind of tone one uses when one is trying to let a child down gently, “we will need someone alert and—”
“Ex-cuse me, Uncle—but it was me that saved these two on Parlour,” Katarina said as she gestured at Boyd and Tatiana, “not the other way ‘round. Not to mention I just killed three Calci gun-ships.”
Ivan looked up at Katarina, and Tatiana saw a flash of the old man there, the slightest fission of annoyance. He wasn’t used to the nieces answering back.
“She has a point, Uncle,” Tatiana said slowly.
“Me and Vast’ll have to use the Maxims, Ivan,” Boyd said. “We’ll need ammunition constantly. Tatiana could really help…”
“No.”
“Yes, Uncle,” Tatiana said. Now it was her turn to put her hands on her hip and stick out her chin.
“It is danger—”
“And waiting here isn’t?” Tatiana said. “What choice do we have? Die, or die fighting? Well, Father wouldn’t die without a fight, and I’m guessing the Uncle Ivan who fought alongside him and Tusk wouldn’t either.”
He looked at her, and she stared back. She saw the fire die in his eyes.
“Very well,” he muttered, his head slumping once more.
#
The Troika’s vac-suit prep-station was sterile
and white. Brightly lit, the walls were lined with lockers, benches and
cabinets containing bulky grey and orange vac-suits and equipment ranging from
portable
Perhaps it was a betrayal of its military heritage, Tatiana reflected, perhaps it was just an oversight, but the Troika only had one such prep-station, and she was forced to get changed with Boyd.
For her part, Tatiana ditched her nightshirt and grabbed her vac-suit’s all-over Gagarin stocking as quickly as she could. For a brief moment, as the nightshirt hit the deck and she stepped into the figure-hugging stocking, she was completely naked, and she felt her cheeks burn even as the coolness of the air bit at her skin, raising tingling gooseflesh all over.
As she sat on a bench and pulled the body-stocking over her legs, she watched Boyd. Faced flushed, he was stood with his back to Tatiana as he stripped down to his boxer-shorts, and Tatiana caught herself hoping he was struggling not to avail himself of her nakedness. Part of her—the shy young girl who wanted to be at home playing with dolls—was glad, but the other part—the curious young woman who wanted to be in bed playing with her man—wanted him to look.
But he didn’t. He dutifully ignored her.
“Boyd?” she said in an effort to seize his attention. “Are we going to…y’know…die?”
He didn’t answer straight away, nor did he turn to face her immediately. He remained stock still for a moment until, shoulders sagging, he exhaled before turning to look at her over his shoulder. His eyes were hooded, and his jaw was set. The same barrier she’d seen on the flight-deck was in place, the same barrier he’d been hiding behind every since they left Potter’s Field.
“Look, Princess, I can’t lie to you. The stories I’ve heard? About these Calci? They might be slow, they might be coming after us with their bare hands, but there’s a lot of them, and there’s probably more on the way…” He looked away again, head sinking still further as he made a pretence of adjusting the wristbands on his stocking. “If Dolly can’t get those engines going, the Calci’ll just wear us down ‘til we run out of ammo and they can rip us apart.”
With that, he fell silent. She looked at him, at his back. Vulnerable and naked in the face of this new enemy, she felt tiny and very, very alone. More then anything she wanted Boyd to take hold of her the way he had on Parlour, and to make her safe. But all he could do was turn his back on her, a slave to whatever fears, whatever reservations, haunted him.
Well, enough was enough. “Oh, Boyd. This,” she said as she stood, stamping her foot and clenching her fist, “is stupid. You’ve been ignoring me ever since we buried Matinee. You know that don’t you?”
He didn’t answer, but his expression shifted with the greatest subtlety as she neared him. It became softer, a little less defensive.
“Why, Boyd? Is it something I’ve done? Said? Don’t you like me anymore? I thought, when you kissed me on Parlour…” Tatiana said as she stepped toward him. “Is it because we buried Matinee? Is it because you blame me that she’s dead?”
“Oh, Jesus, Princess! No!” he said, turning toward her and taking her by the shoulders as he looked at her. She looked back. Suddenly the barrier had gone, and he was earnest and sincere with parted lips and wide, bright eyes. “It’s not that at all, Princess. It’s not your fault she’s dead. I don’t blame you. Nobody does…”
“Really?” Tears stung her eyes. God knew she’d waited for someone to say that to her, and for it to be Boyd was a taste so sweet. “But I ran away. Left her…”
“And if you hadn’t she’d have pushed you away.” His head was lowered now as he looked into her eyes. “Because that’s what she was paid to do. That’s what Vast is paid to do. What I’m paid to do.” He looked away. “Die for you."
The breath caught in her throat. “Would you… Would you die—”
“In a heart beat.”
Then they were in each others arms as they kissed. With his tongue exploring her mouth and his stubble scratching her chin, she thrilled to the feel of his hands as they moved over her. In one he took hold of her head, hair spilling through his fingers, and with the other he took a firm hold of her buttock. For her part, her fingers moved across his shoulders and back, savouring the contours of his body and the synthetic texture of the Gagarin stocking.
“How…long?” she said with a gasp as his mouth moved to her neck. She could feel his erection against her thigh.
“What?” He paused, as if taken aback by such a forward question.
“Vast. How long until she gets here?”
“Oh. I…” He stopped as his lips moved to her earlobe. “I don’t know. She went to the armoury first to grab the guns…”
“Oh, good.” Her hands went between them, and she began to unseal his stocking with every intention of stripping him naked, there and then.
Where this was coming from, she didn’t know. Maybe it was the fear of what lay outside. Maybe it was the realisation she could die very soon. Maybe it was the lingering image of her dead doppelganger and its reminder of her mortality. Maybe she was just horny. Whatever the case, she wasn’t letting this opportunity pass her by.
“If Ivan finds out…” Boyd said, the words muffled and distorted as he ravished her neck.
“He won’t.”
His laugh was dirty and rough. “Won’t find out? Ivan?”
“Who cares anyway?” She’d opened his stocking to his belly, and his chest and part of his shoulders were exposed. Scared and strong, they promised Tatiana stamina and power. “We could be dead soon.” She began to open her own stocking, grasping it at the neck and pulling it open, revealing her cleavage and the mole on her breast. “Just hurry up before—”
The door hissed open, and Vast strode in, encumbered with two big Maxims—heavy calibre machine-guns with a bore big enough to puncture plate armour—resting on each shoulder and her torso lost beneath an array of ammunition belts, bandoliers and grenade satchels.
“—Vast gets here.” Tatiana concluded with a sigh.
If Vast was surprised to catch the pair of them in this tryst, she didn’t show it. Giving them little more then a cursory glance, she dumped the weapons and other equipment on the deck and went to her locker, opening it to reveal an armoured vac-suit inside.
#
“We’re ready, Kat.”
Sat at the tactical station on the flight-deck, Katarina’s brow furrowed as she pressed the earphone deeper into the well of her ear. “What? Already? That was quick,” she said as she looked at the TAC screen. It was flooded with contacts marching down Pha Doram Lof toward them.
“Aye, because we’ve never done this before, have we,” Boyd said, and even the distortion of the open channel couldn’t hide his sarcasm.
Fuck you, Boyd. “My bad, Boydie. I forgot you’re the experienced hard-man…”
“That’s enough, Kat,” Tatiana said over the network. “We’re leaving now, setting up these guns. What’s the ETA on the Calci?”
“I reckon you’ve got five minutes, max. And that’s not all,” she said as she looked at her display. “Long range scans show another four ships inbound. Too early to say what they are, but I think they might be more Calci ships.”
“How long?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“And what’s the environment like out there, Katarina?” Boyd said.
“Um, if I read these scans right, this dreadnought’s so big it seems to have its own micro-climate. Air pressure is twenty kay. Gravity twice Oridian normal. Atmosphere a hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide mix.”
“And the temperature?”
“Fucking cold.”
“‘S'like I never left
Katarina laughed, despite herself.
“Um, Kat?” Tatiana said. “Your, um, language..? Is Uncle Ivan still with you?”
Katarina smiled. They both know Ivan hated swearing. “No, he’s not here,” she said as she took a packet of cigarettes from her sweater pocket. I bet he’d hate this even more, she thought, smiling as she popped a cigarette in her mouth and withdrew the packet’s incumbent lighter.
“He’s not there?” Boyd’s tone was sharp and alarmed. “What do you mean ‘He’s not there’?”
“He’s gone.” She paused to light the cigarette, inhaling deeply. “I just turned ‘round and he’d left. An’ he’s taken Stalin with him.”
#
It was a secret room known only to himself and a select few. As the door hissed shut behind him, he took a deep breath.
“Never thought we’d be in here again, Ivan,” Stalin said.
It was the Troika’s second prep-station. Smaller then the other, it was darker, lit only by red lights and green TAC displays. It smelt of stale sweat and burnt flesh. It had smelt just the same twenty years ago when Gregor had dragged Ivan’s sorry, bleeding carcass away from the Coven’s ambush on Aguri-Takagi.
Gregor, you bastard, he thought, looking way and closing his eyes. What I wouldn’t give to have you here now…
The walls were lined with vac-suits, only these suits were red, adorned with scared black armour, and flashed with the 14/02, Ω and Я вспоминаю badges of the Omega Hammers. There were also enough guns to fight a war.
“You’re not going to…use those? Are you?” Stalin asked, eyeing the weapons.
He looked at them. “Of course not, Stalin,” Ivan said as he began to strip off. Even now his voice was still weary and strained, and his movements lacked snap and purpose. “If God is with us, I won’t need to…”
#
“Right. Opening the ‘lock now. See you soon, Kat.”
Katarina saw a light activate on her console as the airlock opened. Her throat suddenly became tight, and her mouth dry. “Um, Tatiana?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Be careful.” It was hard for Katarina to say. The image of Tatiana letting the Witch live, and the memory of her going to Parlour and nearly getting killed still made Katarina angry, but the realisation they could all die... “Please?”
A pause.
“We will, Kat. We’ll be back, I promise.”
#
The instant the ‘lock opened the drop in temperature was so severe that—heated Gagarin stocking or no—it took Tatiana’s breath away, her hand going to her chest as her gasp reflex almost bent her double.
“Christ on a bike,” Boyd said over the ‘net, voice thin and shallow. He too was slumped, hand going to a handrail on the airlock’s bulkhead to keep himself upright.
“Is this… I’ve never… It’s so cold.”
“You’re right, Princess. This cold: It’s not…not natural.”
Tatiana didn’t respond, however, she just stared.
The Troika’s ramp had already come down, and the area beyond—and immediately around the Troika—was illuminated by the lights in the cutter’s under-carriage. All she could see were the skeletal remains of the Jaroth Pha, stretching away into the darkness.
Only now did she fully realise the sheer scale of these creatures, and of the chamber in which they had died. Hulking skulls lay to rest on the deck, easily big enough to hide a man inside. The bones from their limbs formed a maze of intricate, waist-high walls. Massive rib-cages soared into the air. All glittered white with frost, and the deck—what little she could see through the mass of bones—was ribbed and metallic, just like Pha Doram Lof. The chamber’s high ceiling soared above them, and its walls seemed far, far away.
“I’m not liking this, Princess,” Boyd said. “You should go back.”
“No Boyd. You need me.”
He turned to look at her, and she saw it in his eyes. Yes, he did.
Vast—seemingly unaffected by the horrible cold—had
already pushed past them. Tatiana set off after her, pushing a suspensor sled
laden down with ammo boxes and other gear. Even with its weight partially
negated by its
Even though her pulse quickened as she struggled with the sled, the resulting rise in her body-temperature did nothing to alleviate the cold that seemed to slice through her suit’s thick hide and dissect her. The HUD projected onto her visor told her the suit’s life-support was trying its best to acclimatise, but it didn’t seem to be working.
It’s just like those ghost-stories Kat always used to tell me. They always had a ‘supernatural cold’, she thought as she reached the foot of the ramp, fist-size fragments of bone on the deck making her lose her footing momentarily. Are we alone? Are the Jaroth Pha’s spirits here?
#
Five minutes later—having worked flat out in two suitable congestions of bone to create small two nests, one at each end of the Troika—they were nearly ready. Tatiana had watched Boyd the whole time, and she’d been surprised—and a little thrilled—by just how strong he was, matching the powerful Vast pound for pound as they’d lifted their gear from the suspensor sled and put it in place.
“Tatiana? Can you hear me?” Katarina’s voice was tremulous and high pitched. “They’re here. The Calci, they’re here!”
“What? Already? That was quick,” Boyd said. Knelt by his machine-gun’s tripod, he was hooking up an ammo belt that ran from a huge horizontal drum by its side. He stood, and looked toward the chamber wall before turning to look toward the other three sides of the chamber. “They’ve got us surrounded, alright,” he said.
Tatiana turned to look. Sure enough, all about the chamber, Crepitus’s troops were emerging from Pha Doram Lof. Their slow, lurching movements, the abject lack of life in their faces made her turn away. She was going to be sick.
“Okay, this is it,” Boyd said as he crossed to his Maxim, kneeling at its stock and bracing the butt against his shoulder. He squinted down the barrel of his gun. If he was unnerved, he didn’t show it. “Here they come.”
Tatiana caught a brief glimpse of Vast sprinting toward the machinegun nest she’s set up at the other end of the Troika, vaulting a wall of bone. Then Boyd’s gun roared, and Tatiana cried out, the sound battering her senses.
Part Four
Spirits in the
Material World
Tatiana’s world was dominated by the incessant roar
of machineguns as Boyd and Vast fought to keep the Calci
at bay.
Tatiana couldn’t look. Even now, as she busied
herself maintaining a constant stream of ammunition for the guns, what she’d
seen made her sick. The sight of Ivan after Ivan, Boyd after
Boyd, and Katarina after Katarina being torn into bloody shreds by the endless
hail of bullets. The sight of these fallen Calci
hitting the deck, shrouded in blood and splintered
bone, only to be trodden under foot by the next rank of Calci.
was too much. It was too much.
But she pushed on, carrying ammunition from the
suspensor sled as it sat beneath the Troika.
She dashed back and forth to Vast and Boyd’s positions at either end of the
cutter. Her muscles burnt and her ill-fitting boots rubbed the skin from her
heels. All the time her laboured breath steamed inside her vac-suit, the cold
of the chamber dissecting her with a clinical cruelty. But she pushed on.
“Tatiana, Vast’s gonna need more ammo soon.” Katarina’s voice high and
shrill over the ‘net. “Boyd, there’s a group breaking off. Hex-ref five, niner, seven—”
“I see ‘em, Katarina.” Boyd
said, nearly drowned out by the roar of his Maxim. “What’s the sit-rep with
those other ships on the scanner?”
“They’ve docked. You’ve more Calci
heading your way. And I see more incoming ships, too…”
“More?” Boyd muttered. Tatiana looked at him.
Startled, she saw his face was wet with tears. Was he too suffering at the hands
of the Calci’s most potent psychological weapon?
“Princess?” he said “I’m gonna need more ammo!”
She took a deep breath, calming herself. She took a
deep breath, and hurried to Boyd’s position.
#
Katarina did the best she could to keep up with the
torrent of information her TAC hurled at her. Unit movements and composition. Fields of
fire. Diagnostics. Ammunition
levels. Opposition numbers.
Hunched over the flight-deck’s tactical station, her
clothes were soaked in sweat, and her hair was plastered to her forehead. She
looked at the TAC. Despite Boyd and Vast’s intersecting arcs of fire, the Calci
were slowly closing in. The Maxims just weren’t firing fast enough—and they
were running out of rounds fast. And there were another six vessels on their
way now—one of which was a contact so big it could only be a mothership of some sort.
It can’t be long until they overwhelm us,
Katarina thought, and there’s no way Boyd an’ Vast can hold
off this many Calci hand-to-hand. She grasped the
mic on her comms headset. “Dolly! How long until the graviton drives are back online?”
Doll Two’s voice was flat and even. “I don’t have the
time to repair all these hydrogen relays, Mistress Katarina, so I have elected
force the hydrogen through fewer conduits at a higher pressure—”
“Less science, more answers, Dolly.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen!?” Katarina froze, hands hovering over the
station. “We’ll be dead in five!”
An alarm sounded, and Katarina looked to see the
ammunition read-out on Vast’s machinegun reach a
flashing red zero.
Katarina’s head went into her hands. Her throat
contracted as both tears and pressure threatened to overcome her. I can’t
do this. We can’t
do this! We need experience. Leadership.
We need Ivan.
#
It wasn’t easy for Ivan to pick his way through the
bones. They were big, and—even with his vac-suit’s
Ivan stopped briefly, breathing heavily and hunkering
down as he surveyed a TAC display on his suit’s HUD. His lip curled back. Calci
are closing fast, he thought. Will not be long now.
Must hurry.
“This is stupid, Ivan! If they see us, we’re done
for!”
“Be quiet’ Stalin,” Ivan said.
“No! Shan’t!” Stalin said.
“This is stupid, Ivan. Why are we even out here?”
“Because,” Ivan said, bending low and thrusting his
helmet against Stalin’s, eyeballing the ignorant animal, “I cannot think of
other way to save us, yes? Now shut up and get moving,
or I leave you behind.”
#
Tatiana—stood beneath the centre of the Troika and beside the suspensor—turned
in her vac-suit, looking toward Vast. The red Amazon was stepping away from her
machine-gun, its ammunition exhausted. Tatiana looked down at the suspensor
sled, hoping to see more of the Maxims’ slugs. There were none.
Oh, God. Now
what? Tatiana thought as she looked back toward Vast. Already she had taken
up two SMGs she’d stowed by her position. Gripping
them, wedging their stocks under each arm, she opened fire once more. The guns
syncopated reports would have struck Tatiana as being impressive mere days
ago—but now, with the noise of the Maxim’s ringing in her ears—she thought they
sounded tiny and weak.
Wait… she
suddenly thought, blood freezing still further. Boyd’s gun…
She turned toward Boyd now. His Maxim was also spent,
and he was unslinging a stubby, ancient looking
grenade-launcher with a wooden stock from his shoulder.
“Vast?” he said over the ‘net as he stood and braced
the weapon against his shoulder, squinting down its barrel. “Get
Tatiana inside. They’re gonna be on us in no
time”
#
As soon as Vast’s
machinegun had stooped firing, the Calci had surged
forward. Ivan, head bowed as he knelt before a Jaroth
Pha skull, looked up
briefly.
Now the Calci were all
about him, a crush of forlorn, familiar faces and decaying bodies. They moved
to grab him, but were held back as they impacted against an invisible force, a
shield that absorbed their kinetic energy and dissipated it.
“Okay, Ivan, the ECF’s
holding—for now,” Stalin said, “But there’s only so much it can absorb before
it blows—and takes me with it.”
Ivan spared Stalin a brief glimpse. Sure enough, the
diagnostic on the ECF generator strapped to the dog’s
back was already beginning to glow a deep amber. They
didn’t have much time, he realised, as he turned back to pachyderm skull before
him.
Big, even for it kind, it’s
chin rested on the deck and it’s empty eye-sockets bore down on them. An
ancient sigil—meaning known only to the Jaroth Pha—was carved into its forehead. They’d found it only moments
ago, and Ivan had gone down on his knees immediately.
“Ivan? Ivan? What are you doing? I need help
here!”
Much to Stalin’s chagrin, Ivan didn’t answer. He
merely bowed his head once more as a SHROUD projector on his shoulder burst
into life, creating a holographic, interactive console before him that pulsed a warm, steady red. Fingers moving to press
holographic buttons, he began to talk to himself.
#
“Bring out your dead!” Boyd was shouting “Bring out
your bloody dead!”
Tatiana had never seen Boyd like this before. Eyes
wide, teeth bared, he ranted as he stood on top of the pile of bones he’s
previously used for cover, firing round after round from his grenade launcher.
Beyond him, she could see the explosive results as sundered clouds of bone and Calci were thrown into the air. Shards of
bony shrapnel whistled by her as she crouched by the suspensor.
Beside her, Vast was also firing. Tatiana turned to
see just what she was firing at. The Calci had now
over-run the ad-hoc machine-gun nest Vast had abandoned. Climbing over the
bones, they lurched forward, stumbling on even as Vast poured twin streams of
bullets into their knees. Those that fell at the forefront still clawed their
way toward them, and those behind pushed on, reaching for their prey.
One of Vast’s guns ran out
of bullets, and she cast it aside. Still firing the other SMG,
she twisted and grabbed Tatiana by the arm, pulling the Princess to her feet.
“No, Vast,” Tatiana said as she tried to pull her arm
free. “I won’t leave him. I won’t leave Boyd”
Vast had no chance to respond, Katarina’s signal
suddenly bleating in their ears, “Boyd? Boyd, do you hear me..?” she said,
voice urgent, words compressed and rushed. “…Your suit, Boyd—I think it’s
punctured!”
Tatiana turned away from Vast, movement restricted by
the bulky suit as she looked toward Boyd. She saw him stop firing, clumsy hand
groping at his shoulder from which protruded a shard of bony shrapnel. His gait
was drunken and precarious. He lost his footing, and fell heavily from the top
of the bony wall to the deck. He fell upon the wounded shoulder, pushing the
sharp deeper, and then he lay there, still.
“Boyd!
No! Please no!” Tatiana’s shout was so loud it even rang in her deaf
ears. “I’m coming! Just hang on!” Teeth bared and eyes wide in an almost feral
anger, she shouted “Let me go, Vast. Now!”
Maybe it was Tatiana’s breeding, an innate authority,
maybe it was a desire to see her colleague—friend, even—survive, but Vast
complied immediately. Letting go of Tatiana’s arm, she turned back to the Calci that were nearly upon them both, and carried on
firing as she drew yet another, smaller SMG from a
sling beneath her armpit.
With Vast moving backward to shadow her, firing as
she went, Tatiana ran to Boyd as quickly the vac-suit would allow, fumbling in
one of utility pockets for a vac-seal patch. Reaching the stricken Scot, she
fell to her knees amidst the broken bones and spent cartridges, and looked at
Boyd, shaking him as she peered into his helmet. Flat on his back, his eyes
were closed and his head slumped into the confines of his helmet. He was
turning blue. His body was utterly limp. Finally managing to wrestle the
stubborn patch from its pouch on her sleeve, Tatiana made a quick inspection of
his wound. Boyd’s falling onto the deck had pushed the shrapnel so deep into
his shoulder it was practically plugging the wound. To remove it now would
merely induce ore bleeding. Leaving the bone where it was, she slapped the
vac-seal patch over the hole in his suit. She tried to ignore the blood that
soaked it.
#
“Tatiana! Get out of there! They’re almost on top of
you!”
Katarina couldn’t believe how stupid Tatiana was. The
damned Calci were feet away and she was still trying
to save that stupid Boyd. A camera in the Troika’s underbelly showed her
trying to drag Boyd toward the Troika’s
ramp even as the tide of Calci oozed toward her,
undulating and clawing at the air before them.
Katarina activated her mic.
“Tatiana! You’ve got to get out of there! You’ve got to get out of there now!”
#
The syncopated flashing from the two guns lit Boyd’s
nest like guttering torches.
Vast! Tatiana thought. Thank God!
The bodyguard was walking out from beneath the Troika.
composed and unruffled, her guns blazed as she cut down swathes of the nearest Calci as they fell thick and fast, their splintered, broken
bodies piling up. Tatiana had to look away. They’re not us, she
kept telling herself.
She heaved at Boyd, dragging him toward the Troika’s ramp and the supposed sanctuary
of the airlock, only turning back when she heard Vast
stop firing. The Amazon’s guns were exhausted, and this brief respite was all
the Calci needed, surging forward
“Vast! Look out!” Tatiana shouted as Vast stood her
ground, eyes locked on the Calci as they lurched
toward her. Showing no panic, she dropped one SMG,
and reached for a fresh clip for the other.
“Boyd’s guns!” Katarina’s
voice was high pitched and desperate in Tatiana’s ear. “Use his guns!”
Tatiana dithered as he fingers rested on one of Boyd’s pistols. Even then, even in the face of certain death, the fear of Ivan and his attitude toward guns took over and her hands moved