www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
Hearts and Bones
by
Paul L. Mathews
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 from the guns to the
last two grenades on his belt. “Vast! Down!” she shouted as, turning toward the
Calci, she paused just long enough to flip up the
covers on their primers, depress them, and throw the grenades.
It was her best throw, but such was the gravity in
the Graveyard that the grenades fell to the ground by Vast without bouncing.
Vast barely had time to turn and throw herself to the ground before the
grenades went off. Kinetic grenades, they spat forth a wave of concussive
energy that barrelled into the approaching Calci,
throwing them in all directions. Caught in the blast, Vast flew over Tatiana’s
head, impacted heavily against the troika’s underbelly and thundering into the
deck in a cloud of bone and dust.
“God, Vast, I’m sorry!” Tatiana said as she dashed to
Vast and put an arm about her, helping the big woman to stagger toward the
ramp. Vast’s suit was punctured, she was holed and
bloody, and still she fought. Pulling a further pistol from a holster under her
armpit, she began to fire at the next wave or Calci
that advanced toward them.
What the Hell keeps you up, Vast?
Tatiana thought, and where can I get some?
#
The moment Tatiana and Vast dragged Boyd back inside
the airlock, Katarina brought the door down. Almost as soon as the door locked,
Vast collapsed, as if she’s been driven on by duty alone.
“Get this ‘lock re-pressurised, Kat—”
“Shut up, Tatiana—I know what I’m doing!”
“Boyd and Vast both need medical attention.” Tatiana
activated her mic. “Dolly?
Meet us at med-bay—”
“Wait a minute, Tatiana ,”
Katarina said, alarmed. “What about the grav drives?
Dolly needs to stay where she is and fix ‘em.”
“Why? What’s the use in repairing them if there’s
no-one left alive?”
Katarina froze. She looked to the TAC.
The Troika was being besieged by tides of Calci.
Beyond the chamber, more troop-ships were docking with Pha Dorma Lof, and
still further, more ships were bearing down on the dreadnought, with the mothership now lurking at the fringes of the graveyard..
She held her breath and began to stamp her feet,
beating her fists against the dash of her station. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuuck!”
Her bellow was every bit as intense as her tantrum was childish.
Then she stopped dead, static and confused. “What the
fuck is that?” she said to herself, eyes peering as she leant forward to
inspect the TAC.
Stalin. That’s his transponder. What’s
the fuck is he doing out there, in the graveyard?
#
“Stalin, this is Kataraina—what
are you doing?”
Stalin was barely cognisant of Katarina wittering over his comms suite.
He was too busy watching the press of Calci as they
piled onto his ECF field in a bid to overload it. It’s
gonna blow soon, he thought as he accessed the
field’s readouts. It’s not designed to take this much pressure!
“Stalin!” Katarina said again.
“I’m with Ivan,” he said.
“Ivan? What’s he doing out there?”
“Right now?” Stalin looked
at Ivan. Still on his knees, he was jabbing rapidly at the SHROUD projection,
working through a series of menus imposed on the air before him. Stalin hadn’t
seen the type of glyphs on Ivan’s screen since he was last on this ship, twenty
years ago. “He looks like he’s praying to an elephant skull and trying to hack
into what’s left of this dreadnought’s computer.”
“Elephant..? Look, never mind. I need to talk to him,
fast.”
“Then raise him on the comms
net’.”
“I’ve just tried that—he’s not answering. I need you
to log into his suit’s CPU and open a channel for me.”
“Are you joking? If he’s not answering, it’s because
he wants to be ‘alone’. He’ll kill me if I—”
“Not if the Calci
kill us all first. Do it, Stalin, now.”
#
The TAC showed Katarina the
channel to Ivan’s comm was open. She opened her mouth
to speak to Ivan, but then she stopped as her face fell.
Ivan was crying.
Her hand
went to her open mouth as her eyes widened in astonishment. She’d never heard
him cry before.
Then he began to speak, and it took Katarina a moment
to realise he was talking in Russian. The Troika’s computer, however,
kicked, and began to translate the big man’s lamentations to an increasingly
stunned Katarina.
“—lissa’s dead now, Tusk. Gregor too.
I had to leave him behind. He and his wife told me to meet them at the farm,
but I’m sure they’re dead…”
No! Katarina thought, hands going over her
ears as she squeezed her eyes shut. Don’t say that.
“If they were still alive, they’d have found us by
now,” the translation continued, its clinical, computerised diction clashing
with the distress in Ivan’s voice. “God knows everybody else has.
An alarm from the TAC
pierced Ivan’s monologue, and Katarina looked to see the dire report:
She activated an external camera, to see a small knot
of Calci—consisting of a shaven-headed Boyd with
bloody garrotte marks around his neck, a teenage Ivan with an arm missing and
two mangled Tatianas, converging on a panel on the Troika’s hide—already bent and weakened
by maser fire from the Calci gun-boats. Then an
explosive device inside these Calci exploded in a
burst of flame and rent fresh, taking the panel with them, and gouging a hole
in the ship.
Another alarm, and another. Multiple breaches. Cameras zoomed in and focused, and
Katarina could see them forcing themselves in through holes in the Troika’s
hide, tearing themselves open on jagged, twisted
metal.
Still Ivan continued: “They all want me dead, Tusk,
all of them. They’re all coming back out off my past to get their pound of
flesh out of Ivan the Terrible. They can have me, I don’t care.
“Thom’s dead, Tusk. The man I love, gone, just like
that. He’d waited twenty years for me, and then he died in my arms. All that
time, Tusk, wasted. All that time I should have been with him, but I was too
afraid to tell Gregor.”
What? Katarina’s mouth fell open. Ivan’s Gay?
“He was my brightest joy and my darkest Tzar, Tusk. My reason. And he
loved me so much he gave the last of his life to save mine. And I failed him.”
More alarms. More hull breaches. TAC awash with white contacts as
even more Calci poured out of Pha
Jaroth Lof.
Katarina slouched in her seat.
“I’m pitiful. I don’t care if the Calci
kill me here and now. But… Gregor,
he’s had children. Two girls. Such
beautiful, bright girls. And they don’t deserve to be hunted like this.
They don’t deserve to die here.
“If you’re there, Tusk, if you’ve stayed with your
ship. I need you. I need you more than ever before. Please help them. Please
help the girls…”
As Katarina watched, the small area on the TAC that marked Stalin’s EFC
contracted as the Calci swamped it. The diagnostic
report on the field’s generator showed it was red-lining, seconds from
overload, seconds from detonation.
But then a throb reverberated through the entire
chamber. Everything from the bones of the Jaroth Pha and the Calci,
to the Troika to its crew vibrated so violently, so deeply, that
Katarina thought her kidneys would burst.
The temperature dived even further and with such
sharpness it robbed Katarina of her breath. Her display showed her the
temperature outside plummeted, and the Troika’s external cameras showed
her something else…
The bones of the Jaroth Pha, from their skulls to their
ribs and to their limbs, had suddenly become laced with glowing, pulsing
glyphs, each bright white and fierce. Energy readings from the Troika’s
scanners became confused and erratic, and Katarina could only stare,
dumbfounded.
#
Another vibration shook the corridor. Tatiana’s legs
buckled, but she managed to stay upright. Struggling to help the staggering Vast prop up Boyd, they were making their way to med-bay.
Already waking up—to Tatiana’s surprise—Boyd was vaguely lucid, muttering as
his head rolled about his shoulders.
Yet another vibration rocked the Troika. Even worse
than the last, it so bad blood fled Tatiana’s nose as she cried out in pain.
“Katarina?” she managed to gasp as she steadied
herself. “What’s happening out there?” There was no reply. “Kat—”
A door to her side hissed open,
and a shuffling of Calci lurched from it, falling
upon Tatiana. With a scream, she fell to the floor, head banging against the
bulkhead, disorientating her. Adrenalin helped her regain some composure—but it
was already too late. She could see Vast fighting hard—as ever—but Boyd was
defenceless, twitching on the floor as the Calci
grabbed at him.
Then she lost sight of him as more Calci crowded her. Tatiana after butchered Tatiana, the Calci held her in cold, strong hands. One had the side of
its head blown off, one had a gaping void in the left
side of its torso. One was old and so thin as to be a poisoned stiletto, another couldn’t have been more then ten years
old. With more behind, these four held her down, pining
her to the floor, mouths gaping as they leant toward her warm, soft flesh,
ready to deliver the coup-de-grace.
Facing death at her own hands, she screamed.
#
Ivan pressed one last button on the SHROUD
projection, and a sphere of blue light burst from the sigil
in Tusk’s skull, expanding and sweeping through the chamber. All about Stalin’s
ECF, the Calci collapsed,
lifeless, the instant this wave of ethereal blue energy touched them. Like
dominoes the Calci fell as this blue orb, shot
through with twisting white veins of light, swelled, filling the chamber and
beyond.
“Thank you, Tusk,” Ivan said. Still on his knees, he
looked up at Tusk’s remains with a heavy smile, moustache wet with tears and
intruding into the corners of his mouth. “I will never forget this.”
#
The instant the wave of energy swept through the Troika—unconstrained
by bulkheads, blast-doors or airlocks—the Calci
dropped, lifeless and limp.
Visible for only the briefest moments, vague
apparitions rose from the mangled cages of the Calci,
only to hover over the bodies for a fraction of a second. Tatiana watched
aghast and confused. They seemed to be looking down at her, perhaps lingering
just long enough to say silent, earnest thanks, and then they were gone,
sweeping away, passing the startled Tatiana with supernatural rapidity.
#
“Katarina, this is Ivan. Do you copy?”
Katarina couldn’t reply. She was staring at the TAC. The white contacts of the Calci
had vanished. All the way from the chamber to the perimeter of the dreadnought,
they blinked out.
In their stead were the strangest readings she’d ever
seen, as if some bizarre energy had been released from the Calci.
Even these readings were transitory, however, as the contacts fled the chamber
and swept into Pha Joroth
Lof. Within seconds they were in open space,
fading.
She stared. She didn’t completely understand what
she’d seen, but she could guess. Oh my God, she thought. All those
souls—our souls—set
free. She put her hands together in an attitude of prayer and put
them to his pursed lips as tears ran down her cheeks. Bless you, Ivan.
“Katarina? Do you copy?”
“I’m here, Uncle,” she said, clearing her throat.
#
Ivan was making his way back to the Troika,
fighting to climb over the remains of Jaroth Pha and Calci
alike. It was so cold now the air about him was freezing, and his visor was
steaming up as his suit’s environmental controls failed to cope with the
temperature. Stalin was at his side, his movements becoming slovenly and
torturous as his joints froze.
“Am struggling to reach ship,
Katarina. You must take off.”
“What about you and Stalin?”
“You will leave us, yes?”
“Hey! Wait—” Stalin said.
“You will leave us, and get out of here,” Ivan said,
ignoring the dog.
“But, we can wait, surely?” Katarina said. “The Calci, they’re all gone, right?”
“No…” Ivan said as he consulted the Troika’s TAC
display on his suit’s HUD. It revealed the extent of
the Calci fleet outside. “The rest of Calci are waiting, and Crepitus
will be in that mothership. Katarina,
is only matter of minutes until they will fire on dreadnought and destroy it.
You must go now. That is order. You will go…
… And you will leave us.”
To be continued…
© 2008 Mathew David
Spaull. All rights reserved.